Idle Quotes by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Theognis of Megara, William Shakespeare, Ludwig von Mises, J. Paul Getty, Theodosius Dobzhansky and many others.
Life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter’d with the shocks of doom,
To shape and use.
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter’d with the shocks of doom,
To shape and use.
Rash, angry words, and spoken out of season, When passion has usurp’d the throne of reason, Have ruin’d many. Passion is unjust, And for an idle, transitory gust Of gratified revenge, dooms us to pay With long repentance at a later day.
True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.
Assistance granted to the unemployed does not dispose of unemployment. It makes it easier for the unemployed to remain idle.
Manners are not idle, but the fruit of loyal and of noble mind.
Nostalgia often leads to idle speculation.
There is no doubt that human survival will continue to depend more and more on human intellect and technology. It is idle to argue whether this is good or bad. The point of no return was passed long ago, before anyone knew it was happening.
One monster there is in the world, the idle man.
The sharing economy is about making use of any idle resource out there. We do love seeing other sharing-economy companies flourish.
You must obey this now for a law, that he that will not work shall not eat (except by sickness he be disabled). For the labors of thirty or forty honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain a hundred and fifty idle loiterers.
An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.
Blessed the one who loves truth continually and has not lent his mouth as an instrument of impiety by lying, for he fears the commandment about idle speech.
Painters are not in any way unsociable through pride, but either because they find few pursuits equal to painting, or in order not to corrupt themselves with the useless conversation of idle people, and debase the intellect from the lofty imaginations in which they are always absorbed.
You can bet the rent money that whatever politicians do will end up harming consumers. … Economic ignorance is to politicians what idle hands are to the devil. Both provide the workshop for the creation of evil.
The idle brain is the devil’s playground.
People everywhere are about the same, but … it did seem that in a small town, where evil is harder to accomplish, where opportunities for privacy are scarcer, that people can invent more of it in other people’s names. Because that was all it required: that idea, that single idle word blown from mind to mind.
An idle life and a holy heart is a contradiction.
Just enough sense to stick with something-a chore, task, project, until its completed pays off much better than idle intelligence, even if idle intelligence be of genius caliber.
To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.
Man’s home is nature; his purposes and aims are dependent for execution upon natural conditions. Separated from such conditions they become empty dreams and idle indulgences of fancy.
The pressure on language to deteriorate does not come merely from below, from the “democratic” lev-elers. It comes also from above, from the fancy jar-gonmongers, idle game players, fashionable coteries for second-rate intellectuals.
Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.
I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.
The Buddha also counseled the monks and nuns to avoid wasting any precious time by engaging in idle conversation, oversleeping, pursuing fame and recognition, chasing after desires, spending time with people of poor character, and being satisfied with only a shallow understanding of the teaching.
Time and again, we have found the ‘idle’ truths arrived at through the process of inquiry to be of the greatest moment for practical human affairs.
True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, Which is as thin of substance as the air, And more inconstant than the wind, who woos Even now the frozen bosom of the north, And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence, Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.
I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.
Idlers cannot even find time to be idle, or the industrious to be at leisure. We must always be doing or suffering
My mom said I was not going to be an idle child, so I had things to do every day after school.
Bee not idle and you shall not bee longing.
Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.
I am not the only one that condemns the idle; for once when I was going to give our minister a pretty long list of the sins of one of our people that he was asking after, I began with, “He’s dreadfully lazy.” “That’s enough,” said the old gentleman; ” all sorts of sins are in that one.
People used to complain about ‘the idle rich.’ But the idle rich did not do the kind of harm being done by today’s busybody rich, who feed their own egos by bankrolling political crusades on the left which hurt the very people that the left claims to care about — working people, minorities, and children.
The slothful are always ready to engage in idle talk of what will be done tomorrow, and every day after.
I want to know which idea you’re going to kill yourself trying to make successful, not which ideas have crossed your idle mind.
From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb which says that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil.
Every living creature that comes into the world has something allotted him to perform; therefore, he should not stand an idle spectator of what others are doing.
…one cannot but wonder how an environment can make people despair and sit idle and then, by changing the conditions, one can transform the same people into matchless performers.
A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
We’re silent now, both waiting, till I remind myself that I’m the older one and should therefore initiate conversation. But I don’t. I don’t want to waste this girl with idle chitchat. She’s beautiful.
Sometimes I think that idlers seem to be a special class for whom nothing can be planned, plead as one will with them – their only contribution to the human family is to warm a seat at the common table.
A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.
