To do great work one must be very idle as well as very industrious.

Samuel Butler
About This Quote

The idea that you can’t do great work and still be active and busy is a concept that has been disproved by the advent of modern technology. There are many people who think that they can’t work hard and still be productive. That’s not true, as plenty of great work has been achieved by those who are both busy and lazy. The key to such work is often simple: Effortless productivity. It’s possible that the best way to describe this concept is to say that it’s about being able to do your work well without having to think about it.

Some Similar Quotes
  1. Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you're wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn't love you anymore. - Lady Gaga

  2. Work without love is slavery. - Mother Teresa

  3. There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time. - Coco Chanel

  4. Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live--that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea... - Ayn Rand

  5. I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am... - Audre Lorde

More Quotes By Samuel Butler
  1. Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.

  2. All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

  3. Embryos think with each stage of their development that they have now reached the only condition that really suits them. This, they say, must certainly be their last, inasmuch as its close will be so great a shock that nothing can survive it. Every change...

  4. [P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.

  5. Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.

Related Topics