1.
If history is deprived of the Truth, we are left with nothing but an idle, unprofitable tale.
Polybius
2.
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
3.
No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
Samuel Smiles
4.
The bees can abide no drones amongst them; but as soon as they begin to be idle, they kill them.
Plato
5.
Some temptations come to the industrious, but all temptations attack the idle
Charles Spurgeon
10.
Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do.
Thomas Pynchon
12.
An idle life always produces varied inclinations.
Lucan
13.
I call that man idle who might be better employed.
Socrates
14.
It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret.
William Faulkner
15.
I live an idle burden to the ground.
Homer
16.
Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.
Gustav Mahler
17.
As much pains were taken to make me idle as were ever taken to make me studious.
William Wilberforce
19.
An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.
Jonathan Swift
20.
Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.
Samuel Johnson
22.
People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.
Leo Rosten
23.
When the idle poor, Become the idle rich, You'll never know, Just who is who, Or who is which.
Yip Harburg
24.
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
25.
Arguments derived from probabilities are idle.
Plato
26.
It is idle to play the lyre for an ass.
St. Jerome
29.
And, indeed, I will at this point ask an idle question on my own account: which is better — cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
31.
Purification is never for the selfishly idle, it accrues only to the selflessly industrious.
Mahatma Gandhi
32.
The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.
Walter Bagehot
33.
How idle is this prating about natural rights as though still containing all that had been forfeited.
Jefferson Davis
36.
Where Labor stands idle ... there is a demonstrated deficiency, not of Capital, but of brains.
Horace Greeley
37.
If you're famous, you have to [be overly generous], otherwise people say, "Eric Idle came in and only left me $4." I always tip more than people expect.
Eric Idle
38.
I don't understand being idle; I don't have an idle setting. I probably should develop one.
John Darnielle
40.
Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach.
Samuel Johnson
43.
The keeping of an idle woman is a badge of superior social status.
Dorothy L. Sayers
44.
What's worse: to be idle while someone dies, or to be exiled and empty-handed?
Veronica Roth
46.
Nothing can be more idle than the opposition of theory to practice!
Jean-Baptiste Say
50.
Paradoxically, to be truly idle, you also have to be efficient.
Tom Hodgkinson