Top 64 Idle Men Quotes
#1. Idle men make mischief, especially idle men supplied with ale, whores, and weapons.
Bernard Cornwell
#2. Lucian's father had warned him to fear idle men. Without the pride gained from a good day's work, they were left to their vices and the doubts that crowded their head. Their hatred. Their envy.
Melina Marchetta
#3. From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb which says that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil.
Charles Caleb Colton
#4. Do you smoke? Jack. Well, yes, I must admit I smoke. Lady Bracknell. I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is.
Oscar Wilde
#5. They would sooner be dicing, drinking, and flicking, I don't doubt, but Lord Randyll believes in putting idle men to work.
George R R Martin
#6. 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
#8. No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#9. It is idle to dispute with old men. Their opinions, like their cranial sutures, are ossified.
Santiago Ramon Y Cajal
#10. Let the man who does not wish to be idle, fall in love.
Ovid
#11. The idle wife ranked with the ornamentally wrought weapon and with the splendid offering to the gods as a measure of the man's power to waste, and therefore his superiority over other men ... As is the case with any other object of art, her uselessness is her use.
Emily James Smith Putnam
#12. Even when someone battles hard, there is an equal portion for one who lingers behind, and in the same honor are held both the coward and the brave man; the idle man and he who has done much meet death alike.
Homer
#13. The idle man is the Devil's cushion, on which he taketh his free ease: who, as he is uncapable of any good, so he is fitly disposed for all evil motions.
Joseph Hall
#14. I call that man idle who might be better employed.
Socrates
#15. Away with the cant of 'Measures not men!'-the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along.
George Canning
#17. One man by delay restored the state, for he preferred the public safety to idle report.
[Lat., Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem,
Non ponebat enim rumores ante salutem.]
Quintus Ennius
#18. I am not ignorant of what is said of my Lord in the Psalm: "You destroy those who speak a lie." And again: "A lying mouth deals death to the soul." And likewise the Lord says in the Gospel: "On the day of judgment men shall render account for every idle word they utter."
Saint Patrick
#19. To do good work a man should no doubt be industrious. To do great work he must certainly be idle a well.
Henry Ward Beecher
#20. Men are not really born either hopelessly idle, or preternaturally industrious. They may move in one direction or the other as will or circumstances dictate, but it is open to any man to work.
Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook
#21. Idle man, chases after fairy tales ...
Rumi
#22. There was no reason to feel pressure, but I felt it anyway
the pressure of hot air and passing time, an idle tension that builds up in places where men sweat twenty-four hours a day.
Hunter S. Thompson
#23. On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband's dinners.
Oscar Wilde
#24. And he who lives a hundred years, idle and weak, a life of one day is better if a man has attained firm strength.
Gautama Buddha
#25. Proper loafing requires company.One man lying about is being idle; two men lying about is a lunch break.
Brandon Sanderson
#26. No man has a right to be idle. Where is it that in such a world as this, that health, and leisure, and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, some want to supply, some misery to alleviate?
William Wilberforce
#27. If the belly is full," she said, "if we could know that it would always be full, men would be idle and laugh and play games like children, and then we would have peace and happiness.
Pearl S. Buck
#28. The idle man does not know what it is to enjoy rest, for he has not earned it.
John Lubbock
#29. Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.
Samuel Johnson
#30. Unless man has the wit and the grit to build his civilization on something better than material power, it is surely idle to talk of plans for a stable peace.
Francis Bowes Sayre, Sr.
#31. Could a mariner sit idle if he heard the drowning cry? Could a doctor sit in comfort and just let his patients die? Could a fireman sit idle, let men burn and give no hand? Can you sit at ease in Zion with the world around you damned?
Leonard Ravenhill
#32. In treading upon the ashes of dead men in Italy, Egypt - on the banks of the Bosphorus, one almost despairs to think how idle are the dreams and toils of this life, and were it not for the intellectual pleasure of knowing and learning, one would almost be damaged by travel in these historic lands.
William T. Sherman
#33. We will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.
Plato
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. No man is so idle that he cannot rouse himself just enough to get in the way of a busy person.
Robert Breault
#37. While one-half of the people of the United States are robbed of their inherent right of personal representation in this freestcountry on the face of the globe, it is idle for us to expect that the men who thus rob women will not rob each other as individuals, corporations and Government.
Susan B. Anthony
#39. Love is the occupation of the idle man, the amusement of a busy one, and the shipwreck of a sovereign.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#40. Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution - such call I good books.
Henry David Thoreau
#41. You must obey this now for a Law, that he that will not worke shall not eate (except by sicknesse he be disabled for the labours of thirtie or fortie honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintaine an hundred and fiftie idle loyterers.
John Smith
#42. If thou continuous to take delight in idle argumentation thou mayest be qualified to combat with the sophists, but will never know how to live with men.
Socrates
#43. The busy man has few idle visitors; to the boiling pot the flies come not.
Benjamin Franklin
#44. The vigorous man industriously striving for the improvement of his condition acts neither more nor less than the lethargic man who sluggishly takes things as they come. For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events.
Ludwig Von Mises
#45. 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
#46. In the world of high finance the shilling of the idle rich man can buy more than that of the poor, industrious man.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#47. An idle man has a constant tendency to torpidity. He has adopted the Indian maxim that it is better to walk than to run, and better to stand than to walk, and better to sit than to stand, and better to lie than to sit. He hugs himself into the notion, that God calls him to be quiet.
Richard Cecil
#48. The dangers which threaten us are twofold: First, from the Confederate forces, composed of men whose earnest convictions and reckless bravery it is idle to deny.
Robert Dale Owen
#49. Ahimsa is nothing if not a well-balanced, exquisite consideration for one's neighbour, and an idle man is wanting in that elementary consideration.
Mahatma Gandhi
#50. Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Barontage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; ...
Jane Austen
#51. Hunger is an altogether fit companion for the idle man.
Hesiod
#52. With men one could have clever, uplifting conversations, and men understood the work of an artist; but everything else-idle talk, tenderness, playfulness, love, contentment unmarred by thought-did not flourish among men; for that there had to be women and new places and constantly new impressions.
Hermann Hesse
#53. It was presumptuous for one man to forgive another. That was the duty of God. For men to pretend such mercy was an idle pride and a lack of respect. He did not desire any such mercy for himself.
Mario Puzo
#54. Few women and fewer men have enough character to be idle.
E. V. Lucas
#56. Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.
Samuel Johnson
#57. It is easy for a man who sits idle at home, and has nobody to please but himself, to ridicule or censure the common practices of mankind.
Samuel Johnson
#58. Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#59. An idle man's brain is the devil's workshop.
John Bunyan
#60. The idle man stands outside of God's plan, outside of the ordained scheme of things; and the truest self-respect, the noblest independence, and the most genuine dignity, are not to be found there.
J.G. Holland
#61. Pattycake, pattycake, baker's man; good morning, madam, I'm a psychiatrist
Eric Idle
#62. Rather do what is nothing to the purpose than be idle; that the devil may find thee doing. The bird that sits is easily shot, when fliers scape the fowler. Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all the virtues, and the self-made sepulchre of a living man.
Francis Quarles
#63. A man can never be idle with safety and advantage until he has been so trained by work that he makes his freedom from times and tasks more fruitful than his toil has been.
Hamilton Wright Mabie
#64. All the buildings of justice will remain idle on the day when all men have high conscience!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
