Idle Quotes & Sayings

I have brought it all on myself! Why could I not have been contented to labor with my companions, and not wish to be idle all the day like that useless little Lapdog! — Aesop

Instead of yielding to idle conversation it might profit one to cultivate silence and contemplation. — Clarence Darrow

The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood, being considered a kind of idle, gentlemanlike personage, of vastly superior taste and accomplishments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only to the parson. — Washington Irving

Manners are not idle, but the fruit of loyal and of noble mind. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

There are moments in life when a man retreats defensively, when he must give ground, when he must surrender less important positions in order to protect the more important ones. But should it come to the very last, the most important one, at this point a man must halt and stand firm if he doesn't want to begin life all over again with idle hands and a feeling of being shipwrecked. — Milan Kundera

I do deeply deplore, of the sake of the cause, the prevalent notion, that the clergy must be had, either by persuasion or by bribery. They will not need persuasion or bribery, if their hearts are with us; if they are not, we are better without them. It is idle to suppose that the kingdom of heaven cannot come on earth, without their cooperation. — Sarah Moore Grimke

Provide yourself with such work for your hands as can be done, if possible, both during the day and at night, so that you are not a burden to anyone, and indeed can give to others, as St. Paul the Apostle advises (cf. I Thess. 2:9; Eph. 4:28). In this manner you will overcome the demon of listlessness and drive away all the desires suggested by the enemy; for the demon of listlessness takes advantage of idleness. 'Every idle man is full of desires' (Prov. 13:4 LXX). — Evagrius Ponticus

Passing: the righteous, fair-skinned Nephites, led by Nephi, and their bitter adversaries, the Lamanites, as the followers of Laman were known. The Lamanites were "an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety," whose behavior was so annoying to God that He cursed the whole lot of them with dark skin to punish them for their impiety. — Jon Krakauer

Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed ... .To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! — Samuel Beckett

She might be idle, and silent, and forgetful, - and what seemed more than all other privileges - she might be unhappy if she liked. — Elizabeth Gaskell

I live an idle burden to the ground. — Homer

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

You should not have idle hands, you should always be working. All your life. — Ivan Bunin

I would like to believe that there is a resolution in the human tragedy and that order can be reimposed upon the earth in the same way it occurs in the fifth act of the Elizabethan drama that supposedly mirrors our lives. My experience has been otherwise. History seldom corrects itself in its own sequence, and when we mete out justice, we often do it in a fashion that perpetuates the evil of the transgressors and breathes new life into the descendants of Cain. I would like to believe the instincts of the mob can be exorcised from the species or genetically bred out of it. But there is no culture in the history of the world that has not lauded its warriors over its mystics. Sometimes in an idle moment, I try to recall the names of five slaves out of the whole sorry history of human bondage whose lives we celebrate. I have never had much success. — James Lee Burke

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all." There — G.K. Chesterton

Should God give you worlds, and laws, and treasures, and worlds upon worlds, and Himself also in the Divinest manner, if you will be lazy and not meditate, you lose all. The soul is made for action, and cannot rest till it be employed. Idleness is its rust. Unless it will up and think and taste and see, all is in vain. — Thomas Traherne

The oak was, of course, a great stealer of the surrounding pasture - its only value to provide shade for the livestock - but it was a magnificent tree. It had been there at least as long as Luxtons had owned the land. To have removed it would have been unthinkable (as well as a forbidding practical task). It simply went with the farm. No one taking in that view for the first time could have failed to see that the tree was the immovable, natural companion of the farmhouse, or, to put it another way, that so long as the tree stood, so must the farmhouse. And no mere idle visitor - especially if they came from a city and saw that tree on a summer's day - could have avoided the simpler thought that it was a perfect spot for a picnic. — Graham Swift

I won't read scripts because I have a limited amount of time. Why should I help other people do lame stuff when I can just go out and put on lame stuff of my own? — Eric Idle

When Cecily said she wanted something, it did not express an idle desire but an iron determination. — Cassandra Clare

