48 Quotes About Idleness

Do you find yourself spending too much time doing nothing? Take these idleness quotes to heart and focus on making the most of your time. The word idleness means to be idle, to do nothing. But what could be more important than doing something? Whenever you’re not working or doing something productive, you’re wasting precious hours that could be better spent. Whether it’s spending time with friends or family, reading a good book, playing a sport, or just sitting in silence, you’re still doing something Read more

These quotes about idleness will inspire you to take action and get going.

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Ur be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne. Three be the things I shall have till I die: Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye. Dorothy Parker
People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every...
2
People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day. A.a. Milne
3
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. John Lubbock
4
He knew now that it was his own will to happiness which must make the next move. But if he was to do so, he realized that he must come to terms with time, that to have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre. Albert Camus
Is idleness indeed so black a crime? What are the...
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Is idleness indeed so black a crime? What are the Busy doing, half their time? William Allingham
Joblessness does not necessarily mean idleness
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Joblessness does not necessarily mean idleness Sunday Adelaja
If you wait for the mango fruits to fall, you'd...
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If you wait for the mango fruits to fall, you'd be wasting your time while others are learning how to climb the tree Michael Bassey Johnson
The art of living is the art of bringing dreams...
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The art of living is the art of bringing dreams and reality together. Tom Hodgkinson
Our dreams take us into other worlds, alternative realities that...
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Our dreams take us into other worlds, alternative realities that help us make sense of day-to-day realities. Tom Hodgkinson
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Work was intended not to give a man a reason to live, but rather to give him a means to live. Criss Jami
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An idle mind is a devil’s workshop and I am prone to renting out my mind to the first bidder. Anurag Shourie
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Nobody does nothing. Everybody does something, sometimes nothing is something in the idle man's world. Michael Bassey Johnson
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If your passion does not keep you sleepless, you can't be a good beginner. When passion itches, a great hand scratches... Wake up, it's your time to rise above idleness! Israelmore Ayivor
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Boredom is the Devil's delight. Lindsey Rietzsch
15
We may regard certain days as free days. Free days are however fee days. We will pay later Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
16
Then turn your eyes back on me, and tell me that Cathy and I are still children to be treated with condescension, and are incapable of understanding adult subjects. We haven'tremained idle, twiddling our thumbs while you were off having a good time. V.C. Andrews
17
So many people die though they live, and it is not as if they don’t have life; they only refuse to keep breathing! Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
18
If you think of something, do it. Plenty of people often think, “I’d like to do this, or that. Lydia Davis
19
My greatest urge in life is to do nothing. It's not even an absence of motivation, a lack, for I do have a strong urge: to do nothing. To down tools, to stop. Except I know that if I do that I will fall into despair, and I know that it is worth doing anything in one's power to avoid depression because from there, from being depressed, it is only an imperceptible step to despair: the last refuge of the ego. . Geoff Dyer
20
I never did anything in life to anyone's imagination. Henry James
21
They call it "business" because it does not become successful by a person's "idleness". Go get busy if you want to do business; but be busy for the right reasons! Israelmore Ayivor
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True blessing comes in the dress of sweats, never delaying to wave bye to the excuses and procrastination. True blessing lies in hard work! Israelmore Ayivor
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There is no harvest without hard work, therefore never expect chance to solve your problems of abject need for you. You must take deliberate actions! Israelmore Ayivor
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There are two types of patience. One is exercised in hard work and the other in idleness. Patience with hard work is the one that moves mountains. Patience in idleness moves nothing, not even cobwebs. Israelmore Ayivor
25
Housework, handicrafts, subsistence agriculture, radical technology, learning exchanges, and the like are degraded into activities for the idle, the unproductive, the very poor, or the very rich. A society that fosters intense dependence on commodities thus turns its unemployed into either its poor or its dependents. Ivan Illich
26
Alexandra, my eldest, here, plays the piano, or reads or sews; Adelaida paints landscapes and portraits (but never finishes any); and Aglaya sits and does nothing. I don't work too much, either. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
27
Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the sting. Jerome K. Jerome
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Idleness is a form of passivity in an active universe. Michael Bassey Johnson
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One can only be constantly envious of other people's achievements through idleness, because true dreamers are too focused on their goals and dreams to be worrying about other people's business. Unknown
30
If you could not do much in the month of April with five letters, think of what really you can do with the month of May with three letters before you open the door of the month of June with four letters. Which is the break time for the entire twelve months of the year. Until you clearly understand how you are spending the year, you shall finish spending it and ponder over how you spent it, year after year! No one is absolutely free from excuses and the challenges of life. You just have to do something great with each day in the year!. Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
31
If [a man] spent his money, say, in giving parties for his friends, they (we may hope) would get pleasure, and so would all those upon whom he spent money, such as the butcher, the baker, and the bootlegger. But if he spends it (let us say) upon laying down rails for surface cars in some place where surface cars turn out not to be wanted, he has diverted a mass of labor into channels where it gives pleasure to no one. Nevertheless, when he becomes poor through failure of his investment he will be regarded as a victim of undeserved misfortune, whereas the gay spendthrift, who has spent his money philanthropically, will be despised as a fool and a frivolous person. Bertrand Russell
32
Ivanov: I am a bad, pathetic and worthless individual. One needs to be pathetic, too, worn out and drained by drink, like Pasha, to be still fond of me and to respect me. My God, how I despise myself! I so deeply loathe my voice, my walk, my hands, these clothes, my thoughts. Well, isn't that funny, isn't that shocking? Less than a year ago I was healthy and strong, I was cheerful, tireless, passionate, I worked with these very hands, I could speak to move even Philistines to tears, I could cry when I saw grief, I became indignant when I encountered evil. I knew inspiration, I knew the charm and poetry of quiet nights when from dusk to dawn you sit at your desk or indulge you mind with dreams. I believed, I looked into the future as into the eyes of my own mother.. And now, my God, I am exhausted, I do not believe, I spend my days and nights in idleness. . Anton Chekhov
33
I am well known by my friends to be a workaholic - to their often justifiable annoyance. I am therefore keenly aware that such behavior is at best slightly pathological, and certainly in no sense makes one a better person. David Graeber
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Machinery which is not used is not capital. Karl Marx
35
In a way, her strangeness, her naivete, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist with no art from, she became dangerous. Toni Morrison
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An idle genius is an oxymoron. James Thornton
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Wedged as we are between two eternities of idleness, there is no excuse for being idle now. Anthony Burgess
38
Idling of our elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like it, is punished by those same elders, and no one pities either the boys or the men. Augustine Of Hippo
39
Before you are much older...you will have policemen here to stay. A magistrate will be next. Then perhaps even a jail. And the counterparts of those things are hunger and want, and misery and idleness. The night is coming. Watch and pray. Richard Llewellyn
40
If you are foolish enough to be contented, don't show it, but grumble with the rest; and if you can do with a little, ask for a great deal. Because if you don't you won't get any. Jerome K. Jerome
41
Boredom was at the root of Lazare's unhappiness, an oppressive, unremitting boredom, exuding from everything like the muddy water of a poisoned spring. He was bored with leisure, with work, with himself even more than with others. Meanwhile he blamed his own idleness for it, he ended by being ashamed of it. Unknown
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The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting. Vladimir Nabokov
43
It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one. Jerome K. Jerome
44
It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. Virginia Woolf
45
Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. Virginia Woolf
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Golf is a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness. William Wordsworth
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Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable. Anton Chekhov