80 Quotes About Leisure

Work is a blessing. God has so arranged the world that work is necessary, and He gives us hands and strength to do it. The enjoyment of leisure would be nothing if we had only leisure. It is the joy of work well done that enables us to enjoy rest, just as it is the experiences of hunger and thirst that make food and drink such pleasures. Elisabeth Elliot

Time is a game played beautifully by children. Heraclitus

The art of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly understood by proof. John Stuart Mill

Repose, leisure, peace, belong among the elements of happiness. If we have not escaped from harried rush, from mad pursuit, from unrest, from the necessity of care, we are not happy. And what of contemplation? Its very premise is freedom from the fetters of workaday busyness. Moreover, it itself actualizes this freedom by virtue of being intuition. Josef Pieper

Some of the most memorable, and least regrettable, nights of my own youth were spent in coon hunting with farmers. There is no denying that these activities contributed to the economy of farm households, but a further fact is that they were pleasures; they were wilderness pleasures, not greatly different from the pleasures pursued by conservationists and wilderness lovers. As I was always aware, my friends the coon hunters were not motivated just by the wish to tree coons and listen to hounds and listen to each other, all of which were sufficiently attractive; they were coon hunters also because they wanted to be afoot in the woods at night. Most of the farmers I have known, and certainly the most interesting ones, have had the capacity to ramble about outdoors for the mere happiness of it, alert to the doings of the creatures, amused by the sight of a fox catching grasshoppers, or by the puzzle of wild tracks in the snow. . Wendell Berry

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between her work and her play; her labor and her leisure; her mind and her body; her education and her recreation. She hardly knows which is which. She simply pursues her vision of excellence through whatever she is doing, and leaves others to determine if she is working or playing. To herself, she always appears to be doing both. Unknown

I do not particularly like the word 'work.' Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life. For human beings, a life of such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to be done. . Masanobu Fukuoka

Above a certain level of income, the relative value of material consumption vis-a-vis leisure time is diminished, so earning a higher income at the cost of working longer hours may reduce the quality of your life. More importantly, the fact that the citizens of a country work longer than others in comparable countries does not necessarily mean that they like working longer hours. They may be compelled to work long hours, even if they actually want to take longer holidays. HaJoon Chang

Reading is my favourite occupation, when I have leisure for it and books to read. Unknown

The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time. Wilkie Collins

I've learned one thing, and that's to quit worrying about stupid things. You have four years to be irresponsible here, relax. Work is for people with jobs. You'll never remember class time, but you'll remember the time you wasted hanging out with your friends. So stay out late. Go out with your friends on a Tuesday when you have a paper due on Wednesday. Spend money you don't have. Drink 'til sunrise. The work never ends, but college does.. Tom Petty

My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. In both our work and our leisure, I think, we should be so employed. And in our time this means that we must save ourselves from the products that we are asked to buy in order, ultimately, to replace ourselves. Wendell Berry

To resist the social pressure now put even on one's leisure time, requires a tougher upbringing and a more obstinate willfulness about going one's own way, than ever before. Robert Graves

Few endeavors, if any at all, I find to be inherently mature or inherently immature. Maturity is neither defined by one's particular preferences nor by one's particular activities; rather, it is defined by the strength of one's character. Criss Jami

Before researchers become researchers they should become philosophers. They should consider what the human goal is, what it is that humanity should create. Doctors should first determine at the fundamental level what it is that human beings depend on for life.. Modern scientific agriculture, on the other hand, has no such vision. Research wanders about aimlessly, each researcher seeing just one part of the infinite array of natural factors which affect harvest yields. Even though it is the same quarter acre, the farmer must grow his crops differently each year in accordance with variations in weather, insect populations, the condition of the soil, and many other natural factors. Nature is everywhere in perpetual motion; conditions are never exactly the same in any two years. Modern research divides nature into tiny pieces and conducts tests that conform neither with natural law nor with practical experiences. The results are arranged for the convenience of research, not according to the needs of the farmer. Masanobu Fukuoka

Be so free that nothing more than your future can distract your attention. Michael Bassey Johnson

I gather, " he added, "that you've never had much time to study the classics?"" That is so."" Pity. Pity. You've missed a lot. Everyone should be made to study the classics, if I had my way." Poirot shrugged his shou Agatha Christie

Habitual excuses for inactivity indicates little or no interest in what one ought to have done. Itohan Eghide

