Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.
Lord Chesterfield (Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield) 1694-1773 ‘Letters to his Son’ (1774) 20 July 1749
Grief is a species of idleness.
Samuel Johnson 1709-84 Letter to Mrs Thrale, 17 March 1773, in R. W. Chapman (ed.) ‘The Letters of Samuel Johnson’ (1952) vol. 1
I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely
Arthur Conan Doyle, Sr.
Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and governments.
Benjamin Franklin
Work is no disgrace: it is idleness which is a disgrace
Hesiod
Idleness is the only refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools
Lord Chesterfield
Idleness is to be dead at the limbs but alive within
Unknown
Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues
Benjamin Franklin
In idleness there is a perpetual despair
Thomas Carlyle
Prolonged idleness paralyzes initiative
Unknown
Be not solitary, be not idle
Robert Burton
A pound of idleness weighs twenty ounces
Unknown
Hunger is not the worst feature of unemployment; idleness is.
William E. Barrett
Life is not long and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.
Samuel Johnson
All man’s troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room.
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670
Nobody can think straight who does not work. Idleness warps the mind.
Henry Ford
A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor
Victor Hugo
Shun idleness. It is a rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.
Voltaire
Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.
Soren Kierkegaard
Golf is a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness.
William Wordsworth
I wonder at the idleness of tears.
Lizette Woodworth Reese
Idleness is an appendix to nobility.
Robert Burton
Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.
Lord Chesterfield
Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.
Franz Kafka
Idleness is the heaviest of all oppressions.
Victor Hugo
Idleness is the parent of psychology.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Idleness is the stupidity of the body, and stupidity is the idleness of the mind.
Johann G. Seume
Idleness is to the human mind like rust to iron.
Ezra Cornell
Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.
Jerome K. Jerome
Toil is no source of shame; idleness is shame.
Hesiod
Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease.
Benjamin Franklin
We cannot afford idleness, waste or inefficiency.
Eamon de Valera
Work is no disgrace: it is idleness which is a disgrace.
Hesiod
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
Samuel Butler
Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.
Thomas Carlyle