Idler Quotes

#1. A conclusion I've come to at the Idler is that it starts with retreating from work but it's really about making work into something that isn't drudgery and slavery, and then work and life can become one thing.

Tom Hodgkinson

#2. O, once in each man's life, at least, Good luck knocks at his door; And wit to seize the flitting guest Need never hunger more. But while the loitering idler waits. Good luck beside his fire, The bold heart storms at fortune's gates, And conquers its desire.

John L. Bates

#3. Vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile.

Alexander Smith

#4. An idler and a sluggard are as different as a gourmand and a glutton.

David Mitchell

#5. From a labour point of view, there are practically three races, the Malays the Chinese and Tamils. By nature, the Malay is an idler, the Chinaman is a thief, and the Indian is a drunkard. Yet each, in his special class of work, is both cheap and efficient when properly supervised.

Christopher Hale

#6. Work is as much a necessity to man as eating and sleeping. Even those who do nothing that can be called work still imagine they are doing something. The world has not a man who is an idler in his own eyes.

Wilhelm Von Humboldt

#7. Beauty, pleasure, freedom and plenty of sleep: these are the hallmarks of a successful idler's break. Travel should not be hard work.

Tom Hodgkinson

#8. Through this broad street, restless ever, ebbs and flows a human tide, wave on wave a living river; wealth and fashion side by side; Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.

John Greenleaf Whittier

#9. The faster you go, the idler you get.

Ferreira Gullar

#10. What is a Communist? One who hath yearnings For equal division of unequal earnings, Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing, To fork out his copper and pocket your shilling.

Ebenezer Elliott

#11. She would never blame him for being the ineffectual idler so long as he did it sincerely, from the attitude that nothing much was worth doing

F Scott Fitzgerald

#12. For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world.

William Butler Yeats

#13. Writing a book is a brilliant thing because once you've finished it, you've done it, and there's the potential for it to go on earning you a living without you doing any more work on it. It's absolutely ideal for an idler.

Tom Hodgkinson

#14. As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days,
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses, bread and roses.

James Oppenheim

#15. I like the idea of the idler wheel - it just sits in between things, but it makes such a big difference in the way that the machine is working. That concept has always been something that has interested me, but I didn't really know why.

Fiona Apple

#16. The wicked can have only accomplices, the voluptuous have companions in debauchery, self-seekers have associates, the politic assemble the factions, the typical idler has connections, princes have courtiers. Only the virtuous have friends.

Voltaire

#17. If I were to imagine myself as an idler wheel inside some big mix of gears, then I would be connected to everything. It's not like there's just me and then nothing.

Fiona Apple

#18. Industry has operated against the artisan in favor of the idler, and also in favor of capital and against labor. Any mechanical invention whatsoever has been more harmful to humanity than a century of war.

Remy De Gourmont

#19. Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler

Samuel Johnson

#20. And they die an equal death - the idler and the man of mighty deeds.

Homer

#21. How various his employments whom the world Calls idle; and who justly in return Esteems that busy world an idler too!

William Cowper

#22. Love is the idler's occupation, the warrior's relaxation, and the sovereign's ruination.

Napoleon Bonaparte

#23. There is probably no greater idler than myself. And I would consider myself a lazy-bones if I did not write so many volumes, and if I did not admire my diligence once I begin writing.

Henryk Sienkiewicz

#24. The perfect woman, you see [is] a working-woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who [uses] her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others.

Thomas Hardy

#25. An idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless if it goes as when it stands.

William Cowper

#26. If I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.

Henry David Thoreau

#27. No man is so methodical as a complete idler, and none so scrupulous in measuring out his time as he whose time is worth nothing.

Washington Irving

#28. I suddenly realised, hey, I'm not a lazy idiot, I'm an idler! It's something to aspire to, it's part of the creative process! That's fantastic!

Tom Hodgkinson

#29. In my mind nothing is more abhorrent than a life of ease. None of us has any right to ease. There is no place in civilization for the idler.

Henry Ford

#30. A learned man is an idler who kills time by study.

George Bernard Shaw