Idleness

“ One of its rudiments, he believed, was that one grows tired of one's self sooner than of anything else in the world. Idleness, every one admitted, was the greatest of follies; but idleness was subtle and exacted tribute under a hundred plausible disguises. ”

“ How could I say to this generous being, "Maintain me in idleness. You who have dedicated your powers of mind and fortune to the benefit of your species, shall you so misdirect your exertions, as to support in uselessness the strong, healthy, and capable?" ”

“ And this is called idleness! It is the labor of a galley slave.
The indolence I love is not that of a lazy fellow who sits with his arms across in total inaction, and thinks no more than he acts, but that of a child which is incessantly in motion doing nothing, and that of a dotard who wanders from his subject. ”

“ If it were sheer idleness I could enjoy it, but it is a feverish idleness, in which one is driven here and there, expecting some gratification which not only never comes, but which never even begins to come. ”

“ The chief trouble with idleness is that it so often means introspection, worry, and impatience, especially to those conscientious souls who would fain be about their business.
I have for a long time been accustomed to combat the worry and fret of necessary idleness—not by forbidding it, not by advising struggle and fight against it, but by insisting that the best way to get rid of it is to leave it alone, to accept it. When we do this there may come a kind of fallow time in which the mind enriches and refreshes itself beyond our conception. ”

“ If one were asked to name an employment consistent with perfect idleness it would be difficult to suggest a better than that of watching a lark melting out of sight into the sky, and then finding it again. ”

“ It is the idea that idleness is not an empty thing. Idleness can be, and should be a particularly full thing, rich as it is in the Arabian Nights with invaluable jewels and incalculable stories. Idleness, or leisure, as the Eastern chronicler would probably prefer to call it, is indeed our opportunity of seeing the vision of all things, our rural audience for hearing, as the Sultan of the Indies heard them, the stories of all created things. ”

“ Idleness.—But indeed I do not suspect you of one single moment’s idleness in the whole day. Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools. I do not call good company and liberal pleasures idleness ”

“ And the boy looked out on a world wherein there was nothing for him to do.
His hands grew soft and his eyes went dull and his cheeks turned ashy pale,
For strength which isn't employed by day, with idleness grows stale. ”

“ I must inform him, that, with all his pretensions, he that calls for directions to be idle, is yet but in the rudiments of idleness, and has attained neither the practice nor theory of wasting life. The true nature of idleness he will know in time, by continuing to be idle. Virgil tells us of an impetuous and rapid being, that acquires strength by motion. The Idler acquires weight by lying still. ”

“ For the rise and fall of the tides alone furnish forth sufficient power to do automatically all the labour that is done on the earth. Is ideal man, then, to be idle? I answer that, if so, I see no wrong, but a great good. I deny altogether that idleness is an evil, or that it produces evil, and I am well aware why the interested are so bitter against idleness—namely, because it gives time for thought, and if men had time to think their reign would come to an end. Idleness—that is, the absence of the necessity to work for subsistence—is a great good. ”

“ He that never labours may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasure. The comfort is, that if he devotes himself to insensibility, he will daily lengthen the intervals of idleness, and shorten those of labour, till at last he will lie down to rest, and no longer disturb the world or himself by bustle or competition.
Thus I have endeavoured to give him that information which, perhaps, after all, he did not want; for a true Idler often calls for that which he knows is never to be had, and asks questions which he does not desire ever to be answered. ”

“ Idleness is the cesspool of the soul. Foul vapors arise from stagnant waters, and idle, dangerous, bad, abominable thoughts from inactive hearts - thoughts which may become desires, and end in shameful actions. ”

“ It is an unfortunate fact that very few people are able to be idle successfully. I think it is not so much because we misuse idleness as because we misinterpret it that the long days become increasingly demoralizing. I would ask no one to accept a forced idleness without objection or regret. Such an acceptance would imply a lack of spirit, to say the least. But idleness and rest are not incompatible; neither are idleness and service, nor idleness and contentment. ”

“ Perhaps man may be more properly distinguished as an idle animal; for there is no man who is not sometimes idle. It is at least a definition from which none that shall find it in this paper can be excepted; for who can be more idle than the reader of the Idler?
That the definition may be complete, idleness must be not only the general, but the peculiar characteristick of man; and perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle, that does by others what he might do himself, or sacrifices duty or pleasure to the love of ease. ”

“ No boy had been more completely exposed to the chance of circumstance, and, in consequence, to the unbiassed sway of my natural disposition, which was restless in the extreme. For this there is no alternative—for good or bad, work it will, and in such a case idleness is indeed the root of all evil. ”

“ These are the true and open votaries of idleness, who exist in a state of unruffled stupified laziness, forgetting and forgotten, who have long ceased to live, and at whose death the survivors can only say that they have ceased to breathe. ”

“ The rust of idleness has eaten into my vitals while I lay in my silken bed, and my chance is gone forever. I was bright, and strong, and sharp once, but I feared work and worry, and I hid, growing duller, dimmer, and more useless every day. ”

“ When the mood of energy is upon me, I must be doing something, or I become mopish and unhappy; when the mood of idleness is on me, I find it hard indeed if I cannot rest and let my mind wander over the various pictures, pleasant or terrible, which my own experience or my communing with the thoughts of other men, dead or alive, have fashioned in it; and if circumstances will not allow me to cultivate this mood of idleness, I find I must at the best pass through a period of pain till I can manage to stimulate my mood of energy to take its place and make me happy again. ”

“ He looked at men struggling for political or social distinction, as he might have gazed at a crowd of lunatics fighting for a tinsel crown. ‘And after all,’ he would say to himself, ‘if I am idle, my idleness hurts no one but myself. ”