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. — Robert E.Lee

Years ago when I served as a missionary, we had a visit from Dr. James E. Talmage of the Council of the Twelve
a great student, a great teacher, great theologian, and a great prophet.. Here we sat at his feet every idle minute that we could find and plied him with questions and listened to his counsel.
On one occasion he said to us, I want to tell you missionaries something. The day of sacrifice is not past! The time will come, yet, when many Saints and even Apostles will yet lose their lives in defense of the truth! — Harold B. Lee

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. — Arthur Brisbane

There is a great number of noblemen among you that are themselves as idle as drones, that subsist on other men's labour, on the labour of their tenants, whom, to raise their revenues, they pare to the quick. — Thomas More

Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I also heard that Lord Maxwell keeps a goat in his bedchamber, but you don't see me sending someone to milk it. One mustn't let idle gossip govern one's actions. — Sabrina Jeffries

Gossip and slander are not victimless crimes. Words do not just dissipate into midair ... Words can injure and damage, maim and destroy - forcefully, painfully, lastingly ... Plans have been disrupted, deals have been lost, companies have fallen, because of idle gossip or malicious slander. Reputations have been sullied, careers have been ruined, lives have been devastated, because of cruel lies or vicious rumors ... Your words have such power to do good or evil that they must be chosen carefully, wisely, and well. — Wayne D. Dosick

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. — Allen Tate

Yes, take a little time to play And look at life the other way. God rested when the world was made: Rest now, old friend; be not afraid. But think not that your work is over, That you are now a foot-free rover, A rambler upon idle ways, Whittling away the golden days. For in the road climb to the goal There's no long furlough for a soul. There's no long pause: on every height Another summit swims in sight. The long road rises, scene by scene, With little restings in between. — Edwin Markham

The world of books: romantic, idle, shiftless world so beautiful, so cheap compared with living. — Nancy Spain

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. — Shannon Hale

People who are interested in money are really uninteresting people. They look like Donald Trump. — Eric Idle

One could guess that there was the delicate forethought of a mother behind this choice of the pavillon for Albert: while not wanting to be separated from her son, she nevertheless realized that a young man of the viscount's age needed all his freedom. On the other hand, it must be said that one could also recognize in this the intelligent egoism of the young man, the son of wealthy parents, who enjoyed the benefits of a free and idle life, which was gilded for him like a birdcage. — Alexandre Dumas

And as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality ... it is idle to try to alarm me — Walt Whitman

Hence! home, you idle creatures get you home:
Is this a holiday? what! know you not,
Being mechanical, you ought not walk
Upon a labouring day without the sign
Of your profession? Speak, what trade art thou? — William Shakespeare

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. — Doris Lessing

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. — Mort Crim

Imagination without initiative would more properly be called idle daydreaming. — James Van Fleet

Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do — Thomas Pynchon

To a people famishing and idle, the only acceptable form in which God can dare appear is work and promise of food as wages. — Mahatma Gandhi

The slothful are always ready to engage in idle talk of what will be done tomorrow, and every day after. — John Lyly

That man is idle who can do something better. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've seen a film in which Dr Lorenz pointed out the difference between two colonies of cattle egrets, one free and one caged. The free ones, who had to provide for themselves, were monogamous and energetic and kept their numbers within ecologically reasonable limits. The captive egrets were promiscuous, idle, overbreeding and presumably going to hell fast. — Russell Hoban

Why should the wealth of the country be stored in banks and elevators while the idle workman wanders homeless about the streets and the idle loafers who hoard the gold only to spend it in riotous living are rolling about in fine carriages from which they look out on peaceful meetings and call them riots? — Erik Larson

It had been held that the economic system, any capitalist system, found its equilibrium at full employment. Left to itself, it was thus that it came to rest. Idle men and idle plant were an aberration, a wholly temporary failing. Keynes showed that the modern economy could as well find its equilibrium with continuing, serious unemployment. Its perfectly normal tendency was to what economists have since come to call an underemployment equilibrium. — John Kenneth Galbraith

A fool mistakes meekness for weakness and a quiet tongue for an idle mind. — R.A. Mathis

Damned Beaver/Jeremy is the War, he is every assertion the fucking War has ever made
that we are meant for work and government, for austerity: and these shall take priority over love, dreams, the spirit, the senses and the other second-class trivia that are found among the idle and mindless hours of the day ... Damn them, they are wrong. They are insane. — Thomas Pynchon

I have occupied this idle, empty winter with writing a story. It has been written to please myself, without thought of my own vanity or modesty, without regard for other people's feelings, without considering whether I shock or hurt the living, without scrupling to speak of the dead.

