Quotes & Sayings About Indolent

As a sex, women are habitually indolent; and every thing tends to make them so. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Any church that is overly emphasizing the role of miracles is encouraging his members to be indolent. — Sunday Adelaja

My weakness consists in not having a discriminating eye for the incidental
for the externals,
no eye for the hod of the rag-picker or the fine linen of the next mean. Next man
that's it. I have met so many men." he pursued, with momentary sadness
"met them too with a certain, certain impact, let us say; like this fellow, for instance
and in each case all I could see was merely a human being. A confounded democratic quality of vision which may be better than total blindness, but has been of no advantage to me
I can assure you. Men expect one to take into account their fine linen. But I never could get up any enthusiasm about these things. Oh! It's a failing; and then comes a soft evening; a lot of men too indolent for whist
and a story ... " [p.44] — Joseph Conrad

Human beings betray their worst failings when they marvel to find that a world ruler is neither foolishly indolent, presumptuous, nor cruel. — Marguerite Yourcenar

If a man is indolent, let him be poor. If he is drunken, let him be poor ... Also
somewhat inconsistently
blessed are the poor! — George Bernard Shaw

Hope animates the wise, and lures the presumptuous and indolent who repose inconsiderately on her promises. — Luc De Clapiers

Demosthenes, the great Athenian patriot, cried out to his countrymen when they seemed too confused and divided to stand against the tyranny of Macedonia: "In God's name, I beg of you to think." For a long while, most Athenians ridiculed Demosthenes' entreaty: Macedonia was a great way distant, and there was plenty of time. Only at the eleventh hour did the Athenians perceive the truth of his exhortations. And that eleventh hour was too late. So it may be with Americans today. If we are too indolent to think, we might as well surrender to our enemies tomorrow. — Russell Kirk

Bradlee had been recruited with the idea that the New York Times need nod exercise absolute preeminence in American journalism.
That vision had suffered a setback in 1971 when the Times published the Pentagon Papers. Though the Post was the second news organization to obtain a copy of the secret study of the Vietnam war, Bradlee noted that 'there was blood on every word' of the Times' initial stories. Bradlee could convey his opinions with a single disgusted glance at an indolent reporter or editor.
Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward — Carl Bernstein

The indolent mind is not empty, but full of vermin. — Henry Ward Beecher

All right-wing antigovernment rage in America bears a racial component, because liberalism is understood, consciously or unconsciously, as the ideology that steals from hard-working, taxpaying whites and gives the spoils to indolent, grasping blacks. — Rick Perlstein

I admire and look up to heroes, but indolent men make the best lovers. — Harriette Wilson

It does not pay a man to exist until the age of Methuselah by making his days indolent and useless. The more this is reflected upon, them ore the reflector will desire to undertake meaningful and useful actions, the more they will have lived. — Frederick The Great

It is a matter of simple fact that Icelanders have always been notoriously indolent. — Halldor Laxness

But time was a beast, a big, indolent immovable beast that wasn't interested in my efforts at hastening it in any direction. — Piper Kerman

Colored labor for the house, field, grove, or garden, while easy to control, is very far from satisfactory. It is always uncertain, indolent, and negligent, unless closely and incessantly watched. As a class, the colored servants are given to falsehood and petty theft, are liable to leave you without a word of warning just when badly needed, and are wasteful of your stores and provender. — Adam Wasserman

We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent we have discovered afterward that much was accomplished and much was begun in us. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm a very spoiled writer. I need to be indolent, to waste a lot of paper. I'm inefficient. — Deborah Eisenberg

Indolent, and he was suffering greatly from gout. He abdicated. — H.G.Wells

The countless gold of a merry heart, The rubies and pearls of a loving eye, The indolent never can bring to the mart, Nor the secret hoard up in his treasury. — William Blake

There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest (inspiration) does not always respond to the first invitation. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination. — Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Will it ever stop?" he mused, more to himself than me as another finger joined the one sliding in and out of me with taunting, indolent strokes. "Wanting you - every hour, every breath. I don't think I can stand a thousand years of this." My hips moved with him, driving him deeper. "Think of how my productivity will plummet. — Sarah J. Maas

Life was not given for indolent contemplation and study of self, nor for brooding over emotions of piety: Actions and actions only determine the worth. — Immanuel Hermann Fichte

