Idlers Quotes

As for the Republicans -- how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, [and] steel their emotions against decent human sympathy.

Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

Come, come, leave business to idlers, and wisdom to fools: they have need of 'em: wit be my faculty, and pleasure my occupation, and let father Time shake his glass.

Industry has operated against the artisan in favor of the idler, and also in favor of capital and against labor. Any mechanical invention whatsoever has been more harmful to humanity than a century of war.

Go West, young man, go West. There is health in the country, and room away from our crowds of idlers and imbeciles.

An idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless if it goes as when it stands.

Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler.

How various his employments whom the world Calls idle; and who justly in return Esteems that busy world an idler too!

A learned man is an idler who kills time by study.

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a poor substitute for life.

I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers.

Vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile.

I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air -- or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

By amusing myself with all these games, all this nonsense, all these picture puzzles, I became famous... I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time.

Idlers do not make history: they suffer it!

Democracy does not contain any force which will check the constant tendency to put more and more on the public payroll. The state is like a hive of bees in which the drones display, multiply and starve the workers so the idlers will consume the food and the workers will perish.

The people no longer seek consolation in art. But the refined people, the rich, the idlers seek the new, the extraordinary, the extravagant, the scandalous.

What is a Communist? One who hath yearnings For equal division of unequal earnings, Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing, To fork out his copper and pocket your shilling.

Idlers cannot even find time to be idle, or the industrious to be at leisure. We must always be doing or suffering

If I were to imagine myself as an idler wheel inside some big mix of gears, then I would be connected to everything. It's not like there's just me and then nothing.

In both word and deed, one of the greatest idlers of all time was John Lennon. In his songs we see repeated defences of simply lying around doing nothing.

No man is so methodical as a complete idler, and none so scrupulous in measuring out his time as he whose time is worth nothing.

An idler and a sluggard are as different as a gourmand and a glutton.

The faster you go, the idler you get.

I suddenly realised, hey, I'm not a lazy idiot, I'm an idler! It's something to aspire to, it's part of the creative process! That's fantastic!

There is probably no greater idler than myself. And I would consider myself a lazy-bones if I did not write so many volumes, and if I did not admire my diligence once I begin writing.

A conclusion I’ve come to at the Idler is that it starts with retreating from work but it’s really about making work into something that isn’t drudgery and slavery, and then work and life can become one thing.

Do not lounge in the cities! There is room & health in the country, away from the crowds of idlers & imbeciles. Go west, before you are fitted for no life but that of the factory.

I like the idea of the idler wheel - it just sits in between things, but it makes such a big difference in the way that the machine is working. That concept has always been something that has interested me, but I didn't really know why.

Writing a book is a brilliant thing because once you've finished it, you've done it, and there's the potential for it to go on earning you a living without you doing any more work on it. It's absolutely ideal for an idler.

All poets are idlers, even if all idlers are not poets.