The world, I know, is changing. I am not indifferent to the revolution that has caught us in its mighty skirts, to the enormity of the flood that is threatening to submerge us. But what could I do? In the welter of the surrounding storm, I have taken refuge for a moment on this little raft, constructed with the salvage of my memory. I have tried to steer it into that calm haven of art in which I still believe. I have tried to avoid some of the rocks and sandbanks that guard its entrance.

[from the introduction] — Dorothy Bussy

One of the tests for positive thinking, for constructive thinking, is to test one's idle moments. At those times, is one's mind turning over negative critical thoughts; fighting battles that have been won or lost; rehashing senseless arguments? If so, then one is out of tune. But if one is thinking how to improve a situation or a procedure, how to gain a worthwhile objective, then one is on the constructive side of life. — Paul Davis

It is idle to dispute with old men. Their opinions, like their cranial sutures, are ossified. — Santiago Ramon Y Cajal

A website can be very time-intensive, but I'd love to have one where people can contribute to it - like invent islands and make their own flags, and their own laws. I think that'd be kind of fun. — Eric Idle

I think husbands are like tattoos
you should wait until you come across something you want on your body for the rest of your life instead of just wandering into a tattoo parlor on some idle Sunday and saying, 'I feel like I should have one of these suckers by now. — Sloane Crosley

Gossip is an idle talk that makes you look worse than the person you are talking about, and people tend to have more confidence in the person you talked about when they get tired of your gossip. Speak with love and kindness or don't speak at all. — Uzoma Nnadi

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. — Henry Miller

God is asking you to take care of this special place. He says: If a man is lazy, the rafters sag; if his hands are idle, the house leaks (Ecclesiastes 10:18). — Jim George

Surely man was not created to be an idle fellow; he was not set in this universal orchard to stand still as a tree. — Thomas Dekker

My first professional job was appearing in a disastrous theatre production of Oh, What a Lovely War in Leicester Rep, shortly after leaving Cambridge. — Eric Idle

The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers. — George Henry Lewes

If we shadows have offended,
Know but this and all is mended.
That you have but slumbered here,
While these visions did appear,
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding, but a dream. — William Shakespeare

Idle men tempt the devil to tempt them. — Charles Spurgeon

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. — Alexander Hamilton

I always have a feeling you should move the playing field and the minute you know what you're doing, you're wrong. Therefore, I wanted us not to try to follow Spamalot immediately, but to do something different. This is perfect because it uses all the same skills, like story telling and lyric writing and music writing, but it's presenting it in a different form. And of course it gives me and John a nice chance to perform and show off which is also fun. — Eric Idle

It is idle to hope for the enforcement of a law where nineteen-twentieths of the people do not believe in the justice of its provisions. — Edmund Morris

These are the effects of doting age,
vain doubts and idle cares and over caution. — John Dryden

Beyond the hand holding this book that I'm reading, I see another hand lying idle and slightly out of focus - my extra hand. — Lydia Davis

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. — Johannes Kepler

Why? But I want to know just why it's impossible for an American to be gracefully idle" - his words gathered conviction - "it astonishes me. It - it - I don't understand why people think that every young man ought to go down-town and work ten hours a day for the best twenty years of his life at dull, unimaginative work, certainly not altruistic work. — F Scott Fitzgerald

If you suppress the exorbitant love of pleasure and money, idle curiosity, iniquitous pursuits and wanton mirth, what a stillness would there be in the greatest cities. — Jean De La Bruyere

