quotes about Idle
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But who are we, where do we come from When all those years Nothing but idle talk is left And we are nowhere in the world?" = MEETING =
-- Boris Pasternak -
Some temptations come to the industrious, but all temptations attack the idle
-- Charles Spurgeon -
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Although even when I am being idle I have plenty of food for thought both early and late - thoughts both about and not about art.
-- Gustav Klimt -
Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.
-- Gustav Mahler -
Do not sit idle, for indeed death is seeking you
-- Hasan of Basra -
I am an idle devil. But at least I work at it.
-- Helen Cresswell -
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To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
-- Henry David Thoreau -
As a Jew I cannot sit idle while genocidal atrocities continue to unfold in Darfur, Sudan.
-- Jan Schakowsky -
Nothing can be more idle than the opposition of theory to practice!
-- Jean-Baptiste Say -
How idle is this prating about natural rights as though still containing all that had been forfeited.
-- Jefferson Davis -
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How these curiosities would be quite forgott, did not such idle fellowes as I am putt them downe!
-- John AubreySource : Thomas Hearne, John Aubrey (1813). “Letters Written by Eminent Persons in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: to which are Added, Hearne's Journeys to Reading, and to Whaddon Hall, the Seat of Browne Willis, Esq., and Lives of Eminent Men, by John Aubrey, Esq: The Whole Now First Published from the Originals in the Bodleian Library and Ashmolean Museum, with Biographical and Literary Illustrations ...”, p.333
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An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.
-- Jonathan Swift -
People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.
-- Leo Rosten -
The idle always have a mind to do something.
-- Luc de Clapiers -
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The truth does not reveal itself to idle spectators.
-- Matthew CrawfordSource : Matthew B. Crawford (2009). “Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work”, p.71, Penguin
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All of our days are numbered. We cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all, because the worth of an idea never becomes apparent until you do it.
-- Nick Cave -
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The bees can abide no drones amongst them; but as soon as they begin to be idle, they kill them.
-- Plato -
If history is deprived of the Truth, we are left with nothing but an idle, unprofitable tale.
-- PolybiusSource : Polybius (2003). “The Rise of the Roman Empire”, p.25, Penguin UK
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The idle mind knows not what it wants.
-- Quintus EnniusSource : As quoted in "Noctes Atticae" by Aulus Gellius, Book XIX, Chapter X,
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Be not solitary, be not idle
-- Robert BurtonSource : The Anatomy of Melancholy pt. 3, sec. 4 (1621 - 1651) See Samuel Johnson 97
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To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson -
No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
-- Samuel SmilesSource : Samuel Smiles (2009). “Self-Help: With Illustrations of Character and Conduct”, p.5, The Floating Press
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They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.
-- Socrates -
I think being idle is quite hard for me to do.
-- Tatiana Maslany -
For a few brief days the orchards are white with blossoms. They soon turn to fruit, or else float away, useless and wasted, upon the idle breeze. So will it be with present feelings. They must be deepened into decision, or be entirely dissipated by delay.
-- Theodore L. Cuyler -
Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do.
-- Thomas Pynchon -
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Paradoxically, to be truly idle, you also have to be efficient.
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
What's worse: to be idle while someone dies, or to be exiled and empty-handed?
-- Veronica Roth -
Fancy brings us as many vain hopes as idle fears.
-- Wilhelm von Humboldt -
When the idle poor become the idle rich, you'll never know just who is who, or which is which.
-- Yip Harburg -
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An idle life always produces varied inclinations.
-- LucanSource : "Pharsalia", IV. 704 in "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, (pp. 384-385), 1922.