Quotes about Idleness

"Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel."
-John Quincy Adams

"I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely."
-Arthur Conan Doyle, Sr.

"Am I going home to idleness? No, no. My feet and hands may be still, not so the mind--that has its aspirations yet, and it will work, for it has a law unto itself. Idleness is one thing, doing is another."
-Lew Wallace

"It has been said that idleness is the parent of mischief, which is very true; but mischief itself is merely an attempt to escape from the dreary vacuum of idleness."
-George Borrow

"Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good."
-Soren Kierkegaard

"It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top."
-Virginia Woolf

"Work is no disgrace: it is idleness which is a disgrace."
-Hesiod

"Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything."
-Floyd Dell

"Grief is a species of idleness."
-Samuel Johnson

"Idleness among children, as among men, is the root of all evil, and leads to no other evil more certain than ill temper."
-Hannah More

"In idleness there is a perpetual despair."
-Thomas Carlyle

"Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness."
-Thomas Carlyle

"Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness."
-George MacDonald

"Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen."
-Jerome K. Jerome

"Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds."
-Earl Of Chesterfield