The love of solitude, when cultivated in the morn of life, elevates the mind to a noble independence, but to acquire the advantages which solitude is capable of affording, the mind must not be impelled to it by melancholy and discontent, but by a real distaste to the idle pleasures of the world, a rational contempt for the deceitful joys of life, and just apprehensions of being corrupted and seduced by its insinuating and destructive gayeties. — Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann

Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream. For I am by no means confining you to fiction. If you would please me - and there are thousands like me - you would write books of travel and adventure, and research and scholarship, and history and biography, and criticism and philosophy and science. By so doing you will certainly profit the art of fiction. For books have a way of influencing each other. Fiction will be much the better for standing cheek by jowl with poetry and philosophy. — Virginia Woolf

I'm now asking an idle question of my own: which is better
cheap happiness, or lofty suffering? Well, which is better? — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The mind never sleeps. Though the body can be idle, there shall always be something for the mind to do! Do something with your mind then! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I was an idle king and my chariot dawdled; I waited for the sea but it never came. — Albert Camus

Better to sink with tempests raging o'er
Masts all dismantled and hull gaping wide
Than rest and rot on some unclouded shore
The idle plaything of the listless tide.

Better the grime of battle on the brow,
With grim defeat to crush thy dying hand
Than through long years of peace to tyrant bow
Or dwell captive in a strangers land.

Better the castle with beleaguered gate,
By battle's lightning shivered in a day
Than peaceful walls in pomp of sullen state,
Through centuries sinking to a dull decay.

Better resolve to win thy heart's desire,
And striving bravely, die in the endeavor
Than have the embers of some smothered fire
Lie smouldering in thy saddened soul forever. — Sam Davis

Thou talk'st of nothing." "True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasty; Which is as thin of substance as the air; And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes Even now the frozen bosom of the north, And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, Turning his face t the dew-dropping south. — William Shakespeare

If I could tell the world just one thing
It would be that we're all OK
And not to worry 'cause worry is wasteful
And useless in times like these
I won't be made useless
I won't be idle with despair
I will gather myself around my faith
For light does the darkness most fear
My hands are small, I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
But they're not yours, they are my own
And I am never broken — Jewel

Space is space,life is life,everywhere is the same. But as for me, sustained by the toil of others, lacking civilized vices with which to fill my leisure, I pamper my melancholy and try to find in the vacuousness of the desert a special historical poignancy. Vain, idle, misguided! How fortunate that no one sees me! — J.M. Coetzee

I do not know who coined the statement "an idle mind is the devil's playground," but it is true. When camping in dangerous places, it is often recommended that you keep a campfire going to keep the predators away. When we set our hearts on fire, demonic predators stay out of our camp, which is my main point in this chapter. The apostle Paul put it best: "Love never fails" (see 1 Corinthians 13:8). We have spent several chapters talking about how to win spiritual battles in our own lives and in the lives of others. But when all else fails, remember this: Love cannot be defeated. — Kris Vallotton

It seems idle to rail at ambition merely because it is a boundless passion; or rather is not this circumstance an argument in its favor? If one would be employed or amused through life, should we not make choice of a passion that will keep one long in play? — William Shenstone

He wasn't here to satisfy my idle curiosities. And it held its own fascinations: a man who talked like an innocent and fucked like a sybarite. — Alexis Hall

There are two ways of being happy: We may either diminish our wants or augment our means- either will do- the result in the same; and it is for each man to decide for himself, and do that which happens to be the easiest. If you are idle or sick or poor, however hard it may be to diminish your wants, it will be harder to augment your means. If you are active and prosperous or young and in good health, it may be easier for you to augment your means than to diminish your wants. But if you are wise, you will do both at the same time, young or old, rich or poor, sick or well; and if you are very wise you will do both in such a way as to augment the general happiness of society. — Benjamin Franklin

Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

My idle curiosity might lead to something more official, if the lieutenant feels his work is being hindered by an officious, small-minded, self-important bureaucrat. Not you, of course. I speak in general terms only. — Douglas Preston

