Idleness is only the refuge of weak
minds, and the holiday of fools.

Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.

Idleness is only fatal to the mediocre.

For obstinacy standing alone is the weakest of all things in one whose mind is not possessed by wisdom.

Idleness is the foundation of all evil imaginations.

It is idleness that creates impossibilities; and where men care not to do a thing, they shelter themselves under a persuasion that it cannot be done.

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.

Idleness is the open field of perdition, well tilled and sown with evil thoughts.

How can you claim to be strong, when your minds are so feeble.

To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.

Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, requisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most ourselves) its due. Which is precisely what makes idleness dangerous. All manner of things can grow out of that fallow soil.

A mind too active is no mind at all. — Infirmity

IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.

Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.