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Idleness is emptiness; the tree in which the sap is stagnant,
remains fruitless.
Author: Hosea Ballou
Source: Manuscript--Sermons
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In the diligence of his idleness.
[Lat., Diligenter per vacuitatem suam.]
Author: Hosea Ballou
Source: Manuscript--Sermons
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For idleness is an appendix to nobility.
Author: Robert Burton
Source: Anatomy of Melancholy (pt. I, sec. II, memb. 2, subsect. 6)
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Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time,
which every day produces, and which most men throw away, but
which nevertheless will make at the end of it no small deduction
for the life of man.
Author: Robert Burton
Source: Anatomy of Melancholy (pt. I, sec. II, memb. 2, subsect. 6)
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An idler is a watch that wants both hands;
As useless if it goes as when it stands.
Author: William Cowper
Source: Retirement
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How various his employments whom the world
Calls idle; and who justly in return
Esteems that busy world an idler too!
Author: William Cowper
Source: Task (bk. III, The Garden, l. 342)
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Thus idly busy rolls their world away.
Author: Oliver Goldsmith
Source: The Traveller (l. 256)
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What heart can think, or tongue express,
The harm that groweth of idleness?
Author: John Heywood
Source: Idleness
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I live an idle burden to the ground.
Author: Homer ("Smyrns of Chios")
Source: The Iliad (bk. XVIII, l. 134), (Pope's translation)
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Busy idleness urges us on.
[Lat., Strenua nos exercet inertia.]
Author: Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Source: Epistles (bk. I, XI, 28)
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That destructive siren, sloth, is ever to be avoided.
[Lat., Vitanda est improba--desidia.]
Author: Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Source: Satires (II, 3, 14)
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Valor, gradually overpowered by the delicious poison of sloth,
grows torpid.
[Lat., Blandoque veneno
Desidiae virtus paullatim evicta senescit.]
Author: Caius Silius Italicus
Source: Punica (III, 580)
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Gloomy calm of idle vacancy.
Author: Samuel Johnson
Source: Boswell's Life of Johnson
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I was raised to feel that doing nothing was a sin. I had to
learn to do nothing.
Author: Jenny Joseph
Source: in the London "Observer"
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An idle life always produces varied inclinations.
[Lat., Variam semper dant otia mentem.]
Author: Lucanus (Marcus Annaeus Lucan)
Source: Pharsalia (IV, 704)
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The frivolous work of polished idleness.
- Sir James Mackintosh,
Author: Sir James Mackintosh
Source: Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy--Remarks on Thomas Brown
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Thou seest how sloth wastes the sluggish body, as water is
corrupted unless it moves.
[Lat., Cernis ut ignavum corrumpant otia corpus
Ut capiant vitium ni moveantur aquae.]
Author: Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)
Source: Epistoloe Ex Ponto (I, 5, 5)
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Thee too, my Paridel! she mark'd thee there,
Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair,
And heard thy everlasting yarn confess
The Pains and Penalties of Idleness.
Author: Alexander Pope
Source: The Dunciad (bk. IV, l. 341)
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We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
[Lat., Difficultas patrocinia praeteximus segnitiae.]
Author: Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilian)
Source: De Institutione Oratoria (I, 12)
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Were't not affection chains thy tender days
To the sweet glances of thy honored love,
I rather would entreat thy company
To see the wonders of the world abroad
Than, living dully sluggardized at home,
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Valentine at I, i)
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A man who has no office to go to--I don't care who he is--is a
trial of which you can have no conception.
Author: George Bernard Shaw
Source: The Irrational Knot (ch. XVIII)
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Other men have acquired fame by industry, but this man by
indolence.
[Lat., Utque alios industria, ita hunc ignavia ad vamam
protulat.]
Author: Tacitus (Caius Cornelius Tacitus)
Source: Annales (XVI, 18)
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Their only labour was to kill the time;
And labour dire it is, and weary woe,
They sit, they loll, turn o'er some idle rhyme,
Then, rising sudden, to the glass they go,
Or saunter forth, with tottering steps and slow.
Author: James Thomson (1)
Source: Castle of Indolence (canto I, 72)
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Indolence is the sleep of the mind.
[Fr., L'indolence est le sommeil des esprits.]
Author: Luc de Clapier de Vauvanargues
Source: Reflexions (390)
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There is no remedy for time misspent;
No healing for the waste of idleness,
Whose very languor is a punishment
Heavier than active souls can feel or guess.
Author: Sir Aubrey de Vere
Source: A Song of Faith--Devout Exercises and Sonnets
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It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.
Author: Virginia Woolf
Source: None
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You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip.
Author: Sir James M. Barrie
Source: None
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A nation rushing hastily too and fro, busily employed in idleness.
Author: Phaedrus
Source: None
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Idleness is an inlet to disorder, and makes way for licentiousness. People who have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company.
Author: Jeremy Collier
Source: None
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Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness - the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.
Author: George MacDonald
Source: None
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Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease.
Author: Benjamin Franklin
Source: None
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Evil thoughts often come from idleness.
Author: Gaelic Proverb
Source: None
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I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely.
Author: Sherlock Holmes
Source: None
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He does not seem to me to be a free man who does not sometimes do nothing.
Author: Marcus Tullius Cicero
Source: None
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As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.
Author: Samuel Johnson
Source: None
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I don't think necessity is the mother of invention -- invention . . . arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.
Author: Agatha Christie
Source: None
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It is not the hours we put in on the job, it is what we put into the hours that counts.
Author: Sidney Madwed
Source: None
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Idleness is many gathered miseries in one name.
Author: Jean Paul
Source: None
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The hardest work of all is to do nothing.
Author: Proverb
Source: None
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Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.
Author: Jerome K. Jerome
Source: None
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A man's real worth is determined by what he does when he has nothing to do.
Author: Megiddo Message
Source: None
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