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Idleness

state of a person who does not do anything laborious

Idleness is the state of being idle or inactive, either out of laziness or out of a lack of useful things to do.

There is, however, nothing wanting to the idleness of a philosopher but a better name, and that meditation, conversation, and reading should be called “work.” ~ Jean de La Bruyère
Idleness ... does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations · See also · External links

A

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  • La molesse est douce, et sa suite est cruelle.
    • Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel.
    • Attributed to John Quincy Adams, in his diary. Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).

B

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  • IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.
    • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
  • For idleness is an appendix to nobility.
    • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I, Section II. Memb. 2. Subsect. 6.

C

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  • An idler is a watch that wants both hands;
    As useless if it goes as when it stands.
  • How various his employments whom the world
    Calls idle; and who justly in return
    Esteems that busy world an idler too!

G

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  • Thus idly busy rolls their world away.

H

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  • You must generate energy in order to exist. Everyone must always be working hard. You should never cultivate inaction here. There is no use to be dead weight to the Earth. Whatever wars were fought during the past centuries were only to relieve the world of the dead weight of idleness.
  • What heart can think, or tongue express,
    The harm that groweth of idleness?
    • John Heywood, "Idleness" (circa 1576), as reproduced in Samuel Orchart Beeton and William Michael Rossetti, Encyclopaedia of English and American Poetry, Vol. 1 (1873), No. 400.
  • God loves an idle rainbow,
    No less than laboring seas.
    • Ralph Hodgson, Three Poems, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 655
  • On n’est pas inoccupé parce qu’on est absorbé. Il y a le labeur visible et le labeur invisible.
    • A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labour and there is an invisible labour.
    • Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), book 7, chapter 8

J

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  • If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.

L

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  • Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means waste of time.

M

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  • The worst idleness is that of the heart. Think of the condition and prospects of a voiceless, thankless, prayerless heart.

P

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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 yawn confess
    The Pains and Penalties of Idleness.

R

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S

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  • 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.
  • Leisure is permissible, we understand, because it costs money; idleness is not, because it doesn’t. Leisure is focused; whatever thinking it requires is absorbed by a certain task: sinking that putt, making that cast, watching that flat-screen TV. Idleness is unconstrained, anarchic. Leisure—particularly if it involves some kind of high-priced technology—is as American as a Fourth of July barbecue. Idleness, on the other hand, has a bad attitude. It doesn’t shave; it’s not a member of the team; it doesn’t play well with others. It thinks too much, as my high school coach used to say. So it has to be ostracized.
    • Mark Slouka, “Quitting the paint factory: On the virtues of idleness,” Harper’s, November 2004
  • Just now, when every one is bound, under pain of a decree in absence convicting them of lèse-respectability, to enter on some lucrative profession, and labour therein with something not far short of enthusiasm, a cry from the opposite party, who are content when they have enough
  • Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself.

T

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  • Utque alios industria, ita hunc ignavia ad famam protulerat.
    • Other men have acquired fame by industry, but this man by indolence.
    • Tacitus, Annales (AD 117), XVI. 18.
  • 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.
  • To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse.

Y

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  • No, the enjoyment of an idle life doesn't cost any money. The capacity for true enjoyment of idleness is lost in the moneyed class and can be found only among people who have a supreme contempt for wealth. It must come from an inner richness of the soul in a man who loves the simple ways of life and who is somewhat impatient with the business of making money.
    • Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living (1937), p. 155

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 384-85.
  • Idleness is emptiness; the tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless.
  • Diligenter per vacuitatem suam.
    • In the diligence of his idleness.
    • Book of Wisdom, XIII. 13. (Vulgate LXX).
  • Strenua nos exercet inertia.
    • Busy idleness urges us on.
    • Horace, Epistles, Book I, XI. 28. Same idea in Phædrus, Fables, II. V. 3: Seneca—De Brevitate Vitæ, Chapter XIII and XV.
  • Vitanda est improba syren—desidia.
    • That destructive siren, sloth, is ever to be avoided.
    • Horace, Satires, II. 3. 14.
  • Variam semper dant otia mentem.
  • The frivolous work of polished idleness.
  • Cernis ut ignavum corrumpant otia corpus
    Ut capiant vitium ni moveantur aquæ.
    • Thou seest how sloth wastes the sluggish body, as water is corrupted unless it moves.
    • Ovid, Epistolæ Ex Ponto, I. 5. 5.
  • Difficultas patrocinia præteximus segnitiæ.
    • We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
    • Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria, I. 12.
  • Blandoque veneno
    Desidiæ virtus paullatim evicta senescit.
    • Valor, gradually overpowered by the delicious poison of sloth, grows torpid.
    • Silius Italicus, Punica, III. 580.
  • 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.
  • For Satan finds some mischief still
    For idle hands to do.
  • 'Tis the voice of the sluggard, I heard him complain:
    "You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again";
    As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed,
    Turns his sides, and his shoulders and his heavy head.
  • But how can he expect that others should
    Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
    Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?
  • Worldlings revelling in the fields
    Of strenuous idleness.

See also

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Virtues
Altruism • Asceticism • Beneficence • Benevolence • Bravery • Carefulness • Charity • Cheerfulness • Cleanliness • Common sense • Compassion • Constancy • Courage • Dignity • Diligence • Discretion • Earnestness • Faith • Fidelity • Forethought • Forgiveness • Friendship • Frugality • Gentleness • Goodness • Grace • Gratitude • Holiness • Honesty • Honor • Hope • Hospitality • Humanity • Humility • Integrity • Intelligence • Justice • Kindness • Love • Loyalty • Mercy • Moderation • Modesty • Optimism • Patience • Philanthropy • Piety • Prudence • Punctuality • Poverty • Purity • Self-control • Simplicity • Sincerity • Sobriety • Sympathy • Temperance • Tolerance

Vices
Aggression • Anger • Apathy • Arrogance • Bigotry • Contempt • Cowardice • Cruelty • Dishonesty • Drunkenness • Egotism • Envy • Evil speaking • Gluttony • Greed • Hatred • Hypocrisy • Idleness • Ignorance • Impatience • Impenitence • Ingratitude • Inhumanity • Intemperance • Jealousy • Laziness • Lust • Malice • Neglect • Obstinacy • Philistinism • Prejudice • Pretension • Pride • Recklessness • Self-righteousness • Selfishness • Superficiality • Tryphé • Unkindness • Usury • Vanity • Worldliness

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