I think it must be awful not to work. My only point in being idle is to rest so that I can work more… I’m only unhappy when I’m not working.
Sitting idle at home is the most painful experience for a footballer.
The public don’t want prisoners lying about being idle.
I did all kinds of things as a young person to try to make money. I had a chicken operation – I sold chickens. I can remember going to high school football games as a ten-year-old and gathering Coca-Cola bottles, ’cause you’d turn them in and get a nickel. I wanted not to remain idle.
I face the world as it is and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake, evil does exist in the world.
It is idle to say that nations can struggle to outdo each other in building armaments and never use them. History demonstrates the contrary, and we have but to go back to the last war to see the appalling effect of nations competing in great armaments.
An idle man’s brain is the devil’s workshop.
Everyone now agrees that a physics lacking all connection with mathematics … would only be an historical amusement, fitter for entertaining the idle than for occupying the mind of a philosopher.
There is no substitute under the heavens for productive labor. It is the process by which dreams become realities. It is the process by which idle visions become dynamic achievements.
Nothing spoils idle pleasure like too much awareness
If I’m at a party, and there are lots of people running around, you’ll most likely find me on the floor, painting… I want to be at the party, but I want to do something. I’m just not very idle at all.
Astronomy was born of superstition; eloquence of ambition, hatred, falsehood, and flattery; geometry of avarice; physics of an idle curiosity; and even moral philosophy of human pride. Thus the arts and sciences owe their birth to our vices.
Idleness, pleasure, what abysses! To do nothing is a dreary course to take, be sure of it. To live idle upon the substance of society! To be useless, that is to say, noxious! This leads straight to the lowest depth of misery.
The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers.
It is better to have a fair intellect that is well used than a powerful one that is idle.
People count with self-satisfaction the number of times they have recited the name of God on their prayer beads, but they keep no beads for reckoning the number of idle words they speak.
All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.
Therefore with idle hands and head I sit
In late December before the fire’s daze
Punished by crimes of which I would be quit.
In late December before the fire’s daze
Punished by crimes of which I would be quit.
That the Devil finds work for idle hands to do is probably true. But there is a profound difference between leisure and idleness.
The idle man stands outside of God’s plan, outside of the ordained scheme of things; and the truest self-respect, the noblest independence, and the most genuine dignity, are not to be found there.
Amazon has suffered quarters-long profit droughts. Alphabet has given its investors agita over profligate spending on non-core products. Microsoft’s growth – if not its profit engine – stalled for years, causing its stock to idle, too.
It is idle to talk of civil liberties to adults who were systematically taught in adolescence that they had none; and it is sheer hypocrisy to call such people freedom loving.
I am capable of being idle.
To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity.
My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminuation, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution. It is reason and not passion which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.
EVERY intention which does not assert itself by deeds is a vain intention, and the speech which expresses it is idle speech. It is action which proves life and establishes will
History’s political and economic power structures have always abhorred ‘idle people’ as potential troublemakers. Yet nature never abhors seemingly idle trees, grass, snails, coral reefs, and clouds in the sky.
I love you. I will love you till the stars crumble, which is a less idle threat than is usual to lovers on parting.
Is there no God, then, but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe?
Love is the business of the idle, but the idleness of the busy.
The Californians are an idle, thriftless people, and can make nothing for themselves. The country abounds in grapes, yet they buy, at a great price, bad wine made in Boston.
There is really nothing left to a genuine idle man, who possesses any considerable degree of vital power, but sin.
Instead of yielding to idle conversation it might profit one to cultivate silence and contemplation.
The truth does not reveal itself to idle spectators.
No idle word should be uttered. I understand a word to be idle when it serves no good purpose, either for myself or for another, and was not intended to do so.
We will be better and braver if we engage and inquire than if we indulge in
the idle fancy that we already know — or that it is of no use seeking to
know what we do not know.
the idle fancy that we already know — or that it is of no use seeking to
know what we do not know.
In theory, people would pick progression every time over being idle. But if you look at us as a culture, as a people, you would say that if you get up at five o’clock in the morning, eat your breakfast, go to work, make money, pay your bills, you’re progressing, when you’re still doing what’s comfortable.
Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse: we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard.
It is better to sit alone than in company with the bad, and it is better still to sit with the good than alone. It is better to speak to a seeker of knowledge than to remain silent, but silence is better than idle words.
Don’t be made useless or idle with despair. Gather yourself around your strength for light does the darkness most fear.
Authors are the vanguard in the march of mind, the intellectual backwoodsmen, reclaiming from the idle wilderness new territories for the thought and activity of their happier brethren.