The greater number of people take their opinions on trust, to avoid the trouble of exercising their own minds, and these indolent beings naturally adhere to the letter, rather than the spirit of a law, divine or human. — Mary Wollstonecraft

You must pray with all your might. That does not mean saying your prayers, or sitting gazing about in church or chapel with eyes wide open while someone else says them for you. It means fervent, effectual, untiring wrestling with God. This kind of prayer be sure the devil and the world and your own indolent, unbelieving nature will oppose. They will pour water on this flame. — William Booth

And the eye became a body, the murky heart of a rose. The sinister shadow of an orchid. Or the indolent poppy balanced behind the ear of Baudelaire. — Patti Smith

Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as spectacles to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions. The learned are mere literary drudges. — William Hazlitt

In indolent vacuity of thought. — William Cowper

He doesn't take anything seriously, and he has the work ethic of a ... a ... well, an indolent son of the privileged caste. I've worked my entire life, and I ... " "Take everything seriously?" Amaranthe suggested. Evrial crossed her arms. "Maybe. So, what? Life isn't a joke." "No, but it's easier to enjoy if you can find the humor in even the grim moments. Perhaps it'd be healthy for you to let someone bring a little levity into your life. — Lindsay Buroker

Though you may have known clever men who were indolent, you never knew a great man who was so; and when I hear a young man spoken of as giving promise of great genius, the first question I ask about him always is, Does he work? — John Ruskin

An intelligent class can scarce ever be, as a class, vicious, and never, as a class, indolent. The excited mental activity operates as a counterpoise to the stimulus of sense and appetite. — Edward Everett Hale

If everyone were not so indolent they would realise that beauty is beauty even when it is irritating and stimulating not only when it is accepted and classic. — Gertrude Stein

Indolent and unworthy the beggar may be - but that is not your concern: It is better, said Joseph Smith, to feed ten impostors than to run the risk of turning away one honest petition. — Hugh Nibley

He was confounded by the idea that passing the prime of your life in a cubicle, spending hours a day at a computer, in exchange for money, was considered acceptable, but relaxing in a tent in the woods was disturbed. Observing the trees was indolent; cutting them down was enterprising. What did Knight do for a living? He lived for a living. Knight — Michael Finkel

Man like every other animal is by nature indolent. If nothing spurs him on, then he will hardly think, and will behave from habit like an automaton. — Albert Einstein

No matter what I said they insisted on thinking of God as something outside themselves. Something that yearns to take every indolent moron to His breast and comfort him. The notion that the effort has to be their own ... and that the trouble they are in is all their own doing ... is one that they can't or won't entertain. — Robert A. Heinlein

As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease. — Oliver Goldsmith

All who contribute to the overthrow of religion, or to the ruin of kingdoms and commonwealths, all who are foes to letters and to the arts which confer honour and benefit on the human race (among whom I reckon the impious, the cruel, the ignorant, the indolent, the base and the worthless), are held in infamy and detestation. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Compassion does not only refine and civilize human nature, but has something in it more pleasing and agreeable, than what can be met with in such an indolent happiness, such an indifference to mankind, as that in which the stoics placed their wisdom. As love is the most delightful passion, pity is nothing else but love softened by a degree of sorrow: In short, it is a kind of pleasing anguish, anguish as well as generous sympathy, that knits mankind together, and blends them in the same common lot. — Richard Steele

By this management I found an opportunity to see what a most insignificant, unthinking life the poor, indolent wretch, who, by his unactive temper, had at first been my ruin, now lived; how he only rose in the morning to go to bed at night; that, saving the necessary motion of the troops, which he was obliged to attend, he was a mere motionless animal, of no consequence in the world; that he seemed to be one who, though he was indeed alive, had no manner of business in life but to stay to be called out of it. He neither kept any company, minded any sport, played at any game, or indeed did anything of moment; but, in short, sauntered about like one that it was not two livres value whether he was dead or alive; that when he was gone, would leave no remembrance behind him that ever he was here; that if ever he did anything in the world to be talked of, it was only to get five beggars and starve his wife. — Daniel Defoe

The fact is that everyone is much too busily preoccupied with himself to be able to form a serious opinion about another person. The indolent world is all too ready to treat any man with whatever degree of respect corresponds to his own self-confidence. — Thomas Mann

