Indolence Quotes

“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“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. I love to amuse myself with trifles, by beginning a hundred things and never finishing one of them, by going or coming as I take either into my head, by changing my project at every instant, by following a fly through all its windings, in wishing to overturn a rock to see what is under it, by undertaking with ardor the work of ten years, and abandoning it without regret at the end of ten minutes; finally, in musing from morning until night without order or coherence, and in following in everything the caprice of a moment.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

“The town of L— represented the earth, with its sorrows and its graves left behind, yet not out of sight, nor wholly forgotten. The ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation, and brooded over by a dove-like calm, might not unfitly typify the mind and the mood which then swayed it. For it seemed to me as if then first I stood at a distance, and aloof from the uproar of life; as if the tumult, the fever, and the strife, were suspended; a respite granted from the secret burthens of the heart; a sabbath of repose; a resting from human labours. Here were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with the peace which is in the grave; motions of the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm: a tranquility that seemed no product of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms; infinite activities, infinite repose.”
― Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater

“Twas doing nothing was his curse. Is there a vice can plague us worse?”
― Hannah More

“You appear to me not to have understood the nature of my body & mind. Partly from ill-health, & partly from an unhealthy & reverie-like vividness of Thoughts, & (pardon the pedantry of the phrase) a diminished Impressibility from Things, my ideas, wishes, & feelings are to a diseased degree disconnected from motion & action. In plain and natural English, I am a dreaming & therefore an indolent man. I am a Starling self-incaged, & always in the Moult, & my whole Note is, Tomorrow, & tomorrow, & tomorrow.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Volume II 1801-1806

“I was young at Myna, that first time. When had the change come? He had retreated to here, to Collegium, to spin his awkward webs of intrigue and to lecture at the College. Then, years on, the call had come for action. He had gone to that chest in which he stored his youth and found that, like some armour long unworn, it had rusted away.

He tried to tell himself that this was not like the grumbling of any other man who finds the prime of his life behind him. I need my youth and strength now, as never before. A shame that one could no husband time until one needed it. All his thoughts rang hollow. He was past his best and that was the thorn that would not be plucked from his side. He was no different from any tradesman or scholar who, during a life of indolence, pauses partway up the stairs to think, This was not so hard, yesterday.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Dragonfly Falling

“It is not a single cowardice that drives us into fiction's fantasies. We often fear that literature is a game we can't afford to play — the product of idleness and immoral ease. In the grip of that feeling it isn't life we pursue, but the point and purpose of life — its facility, its use.”
― William H. Gass, Fiction and the Figures of Life

“The last shall not become the first if the last is lagging behind.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“Our abode in this world is transitory, our life therein is but a loan...
Our breaths are numbered and our indolence is manifest.”
― Abu Bakr

“Indolence has always been my most essential quality. ‘Essential’ in the sense that it is the single quality I am convinced I possess and by which I can be recognised and remembered, and also in the sense that I feel most essentially like myself when I am exercising it. I cannot recollect a time when the idea of going for a walk was not a torment to me; a proposition that endangered my constant wish to stay where I was. I imagine myself, child and adult, curled up in an armchair, reading and being told (as a child) or invited (as an adult) to go out and do something. I cannot think why a person sitting with evident contentment in an armchair causes the desire in others for their immediate activity.”
― Jenny Diski, Why Didn’t You Just Do What You Were Told?

“There are two cardinal human sins from which all others derive: impatience and indolence.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“I saw myself as reviving a certain mode of life, a mode that had been almost lost: the contemplative life of the country gentleman, in harmony with his status and history. In Renaissance times they had called it sprezzatura. The idea was to do whatever one did with grace, to imbue one’s every action with beauty, while at the same time making it look quite effortless. Thus, if one were to work at, say, law, one should raise it to the level of an art; if one were to laze, then one must laze beautifully. This, they said, was the true meaning of being an aristocrat.”
― Paul Murray