There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting docilely for death. We all come to that state soon or late. It is the curse of senility.
The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one. Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics; that is mixed mathematics.
The gold-barr’d butterflies to and from And over the waterside wander’d and wove As heedless and idle as clouds that rove And drift by the peaks of perpetual snow.
His mind has become a refuge for old thoughts, idle, indigent, with nowhere else to go. He ought to chase them out, sweep the premises clean. But he does not care to do so, or does not care enough”(72).
For Hell and the foul fiend that rules
God’s everlasting fiery jails
(Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools),
With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door,
Are senseless stories, idle tales,
Dreams, whimseys, and no more.
God’s everlasting fiery jails
(Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools),
With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door,
Are senseless stories, idle tales,
Dreams, whimseys, and no more.
Be not diverted from your duty by any idle reflections the silly world may make upon you, for their censures are not in your power and should not be at all your concerns.
Can there be any greater reproach than an idle learning? Learn to split wood, at least.
Any measure that establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form thereby creates an idle and lazy class, living at the expense of the industrial and working class.
There is not a tool, an implement, or a machine that has not resulted in a decrease in the contribution of human labor. Labor is not made permanently idle [though]; when replaced in one special category… it turns its attack against other obstacles on the main road to progress.
I always considered an idle Life, as a real evil, but, a life of such hurry, such constant hurry, leaves us scarcely a moment for reflection or for the discharge of any other then the most immediate and pressing concerns.
There are idle spots on every farm, and every highway is bordered by an idle strip as long as it is; keep cow, plow, and mower out of these idle spots, and the full native flora, plus dozens of interesting stowaways from foreign parts, could be part of the normal environment of every citizen.
The way I think I should stay out of trouble is by stayin’ busy. With idle time comes a lot of biz, so the more my work load is heavy, I’ll have no time to get into any trouble or makin’ dis tracks or get into conversation about any other rappers.
Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf
Worse than idle is compassion if it ends in tears and sighs.
For Hindus to expect Islam, Christianity or Zoroastrianism to be driven out of India is as idle a dream as it would be for Mussalmans to have only Islam of their imagination rule the world.
If any person wish to be idle, let them fall in love.
We cannot afford to be idle, and though weaker than our opponents in men and military equipments, must endeavor to harass, if we cannot destroy them.
On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband’s dinners.
As someone who took an oath to defend this country, I refuse to sit idle until the unimaginable occurs: Iran cheats or simply runs out the clock, and the largest state sponsor of terrorism threatens the United States and its allies with a nuclear weapon.
I would rather be sick than idle.
A truce to idle phrases!
Like Disneyland, luxury retailers have long had to figure out how to overcome customers’ natural inertia. Unlike less pricey stores, they tend not to attract idle browsers who make impulse purchases.
A Bradypus or Sloth am I, / I live a life of ease, / Contented not to do or die / But idle as I please.
For Christian faith not to be idle in the world, the work of doctors and garbage collectors, business executives and artists, stay-at-home moms or dads and scientists needs to be inserted into God’s story with the world. That story needs to provide the most basic rules by which the game in all these spheres is played.
I call that man idle who might be better employed.
Let the man who does not wish to be idle, fall in love.
The devil finds work for idle hands.
The people who are unemployed want to do the work, but the system is such a catastrophic failure that it cannot bring together idle hands and work. This is all hailed as a great success, and it is a great success – for a very small sector of the population.
Custom is custom: it is built of brass, boiler-iron, granite; facts, reasonings, arguments have no more effect upon it than the idle winds have upon Gibraltar.
Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know.
Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do.
The evils of the body are murder, theft, and adultery; of the tongue, lying, slander, abuse and idle talk; of the mind, covetousness, hatred and error.
I want to be as idle as I can, so that my soul may have time to grow.
If a brain is exercised properly, anyone can grow intelligence, at any age, and potentially by a lot. Or you can just let your brain idle – and watch it slowly, inexorably, go to seed like a sedentary body.
There is nothing I fear so much as idleness, the want of occupation, inactivity, the lethargy of the faculties; when the body is idle, the spirit suffers painfully.
One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation.
Go, all of you poor people, in the name of God the Creator, and let him forever be your guide. And henceforth, do not be beguiledby these idle and useless pilgrimages. See to your families, and work, each one of you, in your vocation, raise your children, and live as the good Apostle Paul teaches you.
If I’m alone too long I think too much, and I’m not interested in doing that. That won’t lead anywhere good, I’m sure. If I’m busy I tend to stay out of trouble. An idle mind is the devil’s playground.
