Short Idleness Quotes & Sayings

Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form - it may be called fleeting or eternal - is in neither case the stuff that life is made of. — Walter Benjamin

I love idleness. I love to busy myself about trifles, to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them, to come and go as my fancy bids me, to change my plan every moment, to follow a fly in all its circlings, to try and uproot a rock to see what is underneath, eagerly to begin a ten-years' task to give it up after ten minutes: in short, to fritter away the whole day inconsequentially and incoherently, and to follow nothing but the whim of the moment. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Around midnight he'd decided there was but a single course of action: He must remove her ovaries to quell the madness. — Peter Geye

I hate spinach," the President of the United States blurted out. "Not the least bit sorry to see it happen." He spoke these candid words in a hush-hush, closed-door meeting with a "special advisor" from agribusiness giant, AgriNu. "Hate it." The President went on, "You know what else I hate? Peas. Despise peas ... and there's so many of them." Edwin Edwards (why do parents do that?), otherwise known as Mr. Ed, leaned back with a sly smile. "What if I told you there was a way to get rid of spinach? And peas? And, at the same time, break open this damned European block to our special genetically modified seeds, allowing us to finally take control of the world market?" The President settled back in his seat, indicating for him to go on. Despite not liking vegetables, the President liked a man with a big appetite. — Sharon Weil

I asked her, "Are you an optimist or a pessimist?" She looked at her watch and said, "I'm optimistic." "Then I have some bad news for you, because humans are going to destroy each others as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon." "Why do beautiful songs make you sad?" "Because they aren't true." "Never?" "Nothing is beautiful and true." She smiled, but in a way that wasn't just happy, and said, "You sound just like Dad. — Jonathan Safran Foer

The extreme inequalities in the manner of living of the several classes of mankind, the excess of idleness in some, and of labour in others, the facility of irritating and satisfying our sensuality and our appetites, the too exquisite and out of the way aliments of the rich, which fill them with fiery juices, and bring on indigestions, the unwholesome food of the poor, of which even, bad as it is, they very often fall short, and the want of which tempts them, every opportunity that offers, to eat greedily and overload their stomachs; watchings, excesses of every kind, immoderate transports of all the passions, fatigues, waste of spirits, in a word, the numberless pains and anxieties annexed to every condition, and which the mind of man is constantly a prey to; these are the fatal proofs that most of our ills are of our own making, and that we might have avoided them all by adhering to the simple, uniform and solitary way of life prescribed to us by nature. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

She dropped on his chest with both knees and vengefully banged his head on the floor, once to knock him out and twice because it made her feel better. — Kerry Greenwood

Too many of us leave our lives - and, in fact, our souls - behind when we go to work. — Arianna Huffington

I suppose actors crave attention of some kind or they have suffered some form of arrested development and are still living in a sort of child's fantasy existence at some level in their psyche. — Hugh Laurie

In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from. — Peter Ustinov

Develop a habit of being grateful and thankful for everything good in your life, and you'll find you are actually opening the door for more good to come into your life. — Idowu Koyenikan

Communism and "free-market" capitalism both are modern versions of oligarchy. In their propaganda, both justify violent means by good ends, which always are put beyond reach by the violence of the means. The trick is to define the end vaguely-"the greatest good of the greatest number" or "the benefit of the many"- and keep it at a distance. — Wendell Berry

Change is not something that we should fear. Rather, it is something that we should welcome. For without change, nothing in this world would ever grow or blossom, and no one in this world would ever move forward to become the person they're meant to be. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Jeff: I understand you guys had a good day today?
Peanut: Yes we had a great day!
Jose: No we did not.
Peanut: Yes
Jose: No
Peanut: Yes
Jose: No
Peanut: Yes
Jose: No we did not have a good day.
Peanut: Yes we hhhaad...a great frickin' day!
What?
Jeff: Did you have a good day?
Peanut: Yes
Jose: No
Peanut: Shut up
Jeff: A good day?
Peanut: Yes
Jose: No
Peanut: Shut up
Jeff: You're supposed to have taken him to the spa.
Peanut: I took him to the spa!
Jose: He put me in the vegetable steamer.
Peanut: It's the same thing!!! — Jeff Dunham

Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long. — Cesare Pavese

My motto has always been: Only first class business and that in a first class way — David Ogilvy

The criteria for serving one's country should be competence, courage and willingness to serve. When we deny people the chance to serve because of their sexual orientation, we deprive them of their rights of citizenship, and we deprive our armed forces the service of willing and capable Americans. — Dianne Feinstein

Writing novels is largely about endurance and patience. I take a lot of breaks, hit walls, and go do something else while I think things through. But I do it every day, and I try to treat it as a job, something that is not dictated by whimsy or muses. — Adam Mansbach