Busily Doing Nothing Quotes & Sayings

Protestations of indifference to higher office are hard to take seriously when the 'non-candidate' is busily engaged in testing the waters. — Jeff Greenfield

(he was a great believer in the healing powers of cheerfulness, if not of open mirth). Yet he had some faults, and one was a habit of dosing himself, generally from a spirit of enquiry, as in his period of inhaling large quantities of the nitrous oxide and of the vapour of hemp, to say nothing of tobacco, bhang in all its charming varieties in India, betel in Java and the neighbouring islands, qat in the Red Sea, and hallucinating cacti in South America, but sometimes for relief from distress, as when he became addicted to opium in one form or another; and now he was busily poisoning himself with coca-leaves, whose virtue he had learnt in Peru. — Patrick O'Brian

I am busily engaged in the study of the Bible. I believe it is God's word because it finds me where I am. — Abraham Lincoln

McDonald's, meanwhile, continues busily to harass small shopkeepers and restaurateurs of Scottish descent for that nationality's uncompetitive predisposition toward the Mc prefix on its surnames. The company sued the McAl an's sausage stand in Denmark; the Scottish-themed sandwich shop McMunchies in Buckinghamshire; went after Elizabeth McCaughey's McCoffee shop in the San Francisco Bay Area; and waged a twenty-six-year battle against a man named Ronald McDonald whose McDonald's Family Restaurant in a tiny town in Il inois had been around since 1956. — Naomi Klein

Dictating condolences to the mother of a murdered husband whom you've been busily cuckolding for the last three years would take more than his limited social vocabulary. — P.D. James

We're busily wrecking the chances for future generations at a rapid rate of knots by not recognizing the damage we're doing to the natural environment, bearing in mind that this is the only planet that we know has any life on it. — Prince Charles

The Economy was studying the purpose of The War, which is to purchase and not have. The customers of The War (all of us, that is) purchase life at a great cost and yet lose it. And The War was just as busily studying the purpose of The Economy, which is to cause people to purchase what they do not need or do not want, and to receive patiently what they did not expect. Having paid for life, we receive death. By now, in this nineteen hundred and eighty-sixth Year of Our Lord, we all have purchased how many shares in death? How many bombs, shells, mines, guns, grenades, poisons, anonymous murders, nameless sufferings, official secrets? But not the controlling share. Death cannot be marketed in controlling shares. — Wendell Berry

You can die for your country or your people or your family, but for a god you should live fully and busily, every day of a long life. — Terry Pratchett

That night, after Gansey had gone to meet Blue, Ronan retrieved one of Kavinsky's green pills from his still-unwashed pair of jeans and returned to bed. Propped up in the corner, he stretched out his hand to Chainsaw, but she ignored him. She had stolen a cheese cracker and now was very busily stacking things on top of it to make sure Ronan would never take it back. Although she kept glancing back at his outstretched hand, she pretended not to see it as she added a bottle cap, an envelope, and a sock to the pile hiding the cracker. — Maggie Stiefvater

When the little mouse, which was loved as none other was in the mouse-world, got into a trap one night and with a shrill scream forfeited its life for the sight of the bacon, all the mice in the district, in their holes were overcome by trembling and shaking; with eyes blinking uncontrollably they gazed at each other one by one, while their tails scraped the ground busily and senselessly. Then they came out, hesitantly, pushing one another, all drawn towards the scene of death. There it lay, the dear little mouse, its neck caught in the deadly iron, the little pink legs drawn up, and now stiff the feeble body that would so well have deserved a scrap of bacon.
The parents stood beside it and eyed their child's remains. — Franz Kafka

Results should not be too voluntarily aimed at or too busily thought of. They are sure to float up of their own accord from a long enough daily work at a given matter. — William James

Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self-portrait in writing. — Vincent Van Gogh

Amazing, I thought, how busily we had turned ourselves into people who didn't know one another very well. — Robert Charles Wilson

The snow had begun in the gloaming, and busily all the night had been heaping field and highway with a silence deep and white. — James Russell Lowell

Namely, never interfere when your enemies are busily engaged in flagrant acts of self-destruction. — Joseph J. Ellis

Science is not a sacred cow-but there are a large number of would-be sacred cowherds busily devoting quantities of time, energy and effort to the task of making it one, so they can be sacred cowherds. — John W. Campbell