An idle man has a constant tendency to torpidity. He has adopted the Indian maxim that it is better to walk than to run, and better to stand than to walk, and better to sit than to stand, and better to lie than to sit. He hugs himself into the notion, that God calls him to be quiet.
Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains, if we will only stop the waste and the idle, useless regretting.
A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation… A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.
To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.
And he who lives a hundred years, idle and weak, a life of one day is better if a man has attained firm strength.
Surely man was not created to be an idle fellow; he was not set in this universal orchard to stand still as a tree.
I used to be quite a big video game player at university and post-university in that weird moment in life before you have a proper job and you’ve got a lot of idle time.
Nothing can be more idle than the opposition of theory to practice!
Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.
O, what I owe to the file, the hammer, and the furnace of the Lord Jesus! I know that he is no idle husbandman – he purposes a crop.
If I sit idle for one day, I feel 24 hours of my life are wasted.
Few women and fewer men have enough character to be idle.
The creative genius begins in the idle moment, dreaming up the impossible, and later making it come true.
Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Barontage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; . . .
With respect to Committees as you would perceive I am very jealous of their formation. I mean working committees. I think business is always better done by few than by many.
All too easily I have had people dismiss food poverty as an affliction of the workless and idle, insinuating that it is a way of life only for those who choose it. Yet the reality couldn’t be more different.
Fancy brings us as many vain hopes as idle fears.
It would be idle, and presumptuous, to wish to imitate the achievements of a Morphy or an Alekhine; but their methods and their manner of expressing themselves are within the reach of all.
In the world of high finance the shilling of the idle rich man can buy more than that of the poor, industrious man.
You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of complicated state of mind. The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.
Busy opinion is an idle fool.
There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, For I am armed so strong in honesty That they pass by me as the idle wind
The old question of whether there is design is idle. The real question is what is the world, whether or not it have a designer–and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature’s particulars.
Fashion is nothing more than the temporary custom of rich and idle people who make it their principal business to study the external elegance of life.
Thou fool! Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; that idle crag thou sittest on is six thousand years of age.
The idle mind knows not what it wants.
I have had my share of twiddling my thumbs while sitting idle at home
I didn’t ever imagine, except in the most idle, obviously wish-fulfillment, ego-gratification fantasies, that anything I wrote would ever win awards, let alone so many.
Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.
Nostalgia often leads to idle speculation.
The purpose of marriage is not to have pleasure and to be idle but to procreate and bring up children, to support a household. This, of course, is a huge burden full of great cares and toils. But you have been created by God to be a husband or a wife and that you may learn to bear these troubles.
I would love to get a place out in the country and spend my idle time just remodeling and planting seeds and watching them grow.
I really hate relaxing. I’ve done three movies in a row, worked for two years straight, and to me, idle time is the devil’s workshop. I like to focus on something.
The vigorous man industriously striving for the improvement of his condition acts neither more nor less than the lethargic man who sluggishly takes things as they come. For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events.
Always plenty to do. Cannot well be idle and believe will rather wear out than rust out.
Look At The Clock When You Are Sitting idle. But Never Look At The Clock When You Are Working.
The Big Lie makes those who toil appear to be idle, while those who speak into dictaphones appear to be the hard workers.
To love Christ more, is the deepest need, the constant cry of my soul
Out in the woods and on my bed and out driving,
when I am happy and busy,
and when I am sad and idle,
the whisper keeps going up for
more love, more love, more love!
Out in the woods and on my bed and out driving,
when I am happy and busy,
and when I am sad and idle,
the whisper keeps going up for
more love, more love, more love!
I begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny, who sways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffered.
And, indeed, I will at this point ask an idle question on my own account: which is better — cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?
Idle hands are the devil’s playthings.
There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level.
The things that really matter don’t mix with idle chatter.
I can’t stand still; I find it very difficult to sit around and do nothing. I’ve got to have projects on the go because the devil makes work for idle hands. I’ve got to be going forward all the time.
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depths of some devine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.
As long as your intentions are solid and about growth and progression and being productive and not being idle, then you’re doing good in my book.
I’m homosexual… How and why are idle questions. It’s a little like wanting to know why my eyes are green.
Men are not really born either hopelessly idle, or preternaturally industrious. They may move in one direction or the other as will or circumstances dictate, but it is open to any man to work.
I never notice what is said about me. I am credited with things I have never done, and abused for them. It would be idle to attempt to contradict newspaper talk and street rumors.