The rich are too indolent, the poor too weak, to bear the insupportable fatigue of thinking. — William Cowper

You know that you yourself are not always in the same state. If you are exact today, closely united to God, and a consolation to the whole house, tomorrow you will be out of sorts, indolent, and a source of affliction to others. Then you will need their support, as you have supported them. — Vincent De Paul

The country robs a thinking person of everything and gives him virtually nothing, whereas the city is perpetually giving. One has simply to see this, and of course feel it, but very few either see it or feel it, with the result that most people are sentimentally drawn to the country, where in no time they are inevitably sucked dry, deflated, and destroyed. The mind cannot develop in the country; it can develop only in the city, yet today everyone flees from the city to the country because people are basically too indolent to use their minds, on which the city makes the greatest demands, and so they choose to perish surrounded by nature, admiring it without knowing it, instead of seizing upon all the benefits the city has to offer, which have increased and multiplied quite miraculously over the years, and never more so than in recent years. — Thomas Bernhard

Business people - Your business - is your greatest prejudice: it ties you to your locality, to the company you keep, to the inclinations you feel. Diligent in business - but indolent in spirit, content with your inadequacy, and with the cloak of duty hung over this contentment: that is how you live, that is how you want your children to live! — Friedrich Nietzsche

The obstinacy of the indolent and weak is less conquerable than that of the fiery and bold. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

Surprisingly few men are lacking in capacity, but they fail because ... they are too indolent to apply themselves with the seriousness and the attention that is necessary to solve important problems. — Calvin Coolidge

Poverty, labor, and calamity are not without their luxuries, which the rich, the indolent, and the fortunate in vain seek for. — William Hazlitt

The true value of man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectability is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent and proud. If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and in his left only the steady and diligent drive for Truth, albeit with the proviso that I would always and forever err in the process, and to offer me the choice, I would with all humility take the left hand. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

The machine-like behavior of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed. — Ivan Illich

The fact is, if a young man is naturally indolent, the spur of necessity will drive him but a very little way, while the having enough to live upon is often the means of preserving his self-respect. — James Payn

Fearless
the cobweb swings from the ceiling
Indolent Housewife
in Daisies
lain! — Emily Dickinson

The New World is not a refuge for the indolent, the criminal, the undesirable of the old, but a young man who has been clearly acquitted of a capital crime, has shown fortitude during his ordeal and has shown outstanding bravery in the field of battle appears to have the qualifications which will ensure his welcome. — P.D. James

The ***** is indolent and lazy, and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent. — Che Guevara

I owe no duty to the forum, the election ground or the senate; I am ... no barking pleader, no judge, no soldier, no king; I have withdrawn from the populace. My only business is with myself. I have no care save not to care. The better life you would more enjoy in seclusion than in publicity. But you will decry me as indolent ... None is born for another, being destined to die for himself. — Tertullian

Existence was given us for action, rather than indolent and aimless contemplation; our worth is determined by the good deeds we do, rather than by the fine emotions we feel. They greatly mistake who suppose that God cares for no other pursuit than devotion. — Elias Lyman Magoon

speckled spiders, indolent and fat with long security, swing idly to and fro in the vibration of the bells, and never loose their hold upon their thread-spun castles in the air, — Charles Dickens

Opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can seize her. — Orison Swett Marden

That is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed, with his legs crossed in that indolent way, observing the clothes the ladies wear, so that he can describe them for his paper and make them out finer than they are and get bribes for it and become wealthy. — Mark Twain

Not for her the cruel, delicate luxury of choice, the indolent, cat-and-mouse pastimes of the hearth-rug. No Penelope she; she must hunt in the forest. — Evelyn Waugh

There is large difference between indolent impatience of labor and intellectual impatience of delay, large difference between leaving things unfinished because we have more to do or because we are satisfied with what we have done. — John Ruskin

There are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, the other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall 'inherit the earth.' Neither covetous men, nor the grave, can inherit anything; they can but consume. Only contentment can possess. — John Ruskin

RICH, adj. Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless. — Ambrose Bierce