“ Want always struggles against idleness, but want herself is often overcome; and every hour shows the careful observer those who had rather live in ease than in plenty.
So wide is the region of Idleness, and so powerful her influence. But she does not immediately confer all her gifts. My correspondent, who seems, with all his errours, worthy of advice, must be told, that he is calling too hastily for the last effusion of total insensibility. Whatever he may have been taught by unskilful Idlers to believe, labour is necessary in his initiation to idleness. ”

“ But idleness may link itself with any, all, or none of these. It is the will-o'-the-wisp among human characteristics. You avoid it, being hoodwinked as to its presence in your vicinage; you bear with it in others, when your tolerance is veritably bestowed on something very different. ”

“ There is nothing so injurious for a delicate boy, or for any one else, as idleness. Work, in moderation, enlivens the spirits, braces the nerves, and gives tone to the muscles, and thus strengthens the constitution. Of all miserable people, the idle boy or the idle man is the most miserable! If you are poor, of course you will bring him up to some calling; but if you are rich, and your boy is delicate (if he be not actually in a consumption) , you will, if you are wise, still bring him up to some trade or profession. ”

“ To be forced to do nothing is not idleness, it is the worst kind of imprisonment. Being made to stand in the corner with one’s face to the wall is not idleness—it is punishment. But getting up on Saturday morning with a wonderful day ahead in which one may do [Pg 152] what one likes—that is idleness. ”

“ I am moved by the commiseration with which all human beings ought to behold the distresses of each other, to try some expedients for their relief, and to inquire by what methods the listless may be actuated, and the empty be replenished.
There are said to be pleasures in madness known only to madmen. There are certainly miseries in idleness, which the Idler only can conceive. ”

“ Idleness is the parent of all psychology. ”

“ Now, inasmuch as he had thus taken a disgust to business and application, and was surfeited, as I may say, with the perplexities of it, it must be as natural for him, we know, to search for repose in the contrary extreme, viz., recreation and idleness, as it is for a man to seek rest after toil, to sleep after a day's labour, or to sit down after a long and tiresome walk. But there are two very distinct sorts of idleness, and two very different kinds of recreation; there is a shameful idleness which is no better than downright sloth ”

“ Idleness, abundance of idleness, a dread of labour and a love of ease. Their country was fruitful, and the abundance they had they came easily by, which was a temptation to them to indulge themselves in sloth, which disposed them to all that abominable filthiness which kindled their flames. Note, Idleness is an inlet to much sin. The men of Sodom, who were idle, were wicked, and sinners before the Lord exceedingly, Gen. xiii. 13. The standing waters gather filth and the sitting bird is the fowler's mark. When David arose from off his bed at evening he saw Bathsheba. ”

“ Shying, for the present, the question in Political Economy, and viewing the subject in a moral, social, and poetical light, what, pray, is the true influence of The Still? It makes people idle. Idle? What species of idleness is that which consists in being up night and day—traversing moors and mountains in all weathers—constantly contriving the most skilful expedients for misleading the Excise, and which, on some disastrous day, when dragoons suddenly shake the desert—when all is lost except honour—hundreds of gallons of wash (alas! alas! a-day!) ”

“ And do you know, neighbours, that once on a time people were still anxious about that disease of Idleness: at one time we gave ourselves a great deal of trouble in trying to cure people of it. Have you not read any of the medical books on the subject? ”

“ It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen. ”

“ An idle life I live in this place, as the world counts it; but then I have the satisfaction of differing from the world as to the meaning of idleness. A windmill twirling its arms all day is admirable only when there is corn to grind. ”

“ Idleness of the mind is much worse than that of the body: wit, without employment, is a disease—the rust of the soul, a plague, a hell itself. ”

“ And, besides, you may inflame maladies and irritate them by checking them; if you do not combat them at the fitting moment.' Therefore, when you shall seem to be curable by my skill, take care, and by my precepts shun the first approaches of idleness. 'Tis that which makes you love, 'tis that which supports it, when once it has caused it: that is the cause and the nutriment of the delightful malady.
If you remove all idleness, the bow of Cupid is broken, and his torch lies despised and without its light. ”

“ For here again was a distinguishing note of those earlier days of which I am speaking. Idleness was a distinct discredit, if not dishonor. In communities where everybody had to work, an idler or a loafer was an intolerable impertinence, and was usually made to feel it. ”

“ Father's tolerance of idleness in others, however, did not extend to tolerance of idleness in us, and this led to my first rebellion, which occurred when I was fourteen. For once, I had been in the woods all day, buried in my books; and when I returned at night, still in the dream world these books had opened to me, father was awaiting my coming with a brow dark with disapproval. ”

“ Very properly they regard idleness as a species of crime against the common weal, and only when incapacitated, do either men or women cease to labor either with head or hands. They understand that all well balanced minds require a certain amount of active occupation, and that idleness induces pernicious conduct. ”

“ That was the last attempt to save themselves, and after it there was nothing to do but to wait the apparently inevitable hour when they would all go down together. Idleness feeds despair, and despair nourishes idleness. ”

“ Work is no disgrace: it is idleness which is a disgrace. ”

“ Had there not been the folly of idleness in this world, what man would fail either to be rich or learned? It is by reason of idleness that this earth is filled to its utmost limit of the sea with indigent and beastly men. ”

“ It has been said that idleness is the parent of mischief, which is very true; but mischief itself is merely an attempt to escape from the dreary vacuum of idleness. ”

“ it introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind, and benumbs the activity of man. ”