Even though I’m resting I’m accomplishing something by sewing that shirt that I’ve been meaning to sew for weeks. And it’s relaxing. It’s so very meditative and quiet and enjoyable. But at least I’m producing something. I’m being productive in some way. I have a very hard time being completely idle.
The world of books: romantic, idle, shiftless world so beautiful, so cheap compared with living.
Transfer payments discourage the recipients from earning income in the present and from investing in their potential to earn income in the future. People respond to a reduced cost of idleness by choosing to be idle more often.
Arguments derived from probabilities are idle.
All the buildings of justice will remain idle on the day when all men have high conscience!
The question ‘Who am I?’ is not an idle one. How you answer the question will determine how you live the rest of your life. It will determine the quality of your life.
Even an idle phone conversation when driving takes a 40 percent bite out of your focus and, surprisingly, can have the same effect as being drunk.
Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.
No man is so idle that he cannot rouse himself just enough to get in the way of a busy person.
Among the idle rich, boredom is one of the most common causes of unhappiness. People who have difficulty in earning their living may suffer greatly, but they are not bored. Wealthy men and women become bored when they depend upon the theater for their enjoyment instead of making their own lives interesting.
It is idle to await unanimity.
On a mission your worst enemy is idle time.
An absolute monarch, who is rich without patrimony, may be charitable without merit; and Constantine too easily believed that he should purchase the favour of Heaven if he maintained the idle at the expense of the industrious, and distributed among the saints the wealth of the republic.
I’m not good when idle.
The idle always have a mind to do something.
The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.
Sick I am of idle words, past all reconciling, Words that weary and perplex and pander and conceal, Wake the sounds that cannot lie, for all their sweet beguiling; The language one need fathom not, but only hear and feel.
Most of the time, feelings just seem to get in the way. They’re a luxury for the idle, a bourgeois concept. Feelings are overrated.
After all, people may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each other, I think.
Thanks be to God. Since my leaving the drinking of wine, I do find myself much better, and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company.
I have ideas every day, and if I’m not carrying a pad of paper, I’m typing it into the notes thing on my iPhone, and it’s just ridiculous – idle hands are the devil’s plaything, and I can’t be the devil’s plaything. I got to be the devil; I got to be the guy making it all happen.
Never allow any unnecessary or vain thought to occupy your mind. This is more easily said than done. You cannot make your mind a blank all at once. So in the beginning try to prevent evil or idle thoughts by occupying your mind with the analysis of your own faults, or the contemplation of the Perfect Ones.
Miss Erstwhile: “It is such a relief, Mr. Nobley, to already know that you find this exercise vulgar and your partner unworthy. It saves us the idle chitchat.” Mr. Nobley: “And yet you chat away.
Nature, being a wise and provident lady, governs her parts very wisely, methodically, and orderly: Also, she is very industrious and hates to be idle, which makes her employ her time as a good housewife doth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
Do not sit idle, for indeed death is seeking you
Permanent mass unemployment destroys the moral foundations of the social order. The young people, who, having finished their training for work, are forced to remain idle, are the ferment out of which the most radical political movements are formed. In their ranks the soldiers of the coming revolutions are recruited.
It is in vain to hope to guard against events too mighty for human foresight or precaution, and it would be idle to object to a government because it could not perform impossibilities.
Game, noun: Any unserious occupation designed for the relaxation of busy people and the distraction of idle ones. It’s used to take people to whom we have nothing to say off our hands, and sometimes even ourselves.
To do good work a man should no doubt be industrious. To do great work he must certainly be idle a well.
The bees can abide no drones amongst them; but as soon as they begin to be idle, they kill them.
I think my parents recognised that I’d always wanted to be a writer, and so they didn’t think that this was some idle, faddish wish on my part.
Prosperity is no idle expression. It is a job for every worker; it is the safety and safeguard of very business and every home. A continuation of the policies of the Republican party is fundamentally necessary to the future advancement of this progress and to the further building up of this prosperity.
Sometimes I don’t write at all. Someone once asked me, “What do you do when you’re not writing?” And I said, “I idle.”
To a people famishing and idle, the only acceptable form in which God can dare appear is work and promise of food as wages.
As well might you leave the fairies to plough your land or the idle winds to sow it, as sit down and wait for freedom.
No man has a right to be idle. Where is it that in such a world as this, that health, and leisure, and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, some want to supply, some misery to alleviate?
[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.
I don’t know if I can relax. Relax, I can’t do. My brain, on idle, is a bad thing. I just get weird. I mean, not weird. I get, I get antsy.