If Shirley were not an indolent, a reckless, an ignorant being, she would take a pen at such moments, or at least while the recollection of such moments was yet fresh on her spirit. She would seize, she would fix the apparition, tell the vision revealed. Had she a little more of the organ of acquisitiveness in her head, a little more of the love of property in her nature, she would take a good-sized sheet of paper and write plainly out, in her own queer but clear and legible hand, the story that has been narrated, the song that has been sung to her, and thus possess what she was enabled to create. But indolent she is, reckless she is, and most ignorant; for she does not know her dreams are rare, her feelings peculiar. She does not know, has never known, and will die without knowing, the full value of that spring whose bright fresh bubbling in her heart keeps it green. — Charlotte Bronte

The Llama is a woolly sort of fleecy hairy goat, with an indolent expression and an undulating throat; like an unsuccessful literary man. — Hilaire Belloc

You appear to me not to have understood the nature of my body & mind. Partly from ill-health, & partly from an unhealthy & reverie-like vividness of Thoughts, & (pardon the pedantry of the phrase) a diminished Impressibility from Things, my ideas, wishes, & feelings are to a diseased degree disconnected from motion & action. In plain and natural English, I am a dreaming & therefore an indolent man. I am a Starling self-incaged, & always in the Moult, & my whole Note is, Tomorrow, & tomorrow, & tomorrow. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Providence has decreed that those common acquisitions, money, gems, plate, noble mansions, and dominion, should be sometimes bestowed on the indolent and unworthy; but those things which constitute our true riches, and which are properly our own, must be procured by our own labor. — Desiderius Erasmus

That indolent but agreeable condition of doing nothing. — Pliny The Younger

Vanity, or to call it by a gentler name, the desire of admiration and applause, is, perhaps, the most universal principle of humanactions ... Where that desire is wanting, we are apt to be indifferent, listless, indolent, and inert ... I will own to you, under the secrecy of confession, that my vanity has very often made me take great pains to make many a woman in love with me, if I could, for whose person I would not have given a pinch of snuff. — Lord Chesterfield

An energetic man will succeed where an indolent one would vegetate and inevitably perish. — Jules Verne

Non-doing has nothing to do with being indolent or passive. Quite the contrary. It takes great courage and energy to cultivate non-doing, both in stillness and in activity. Nor is it easy to make a special time for non-doing and to keep at it in the face of everything in our lives which needs to be done. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

If you are fortunate enough to enjoy great success, you should never forget the spirit of the beginner, and not grow indolent and arrogant. — Kentetsu Takamori

The English, by and large, being a crass and indolent race, were not as keen on burning women as other countries in Europe. — Terry Pratchett

What does drunkenness not accomplish? It unlocks secrets, confirms our hopes, urges the indolent into battle, lifts the burden from anxious minds, teaches new arts. — Horace

Indolent people, whatever taste they may have for society, seek eagerly for pleasure, and find nothing. They have an empty head and seared hearts. — Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann

How dare this soft-waisted, indolent creature insult Morgan's lack of blue blood? Oh, Morgan had his faults to be sure... but he was a hundred times more of a man than Gerard could ever hope to be. "He's an attractive man."
"An oversized ape," Gerard scoffed.
"He amuses me. And he can afford my tastes. That is enough for now. — Lisa Kleypas

Good evening, Miss Fairmont."
She saw Black sprawled out in a wingback chair, jacketless, the white shirt he wore unbuttoned to the waist, revealing an enticing view of his chest and the fine black hair that was hidden beneath. "I was beginning to wonder if you would come tonight. It is midnight after all."
On cue the large pendulum clock in the hall began to chime out the hour. Isabella met his gaze, marveled at the dark layers in his eyes. He appeared at once indolent, yet supremely masculine, and in his state of dishabille he was utterly breathtaking. — Charlotte Featherstone

Not alone to know, but to act according to thy knowledge, is thy destination,
proclaims the voice of my inmost soul. Not for indolent contemplation and study of thyself, nor for brooding over emotions of piety,
no, for action was existence given thee; thy actions, and thy actions alone, determine thy worth. — Johann Gottlieb Fichte

The New Hampshire girls who came to Lowell were descendants of the sturdy backwoodsmen who settled that State scarcely a hundred years before ... They were earnest and capable; ready to undertake anything that was worth doing. My dreamy, indolent nature was shamed into activity among them. They gave me a larger, firmer ideal of womanhood. — Lucy Larcom

Maybe am too much on men, but sincerely, today's man has literally grown indolent in love. He fast falls asleep even before night conversations begin — Francis Otieno

