Home › I › Idleness

Idleness: Quotations from Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations

Idleness is emptiness; the tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless.— HOSEA BALLOU — MS. Sermons.

For idleness is an appendix to nobility.— BURTON — Anatomy of Melancholy. Pt. I. Sec. II. Memb. 2.

Subsec. 6. An idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless if it goes as when it stands.— COWPER — Retirement.

How various his employments whom the world Calls idle; and who justly in return Esteems that busy world an idler too!— COWPER — The Task. Bk. III.

The Garden. L. 342. L. 342. Thus idly busy rolls their world away.— GOLDSMITH — The Traveller. L. 256.

What heart can think, or tongue express, The harm that groweth of idleness?— JOHN HEYWOOD — Idleness.

I live an idle burden to the ground.— HOMER — Iliad. Bk. XVIII. L. 134.

Pope's trans. Gloomy calm of idle vacancy.— SAM'L JOHNSON — Boswell's Life of

Johnson. Dec. 8, 1763. Thee too, my Paridel! she mark'd thee there, Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair, And heard thy everlasting yawn confess The Pains and Penalties of Idleness.— POPE — Dunciad. Bk. IV. L. 341.

I rather would entreat thy company, To see the wonders of the world abroad Than living, dully sluggardized at home, Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.— Shakespeare — Two Gentlemen of Verona. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 5.