Never idle a moment, but thrifty and thoughtful of others.
Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach.
Leaves are light, and useless, and idle, and wavering, and changeable; they even dance; and yet God in his wisdom has made them a part of oaks. And in so doing he has given us a lesson, not to deny the stout-heartedness within because we see the lightsomeness without.
although it has been said that idle hands are the devil’s workshop, when it comes to teenagers, both idle and active hands are the devil’s workshop.
When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor’s cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing?
The dangers which threaten us are twofold: First, from the Confederate forces, composed of men whose earnest convictions and reckless bravery it is idle to deny.
I hate being idle – there are still so many things I want to do.
The last time I was pulled over was in 2005. I was going 55 in a 35 mile per hour zone – which I don’t understand because you can barely even idle at 35 miles per hour. Anyway, I was ordered to go to traffic school. It was an 8-hour class and really painful.
For Satan always finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.
Idle man, chases after fairy tales.
Science does not mean an idle resting upon a body of certain knowledge; it means unresting endeavor and continually progressing development toward an end which the poetic intuition may apprehend, but which the intellect can never fully grasp.
He who saddens at thought of idleness cannot be idle, / And he’s awake who thinks himself asleep.
Whenever I produce my best work, it’s always because I’ve spent time being idle. Something always emerges after nothing.
Rather do what is nothing to the purpose than be idle; that the devil may find thee doing. The bird that sits is easily shot, when fliers scape the fowler. Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all the virtues, and the self-made sepulchre of a living man.
Between 1857 and 1929, while regulators largely stood idle, the American economy swung through 19 national boom-and-bust gyrations that sometimes threatened to wipe out whole industries within months.
God helps those who work, not those who are idle. No one helps an inactive person, but one who joins in the labor. The good God himself will bring…work to perfection.
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.
I can only tell you that eggs, country ham, biscuits, a pot of coffee, a morning paper, a table by the window overlooking the veranda and putting green, listening to the idle chitchat of competitors, authors, wits and philosophers, hasn’t exactly been a torturous way to begin each day at the Masters all these years.
You find you have a lot of friends when you are rich and idle.
Raking over the past and sifting its dust is an occupation for the idle or the elderly retired.
God loves an idle rainbow, no less than laboring seas.
Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.
My day starts at 5 A.M. and gets over at 10:30 P.M. Its a long day but I love it… I can’t sit idle.
An idle life always produces varied inclinations.
It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.
I will call out the lazy, the idle, and the ignorant. I will support the hard working, the industrious, and the law.
No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken.
The Lord had given them the day and the Lord had given them the strength. And the day and the strength had been dedicated to labor, and the labor was its reward. Who was the labor for? What would be its fruits? These were irrelevant and idle questions.
And if nobody reads me, shall I have wasted my time, when I have beguiled so many idle hours with such pleasant and profitable reflections?
Man is responsible not only for every deed, but also for every idle word and thought.
Go on, fair Science; soon to thee
Shall Nature yield her idle boast;
Her vulgar lingers formed a tree,
But thou hast trained it to a post.
Shall Nature yield her idle boast;
Her vulgar lingers formed a tree,
But thou hast trained it to a post.
History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.
I have a scholar’s love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment.
Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don’t have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.
It would be idle to say that we were not, from time to time, aware that a volcano slumbered fitfully beneath us. There were dark sides to the Slavery Question, for master, as for slave.
As long as this deliberate refusal to understand things from above, even where such understanding is possible, continues, it is idle to talk of any final victory over materialism.
If you’re famous, you have to [be overly generous], otherwise people say, “Eric Idle came in and only left me $4.” I always tip more than people expect.
O, my lord, You said that idle weeds are fast in growth: The prince my brother hath outgrown me far.
And if he is lying and he double-crosses you, I’ll kill him for you.” From anyone else, it would have been an idle threat, and I smiled, feeling loved. (Ivy and Rachel)
The idle man is the devil’s cushion.
My father passed away in 1994 and I cancelled all my plans. After I lost him, I didn’t know what to do and sat idle for many days. I got frustrated and angry for even little things.
I have seen good nurses and bad nurses. They existed along a continuum: from hard-working, kind and competent people, to office-hugging, bone-idle types, to apathetic, disengaged automatons.
The idle man does not know what it is to enjoy rest.
Today, I am an inquisitor. I shall not sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.
The bottom line is that we cannot sit idle as unparalleled rules and regulations significantly restrict our rights and ability to care for our families.