Play is the creation of value that is not necessary. Dallas Willard

Business is leisure when you find pleasure in it. Peter Adejimi

Any idea that takes away sweet sleeps from you will eventually bring to you sweet life. Be diligent and willing to stay awake until your good is better and your better becomes excellent! Israelmore Ayivor

Stress is equivalent to weapons of mass destruction armed for wrong reasons. The difference is that, it is less costly as compared to the atomic bombs! However, it destroys faster! Israelmore Ayivor

Stop over-loading yourself with numberless tasks. Give time to yourself for rest and positive deliberations. You can’t think better and plan better when you are under stress! Israelmore Ayivor

Most of us have no sympathy with the rich idler who spends his life in pleasure without ever doing any work. But even he fulfills a function in the life of the social organism. He sets an example of luxury that awakens in the multitude a consciousness of new needs and gives industry the incentive to fulfill them. Ludwig Von Mises

Measurement aside, there are two reasons aggregate growth might matter. The first is to create jobs to assimilate the unemployed and anticipate increases in population. The second is to improve living standards. Economic logic does not require overall expansion to achieve either of these objectives. An expanding labour force can be accommodated if hours of work fall. And it's productivity growth, rather than the overall size of the economy, that drives improvements in living standards. Getting bigger doesn't necessarily yield wealth; improving productivity does. . Juliet Schor

Like every other good thing in thisworld, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay. Let us beduly thankful for that, my dear Denis--duly thankful. Aldous Huxley

A life of leisure never satisfies anyone who possesses a lively mind. Kilroy J. Oldster

Even their downtime was epic. Robert Kurson

Enjoy good moments while they last, then make sure they're not the last Constance Friday

Sunday, the day for the language of leisure. Elfriede Jelinek

Villagers saw me as a person when I played with them, as opposed to when I talked with them. Rebekah Nathan

Pages entertain me more than pictures do. Amit Kalantri

If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively. Eleanor Roosevelt

I liked to be off by myself, away from the eyes of adults who always had some task or errand to demand of an unoccupied child. Geraldine Brooks

The vacancy left by absence of worship is filled by mere killing of time and by boredom, which is directly related to inability to enjoy leisure; for one can only be bored if the spiritual power to be leisurely has been lost. There is an entry in Baudelaire.. "One must work, if not from taste then at least from despair. For, to reduce everything to a single truth: work is less boring than pleasure. . Josef Pieper

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

Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now–eager for amusement; prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage. He only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion; of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis; happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under the orchard boughs at noon, when the summer pears were falling. He knew nothing of weekday services, and thought none the worse of the Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the blessing; liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or port-wine, not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty aspirations. George Eliot

Sam Rayburn on LBJ's recuperation from his heart attack: "It would kill him if he relaxed. Robert A. Caro

Everything that we enjoy is a result of someone's hard work. Some work is visible and other work goes unseen, but both are equally important. Some people stop working as soon as they find a job. Regardless of the unemployment statistics, it is hard to find good people to work. Many people don't understand the difference between idle time and leisure time. Idle time amounts to wasting or stealing time; leisure time is earned. Procrastinating amounts to not working. Excellence is not luck; it is the result of a lot of hard work and practice. Hard work and practice make a person better at whatever he is doing. Shiv Khera

One of the most frequent sins of omission is the failure to get adequate rest. James MacDonald

Moment of pleasures helps to renew strength and reposition man to creative point Adedayo Olabamiji

At fifteen, I have taken up the burdens of a woman, and have come to feel I am one. Furthermore, I am glad of it. For I now no longer have the time to fall into such sins as I committed as a girl, when hours that were my own to spend spread before me like a gift. Geraldine Brooks

But the more time has been released from production, the more imperative it has become to absorb that time in consumption and consumerism, given that, as was earlier argued, capitalist 'economic rationality has no room for authentically free time which neither produces nor consumes commercial wealth'. The ever-present danger is that freely associating and self-creating individuals, liberated from the chores of production and blessed with a whole range of labour-saving and time-saving technologies to aid their consumption, might start to build an alternative non-capitalistic world. They might become inclined to reject the dominant capitalist economic rationality, for example, and start evading its overwhelming but often cruel rules of time discipline. To avoid such eventualities, capital must not only find ways to absorb more and more goods and services through realisation but also somehow occupy the free time that the new technologies release. . David Harvey