There seem to be two causes of the deterioration of the arts. What are they? Wealth, I said, and poverty. How do they act? The process is as follows: When a potter becomes rich, will he, think you, any longer take the same pains with his art? Certainly not. He will grow more and more indolent and careless? Very true. And the result will be that he becomes a worse potter? Yes; he greatly deteriorates. — Plato

She posed as being more indolent than she felt, for fear of finding herself less able than she could wish. — Elizabeth Bowen

R.I.P. A careless abbreviation of "requiescat in pace", attesting to indolent goodwill to the dead. According to the learned Dr. Drigge, however, the letters originally meant nothing more than "reductus in pulvis". — Ambrose Bierce

Our capacity of appreciating the beauties of the earth we live on is, in truth, one of the civilised accomplishments which we all learn, as an Art; and, more, that very capacity is rarely practised by any of us except when our minds are most indolent and most unoccupied. How much share have the attractions of Nature ever had in the pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves or our friends? What space do they ever occupy in the thousand little narratives of personal experience which pass every day by word of mouth from one of us to the other? All that our minds can compass, all that our hearts can learn, can be accomplished with equal certainty, equal profit, and equal satisfaction to ourselves, in the poorest as in the richest prospect that the face of the earth can show. — Wilkie Collins

In New York, one must collapse to be indolent. — Mason Cooley

What can be more disgusting than that impudent dross of gallantry, thought so manly, which makes many men stare insultingly at every female they meet? Can it be termed respect for the sex? No, this loose behaviour shews such habitual depravity, such weakness of mind, that it is vain to expect much public or private virtue, till both men and women grow more modest . . .
not the indolent condescension of protectorship. — Mary Wollstonecraft

God's prayer-line is not a wheel of fortune or lottery for the indolent. — Bryant McGill

The secret of the whole matter is that a habit is not the mere tendency to repeat a certain act, nor is it established by the mere repetition of the act. Habit is a fixed tendency to react or respond in a certain way to a given stimulus; and the formation of habit always involves the two elements, the stimulus and the response or reaction. The indolent lad goes to school not in response to any stimulus in the school itself, but to the pressure of his father's will; when that stimulus is absent, the reaction as a matter of course does not occur. — Edward O. Sisson

It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us - dreamers and indolent ... It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich - these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it. — Mark Twain

There was more courage in bearing trouble than in escaping from it; the brave and the energetic cling to hope, even in spite of fortune; the cowardly and the indolent are hurried by their fears,' said Plotius Firmus, Roman Praetorian Guard. — Tacitus

Having despised us, it is not strange that Americans should seek to render us despicable; having enslaved us, it is natural that they should strive to prove us unfit for freedom; having denounced us as indolent, it is not strange that they should cripple our enterprises. — Frederick Douglass

The procrastinator is not only indolent and weak, but commonly, false, too; most of the weak are false. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

In disposition the Negro is joyous, flexible, and indolent; while the many nations which compose this race present a singular diversity of intellectual character, of which the far extreme is the lowest grade of humanity. — Samuel George Morton

Most Americans don't know about environmental problems, because we have in our country a negligent and indolent press. The biggest lie that the right wing holds in our country is that there is such a thing as a liberal media. Americans are getting their news from the right-wing media. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

They who know the agonies of an ambitious, indolent, doubting, self-accusing man, - of a man who has a skeleton in his cupboard as to which he can ask for sympathy from no one, - will understand what feelings were at work within the bosom of Sir Thomas when his Percycross friends left him alone in his chamber. — Anthony Trollope

The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent, and proud. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

With care and patience, people may accomplish things which, to an indolent person, would appear impossible. — Dorothea Dix

An opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its decorations, as its only design is to gratify the senses and keep up an indolent attention in the audience. — Joseph Addison

The confirmed prejudices of a thoughtful life are as hard to change as the confirmed habits of an indolent life; and as some must trifle away age because they trifled away youth, others must labor on in a maze of error because they have wandered there too long to find their way out. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

With thunder and heavenly fireworks must one speak to indolent and somnolent senses. But beauty's voice speaketh gently: it appealeth only to the most awakened souls — Friedrich Nietzsche

Too indolent to bear the toil of writing; I mean of writing well; I say nothing about quantity.
[Lat., Piger scribendi ferre laborem;
Scribendi recte, nam ut multum nil moror.] — Horace