Even when someone battles hard, there is an equal portion for one who lingers behind, and in the same honor are held both the coward and the brave man; the idle man and he who has done much meet death alike.
Goddesses never die. They slip in and out of the world’s cities, in and out of our dreams, century after century, answering to different names, dressed differently, perhaps even disguised, perhaps idle and unemployed, their official altars abandoned, their temples feared or simply forgotten.
Our Lord approved neither idol worship or idle worship but ideal worship in Spirit and truth.
If history is deprived of the Truth, we are left with nothing but an idle, unprofitable tale.
You should not have idle hands, you should always be working. All your life.
It is idle to dispute with old men. Their opinions, like their cranial sutures, are ossified.
Purge your mind of all aimless and idle thoughts, especially those that pry into the affairs of others or wish them ill.
As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.
Sow seed–but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth–let no imposter heap;
Weave robes–let not the idle wear;
Forge arms–in your defence to bear.
Find wealth–let no imposter heap;
Weave robes–let not the idle wear;
Forge arms–in your defence to bear.
Money is nothing more than a tool. It can be a force for good, a force for evil, or simply idle.
it is not that religion is merely useless, it is mischievous. It is mischievous by its idle terrors; it is mischievous by its false morality; it is mischievous by its hypocrisy; by its fanaticism; by its dogmatism; by its threats; by its hopes; by its promises.
I’m not very happy idle. There’s always this voice in my head that says, ‘I should be writing.’
Nothing is greater or more fearful sacrilege than to prostitute the great name of God to the petulancy of an idle tongue.
There is a working class – strong and happy – among both rich and poor: there is an idle class – weak, wicked, and miserable – among both rich and poor.
As someone who makes his living as an actor, my routine varies almost every day. There are weeks I’m working and weeks I’m not. People think it must be great to have all that time off, but you’d be surprised how quickly that grass would become greener. The idle brain is the devil’s playground.
Where there are millions upon millions of units of idle labour, it is no use thinking of labour-saving devices.
There is no more self-contradictory concept than that of idle thoughts. What gives rise to the perception of a whole world can hardly be called idle. Every thought we have either contributes to truth or to illusion.
Today we may face some boring task or idle conversation that feels like a complete waste of time. Perhaps next week or next year we’ll understand that nothing is wasted, that in the economy of our universe even a weed is simply a flower whose use has yet to be discovered.
Our lives show the accumulation of all of our varied wishes. Wanting something with all your heart will begin to slough away all of your untrue and idle wishes. Success comes from an undivided heart.
Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves.
There was a moment when I was getting death threats and bullshit via the Internet, so I was being a little more conscious and reading local message boards before going to certain towns, just to see if people were making bullshit idle threats on the Internet.
I think of myself as naturally idle. The trouble is, the ‘nothing’ that I do every day is not really nothing. I potter. I muck about with emails, I make coffee, I fiddle with my computer to make sure that the book I haven’t started writing is perfectly synced across all platforms and devices.
As much pains were taken to make me idle as were ever taken to make me studious.
Another hundred years may pass before we understand the true significance of Apollo. Lunar exploration was not the equivalent of an American pyramid, some idle monument to technology, but more of a Rosetta stone, a key to unlocking dreams as yet undreamed.
The thirst for something other than what we have…to bring something new, even if it is worse, some emotion, some sorrow; when our sensibility, which happiness has silenced like an idle harp, wants to resonate under some hand, even a rough one, and even if it might be broken by it.
Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.
These idle disputants overlooked the invariable laws of nature, which have connected peace with innocence, plenty with industry, and safety with valour.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
Evolution by natural selection is not an idle hypothesis. The genetic variation on which selection acts is well understood in principle all the way down to the molecular level.
The keeping of an idle woman is a badge of superior social status.
The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement. The great thing is indeed that the muddled state too is one of the very sharpest of the realities, that it also has color and form and character, has often in fact a broad and rich comicality.
This is a most unfortunate affair, and will probably be much talked of. But we must stem the tide of idle chatter, and pour into our wounded bosoms the soothing balm of vengeance.
After having stopped the lower activities of the mind, it must be made receptive; and, instead of weaving all kinds of empty and idle thoughts, the mind should receive intuitions from above.
It is idle to waste time and discuss whether it was within our power and duty to see whether we could prepare a Bill better than the Remedial Bill.
Thanks be to God, since my leaving drinking of wine, I do find myself much better, and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company.
Idle and meaningless … a form less solemn to me than the affirmation I would have reverently made.
