Idle Quotes

On a mission your worst enemy is idle time.

As for the Republicans -- how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, [and] steel their emotions against decent human sympathy.

Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.

Come, come, leave business to idlers, and wisdom to fools: they have need of 'em: wit be my faculty, and pleasure my occupation, and let father Time shake his glass.

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

Industry has operated against the artisan in favor of the idler, and also in favor of capital and against labor. Any mechanical invention whatsoever has been more harmful to humanity than a century of war.

Go West, young man, go West. There is health in the country, and room away from our crowds of idlers and imbeciles.

An idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless if it goes as when it stands.

Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler.

Flee idleness... for no one is more exposed to such temptations than he who has nothing to do.

How various his employments whom the world Calls idle; and who justly in return Esteems that busy world an idler too!

A learned man is an idler who kills time by study.

Idleness is an enemy of the soul.

I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers.

If history is deprived of the Truth, we are left with nothing but an idle, unprofitable tale.

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a poor substitute for life.

Vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile.

By amusing myself with all these games, all this nonsense, all these picture puzzles, I became famous... I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time.

I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air -- or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

All of our days are numbered. We cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all, because the worth of an idea never becomes apparent until you do it.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

Fear is nothing but idleness of the will.

We cannot afford idleness, waste or inefficiency.

No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.

The bees can abide no drones amongst them; but as soon as they begin to be idle, they kill them.