A person may rise to the highest degree of contemplation even when busily occupied. — Mary Euphrasia Pelletier

The only things that moved in the neighbourhood were bits and bobs of bafflingly pointless machinery, whittling the hours busily doing nothing. Waiting to be freed from flesh. It was an oppressive reality come home to roost. This house here contained dead people. And that one, and that one there. The same all the way down the block, horrible, inexplicable, and so quiet. — B.P. Gregory

These matters having been arranged, I had a temporary awning erected near the river, and was for three or four days busily employed writing an account of our journey for the Governor's information. — Charles Sturt

Frequently, we busily search for group service projects, which are surely needed and commendable, when quiet, personal service is also urgently needed. Sometimes the completing of an occasional group service project ironically salves our consciences when, in fact, we are constantly surrounded by a multitude of opportunities for individual service. In serving, as in true worship, we need to do some things together and some things personally. Our spiritual symmetry is our own responsibility, and balance is so important. — Neal A. Maxwell

I am busily engaged in study of the Bible. — Abraham Lincoln

An hour or two spent in writing from dictation, another hour or two in reading aloud, a little geography and a little history and a little physics made the day pass busily. — Hudson Stuck

They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change. — Thomas Wyatt

Limping, attendants rushed up to support him,
Attendants made of gold who looked like real girls,
With a mind within, and a voice, and strength,
And knowledge of crafts from the immortal gods.
These busily moved to support their lord ... — Homer

Mathilde returned and strolled past the drawing-room windows; she saw him busily engaged in describing to Madame de Fervaques the old ruined castles that crown the steep banks of the Rhine and give them so distinctive a character. He was beginning to acquit himself none too badly in the use of the sentimental and picturesque language which is called wit in certain drawing-rooms. — Stendhal

Can anything be sillier than the point of view of certain people - I mean those who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves very busily engaged in order that they may be able to live better; they spend life in making ready to live! They form their purposes with a view to the distant future; yet postponement is the greatest waste of life; it deprives them of each day as it comes, it snatches from them the present by promising something hereafter. The greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon the morrow and wastes to-day. You dispose of that which lies in the hands of Fortune, you let go that which lies in your own. — Seneca.

I was greeted by the Ulmers' eleven-year-old daughter, a girl of remarkable poise. Mrs. Ulmer was busily typing a manuscript that needed to make the evening mail and after welcoming me, in a very friendly manner, she returned to work. There were two other children and Mr. Ulmer, who was writing the manuscript just as his wife was typing it. The youngest child, who could have been no more than five or six, had the task of relaying the handwritten pages from his father to his eldest sister, who would quickly scan them for errors, and from her to his mother. The middle child, a little girl of seven or eight, lay on the floor with a large dictionary and would look up words when called upon by her parents or sister. — Robert Bruce Stewart

Robertson Ay was sitting in the garden busily doing nothing. — P.L. Travers

And what does every child believe every adult capable of doing? Of actually being able to bend the world to an inner desire, exactly what the child is busily practicing in his passionate play. — Joseph Chilton Pearce

Even while we busily attend meetings, contribute money and perform our assigned tasks, we suspect that we may be helping to create a force that is inimical to many values we hold dear. — Robert Shea

Ah! the best righteousness of our man-of-war world seems but an unrealized ideal, after all; and those maxims which, in the hope of bringing about a Millennium, we busily teach to the heathen, we Christians ourselves disregard. — Herman Melville

Sometimes in the late evenings one walks busily up and down the ward doing this and that, forgetting that there is anything beyond the drawn blinds, engrossed in the patients, one's tasks - bed-making, washing, one errand and another - and then suddenly a blind will blow out and almost up to the ceiling, and through it you will catch a glimpse that makes you gasp, of a black night crossed with bladed searchlights, of a moon behind a crooked tree.
The lifting of the blind is a miracle; I do not believe in the wind. — Enid Bagnold

We are no different today, friends. We get caught up in the season, busily making preparations for Christmas. We decorate, bake cookies, shop, and wrap presents, and yet we aren't truly ready. We aren't waiting with great expectations. Our hearts aren't prepared to receive this holy guest, this heavenly visitor. — Melody Carlson

Mankind is busily manufacturing its way into extinction. — Steven Magee