I believe in honesty and integrity, having a belief system that you’ve thought through and then stick to. I believe in being creative and contributing, and I believe in taking a stand against injustice that you encounter in everyday life and not being idle in that respect.
Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life.
If you are idle, you are on the road to ruin; and there are few stopping-places upon it. It is rather a precipice than a road
Silence holds the door against the strife of tongue and all the impertinences of idle conversation.
It is better wither to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few.
A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum.
There are a lot of young people out there who need to start using their idle time in a positive way. Parents need to play an important role in making sure their children succeed in school.
They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.
No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
Hope is not an idle term. Hope is the reality that can and does reveal itself to us at God’s choice hour. To hope is to know the secret of achievement.
For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble and necessary to the common weal, has no assurance that it will sustain him while he stands ready to practice it, or keep him out of the poorhouse when illness or age makes him idle.
Children generally hate to be idle; all the care then is that their busy humour should be constantly employed in something of use to them
It’s always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret.
Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.
Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.
Stoicism – and philosophy – are not the domains of idle professors. They are the succor of the successful and the men and women of action.
A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.
I’m a novelist, and idle speculation is what novelists do. How odd to spend one’s life trying to pretend that non-existent people are real: though no odder, I suppose, than what government bureaucrats do, which is trying to pretend that real people are non-existent.
You will find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans: great, big, vulgar, bustling people more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues but also more corrupt.
We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us.
Idle men tempt the devil to tempt them.
Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears.
It’s not an idle boast that the British Army is, man for man, probably the best fighting force in the world.
Now, my tree-climbing days long behind me, I often think about the lasting value of those early, deliciously idle days. I have come to appreciate the long view afforded by those treetops. The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.
Jewels, lies, slips of paper, dried flowers, memories of thing long past, useless quotations, idle hands, beads, buttons, and mischief.
But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know; – that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.
I’m like, ‘Man, if I’m going to have this idle time, I might as well be in school, do something positive where I’m not just wasting my prime years and not getting something else in return.’ If I’m in school and training, that’s OK. I did that in college. It worked.
Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man.
Those who are too idle to read, save for the purpose of amusement, may in these works acquire some acquaintance with history, which, however inaccurate, is better than none.
[There] is no class so dangerous as the idle educated.
Maps help us in tracking our cabs – if they’re idle, headed for a booking, or in the midst of a trip. With custom systems built atop maps using available APIs, we are able to manage our inventory extremely well, predict ETAs for customers, and optimally allocate the nearest cab to a booking request.
There is not a thing on the face of the earth that I abhor so much as idleness or idle people.
As to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church steeple minds the rooks cawing about it.
I’m not very happy idle.
Unquiet souls. In the dark fermentation of earth, in the never idle workshop of nature, in the eternal movement, yea shall find yourselves again.
The very provision of benches by the council or the corporation acknowledges the human need to be private in public, to be conspicuously idle, to have nothing better to do.
I’m homosexual. How and why are idle questions. It’s a little like wanting to know why my eyes are green.
Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
Idle is the day and lantern the hour as I delight in the splendor of your kiss grog.
‘Habibi’ is a complex and unapologetic work of fantasy – no idle undertaking for readers of any faith or no faith at all, but one well worth the trouble.
I am a complete workaholic and hate sitting idle.
As for joy, as little as one can have of it in this life, experience shows that it is not the idle who possess it, but those who are zealous in the service of God.
Plough not the seas, sow not the sands,Leave off your idle pain;Seek other mistress for your minds,Love’s service is in vain.
Most women indulge in idle gossip, which is the henchman of rumor and scandal.
Idle minds are the devil’s research-and-development department.
The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions, for life is a kind of chess.
Unless man has the wit and the grit to build his civilization on something better than material power, it is surely idle to talk of plans for a stable peace.
The ruin of most men dates from some idle moment.
When on the breath of Autumn’s breeze, From pastures dry and brown, Goes floating, like an idle thought, The fair, white thistle-down; O, then what joy to walk at will, Upon the golden harvest-hill!
I spend a good deal of time wondering how we will seem to the people who come after us. This is not an idle interest, but a deliberate attempt to strengthen the power of that “other eye,” which we can use to judge ourselves.
I think there’s nothing that makes you happier than to be really involved in something. I can’t imagine a totally idle life.
I don’t like idle time.
How idle it is to call certain things God-sends! as if there was anything else in the world.
Thus God himself was too kind to remain idle and began to play the game of signatures signing his likeness unto the world: therefore I chance to think that all nature and the graceful sky are symbolized in the art of Geometria.
We will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.