“Laziness is the embodiment of self-control.”
― Raheel Farooq

“Of all our passions, that which is most unknown to ourselves is indolence. Although the injuries it causes are very imperceptible, no other passion is more ardent or more malignant. If we consider attentively its influence we shall see that on every occasion it renders itself master of our sentiments, our interests, and our pleasures; it is the remora which arrests the course of the largest vessels, a calm more dangerous to the most important affairs than rocks or tempests. The repose of indolence is a secret spell of the mind which suspends our most ardent pursuits and our firmest resolves.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims and Moral Reflections

“…man does not live very long in the infantile environment or in the bosom of his family without real danger to his mental health. Life calls him forth to independence, and he who gives no heed to this hard call because of childish indolence and fear is threatened by a neurosis, and once the neurosis has broken out it becomes more and more a valid reason to escape the battle with life and to remain for all time in the morally poisoned infantile atmosphere.”
― C.G. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious

“To the casual observer it may have looked like I was living a life of indolence, compared to the noisy industry with which the city to the north was ripping itself to pieces. It was true that, after a brief but regrettable entanglement with Higher Learning, I had fairly much confined my activities to the house and its environs. The simple fact of it was that I was happy there, and as I didn’t have any skills to speak of, or gifts to impart, I didn’t see why I ought to burden the world with my presence. It was not true, however, to say that I did nothing.”
― Paul Murray

“The secret of the whole matter is that a habit is not the mere tendency to repeat a certain act, nor is it established by the mere repetition of the act. Habit is a fixed tendency to react or respond in a certain way to a given stimulus; and the formation of habit always involves the two elements, the stimulus and the response or reaction. The indolent lad goes to school not in response to any stimulus in the school itself, but to the pressure of his father's will; when that stimulus is absent, the reaction as a matter of course does not occur.”
― Edward O. Sisson

“Miracle centered gospel brings about the culture of indolence and insolence upon the country.”
― Sunday Adelaja

“It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to work; it facinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.”
― Jerome Klapka Jerome

“Indolence is the beginning of all vice, because in a condition of slothful dreaming the libido has abundant opportunity for sinking into itself...”
― C.G. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious

“Letters have time, time costs nothing in these parts-let's return to the melons and peaches of Afghanistan.”
― Annemarie Schwarzenbach, All the Roads Are Open: The Afghan Journey

“...spent the summer drowsing on his rooftop deck, smoking cigarettes, reading Proust, dreaming about death and indolence and beauty and time.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“God's prayer-line is not a wheel of fortune or lottery for the indolent.”
― Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

“I decided I would teach Mrs. P. a lesson by cooking my own meal.”
― Paul Murray

“Why is it a man can never seem to buckle down and train himself to indolence and stupidity when he can see what sanctuary they offer from toil and pain?”
― Alan LeMay

“Any church that is overly emphasizing the role of miracles is encouraging his members to be indolent.”
― Sunday Adelaja

“Indolence saves us from prolixity and thereby from the shamelessness inherent in production.”
― Emil M. Cioran, Drawn and Quartered

“Indolence has destroyed the arts.”
― Pliny

“For an active person it is the work of a lifetime to acquire it, but once you have grasped the sweetness of indolence you will hold on to it for ever, even if it is a constant struggle.”
― Alfred Kubin, The Other Side

“For any recipe writer, the mark of success isn't teaching people how to cook well, it's showing them how to think well about food, of which 90 per cent is just about having the confidence to disagree. Margaret got into the history of things, explaining that flummery-- a jellied fruit cream-- used to be set with the shavings of the horn of a young deer, and then was made using the gelatinous powers of simmered calves' foot, and then with isinglass-- a collagen derived from the swim bladder of a fish. In the end, she gave you a more down-to-earth raspberry syllabub recipe with Sauternes, rosewater and cream. Margaret could give a detailed appraisal of tinned foods or she could convince you-- like she convinced me-- that a cheese soufflé isn't just a reasonable proposition but in fact an easy midweek lunch. 'Why should people enjoy cooking?' Margaret would say, because she knew it was her job to put forward a case.”
― Ruby Tandoh, All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now