To procrastinate seems inherent in man, for if you do to-day that you may enjoy to-morrow it is but deferring the enjoyment; so that to be idle or industrious, vicious or virtuous, is but with a view of procrastinating the one or the other. — Benjamin Haydon

Belief fails when it works not well indeed but is idle as a sleeping man ... Each virtuous deed is strong when it is grounded upon the solidity of belief. — John Wycliffe

David Henderson's 1970 poem "Keep on Pushing," also analyzed the geographies of urban warfare in the Summer of 1964's Harlem Riots. Henderson warned of the crude mathematics of wide avenues that can swallow protest pickets, easily dismantle popular barricades, and muster five hundred cops in fifteen minutes, but he also suggests how, "For Harlem/ reinforcements come from the Bronx / just over the three-borough Bridge. / a shot a cry a rumor / can muster five hundred Negroes / from idle and strategic street corners / bars stoops hallways windows. — Anonymous

Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Every dollar and every moment of care devoted to increasing the individual importance of people, all skill and training, all fine organization to humanize work, every increase of political expression, is a protection against idle use of our military power, against any attempt to convert legitimate and necessary preparation for defense into an instrument of conquest. It may be said with justice that the man is dangerous who talks loudly about military preparation and is uninterested in social reform. It is the people engaged in adding to the values of civilization who have earned the right to talk about its defense. — Franklin Foer

All, the intelligent and stupid, diligent and idle, have been swept along on a current of increased output that, in the usual case, owed nothing whatever to their efforts. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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. — George Du Maurier

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. — Thomas Carlyle

The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, yet its inhabitants are strikingly unhappy. Accordingly, we present to the rest of mankind, on a planet rife with suffering and tragedy, the spectacle of a clown civilization. Sustained on a clown diet rich in sugar and fat, we have developed a clown physiognomy. We dress like clowns. We move about a landscape filled with cartoon buildings in clownmobiles, absorbed in clownish activities. We fill our idle hours enjoying the canned antics of professional clowns ... Death, when we acknowledge it, is just another pratfall on the boob tube. Bang! You're dead! — James Howard Kunstler

Sometimes I find it difficult to determine whether or not I'm merely spinning my wheels or making progress. Nevertheless, I must keep moving on until I reach a destination. For I would much rather be in perpetual motion with the promise of reaching some place majestic beyond the horizon, rather than sitting idle alongside a dirt road watching time hurriedly pass me by. — Terry A. O'Neal

It is better to have a fair intellect that is well used than a powerful one that is idle. — Bryant H. McGill

I listen to the audience and try and bounce with them. All audiences are different. But they are all homo sapiens. — Eric Idle

And you, too, youthful reader, will realize the Vision (not the idle wish) of your heart, be it base or beautiful, or a mixture of both, for you will always gravitate toward that which you, secretly, most love. — James Allen

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. — Samuel Rutherford

Is there no God, then, but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe? — Thomas Carlyle

I suppose when I was writing 'V for Vendetta' I would in my secret heart of hearts have thought: 'Wouldn't it be great if these ideas actually made an impact?' So when you start to see that idle fantasy intrude on the regular world ... It's peculiar. — Alan Moore

I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day, Your little month, your little half a year, Ere I forget, or die, or move away, And we are done forever; by and by I shall forget you, as I said, but now, If you entreat me with your loveliest lie I will protest you with my favorite vow. I would indeed that love were longer-lived, And vows were not so brittle as they are, But so it is, and nature has contrived To struggle on without a break thus far,
Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Idle Jeffrey, when asking his cousin for money: "I fear I have not a mercenary tendency."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer and his cousin, Plantagenet Palliser: "Men must have mercenary tendencies or they would not have bred. The man who plows, so he may live, does so because, luckily, he has mercenary tendencies."

Jeffrey: "Just so, but you see I am less lucky than the plowman."

Palliser: "There is no vulgar error so vulgar, that is to say common or erroneous, as that by which men have been taught to say that mercenary tendencies are bad. The desire for wealth is the source of all progress. Civilization comes from what men call greed. Let your mercenary tendencies be combines with honesty, and they cannot take you astray. — Anthony Trollope