Reading might be the root of ideas and inventions, even in the case of leisure reading. Eraldo Banovac

In my opinion, if 100% of the people were farming it would be ideal. If each person were given one quarter-acre, that is 1 1/4 acres to a family of five, that would be more than enough land to support the family for the whole year. If natural farming were practiced, a farmer would also have plenty of time for leisure and social activities within the village community. I think this is the most direct path toward making this country a happy, pleasant land. . Masanobu Fukuoka

The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He consumes freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities. Thorstein Veblen

The ceremonial differentiation of the dietary is best seen in the use of intoxicating beverages and narcotics. If these articles of consumption are costly, they are felt to be noble and honorific. Therefore the base classes, primarily the women, practice an enforced continence with respect to these stimulants, except in countries where they are obtainable at a very low cost. From archaic times down through all the length of the patriarchal regime it has been the office of the women to prepare and administer these luxuries, and it has been the perquisite of the men of gentle birth and breeding to consume them. Drunkenness and the other pathological consequences of the free use of stimulants therefore tend in their turn to become honorific, as being a mark, at the second remove, of the superior status of those who are able to afford the indulgence. Infirmities induced by over-indulgence are among some peoples freely recognised as manly attributes. It has even happened that the name for certain diseased conditions of the body arising from such an origin has passed into everyday speech as a synonym for "noble" or "gentle". It is only at a relatively early stage of culture that the symptoms of expensive vice are conventionally accepted as marks of a superior status, and so tend to become virtues and command the deference of the community; but the reputability that attaches to certain expensive vices long retains so much of its force as to appreciably lesson the disapprobation visited upon the men of the wealthy or noble class for any excessive indulgence. The same invidious distinction adds force to the current disapproval of any indulgence of this kind on the part of women, minors, and inferiors. This invidious traditional distinction has not lost its force even among the more advanced peoples of today. Where the example set by the leisure class retains its imperative force in the regulation of the conventionalities, it is observable that the women still in great measure practise the same traditional continence with regard to stimulants. Thorstein Veblen

My between-books strategy was reading voraciously and on a whim. Erik Larson

The river was very real; it held him comfortably and gave him the time at last, the leisure, to consider this month, this year, and a lifetime of years. Ray Bradbury

Envy, as distasteful as it is, has seeped into my mind on rare occasions, and those I've envied, although few in number, have only been those that live a life of leisure with peace of mind and time to do such wonderful things as read. Donna Lynn Hope

The more interesting life becomes, in other words, the more boredom we are doomed to experience. Susan Maushart

They said 'ski', but they heard 'vodka'! Ismail Kadare

Even when he played, he made a business of it. H.W. Brands

Sometimes, the inessential is essential. T.L. Rese

It’s the Olympics. If you can’t get up to swim early in the morning, don’t go. Michael Phelps

I don't envy "busy." Busy means having a schedule, not living life. What I really covet is leisure and peace of mind. Those who have both, have it all. Donna Lynn Hope

The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work stretch out in the sun and scratch himself. H. L. Mencken

It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man. Scott Elledge

When a man retires and time is no longer a matter of urgent importance his colleagues generally present him with a watch. R. C. Sherriff

The question isn't at what age I want to retire it's at what income. George Foreman

Old age is when you know all the answers but nobody asks you the questions. Laurence J. Peter

I'm going to spend it all... why leave it to our errors? Brian Morgan

Retirement: Twice as much husband half as much pay. Anonymous

Constant togetherness is fine - but only for Siamese twins. Victoria Billings

Retirement must be wonderful. I mean you can suck in your stomach for only so long. Burt Reynolds

Our boss has been so successful he deserves to retire so that he can spend more time .. . with his servants. Anonymous

Since our boss will be retiring soon it's been suggested that we give him a little momentum. Anonymous

I used to dread getting older because I thought I would not be able to do all the things I wanted to do but now that I am older I find that I don't want to do them. Lady Nancy Astor

Since chess was such a painful test of intellect, it affected his emotions too much to be sport. Paul C. Nagel

The end of labor is to gain leisure. Aristotle

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature. Henry David Thoreau

The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure. Laurence J. Peter

Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay. Aldous Huxley

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles. Samuel Johnson

I had a very happy childhood, but I still used my imagination as a leisure resort. Geraldine McCaughrean