“1781. Half a Loaf is better than no Bread.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
"The Courtship of Arthur and Al", The New Yorker (26 August 1939); Fables for Our Time & Famous Poems Illustrated (1940). Parody of Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Better to have loved and lost/than never to have loved at all."
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time
“1781. Half a Loaf is better than no Bread.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…
John Hay (1838–1905) American statesman, diplomat, author and journalist
"Little Breeches", Pike County Ballads and Other Pieces (1873).
“To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.”
Victor Hugo book Les Misérables
Les feuilles d'automne (1831)
Variant: To divinise is human, to humanise is divine.
Source: Les Misérables
“"Loafing" is easy, but "leisure" is difficult.”
Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant
Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 185
“It takes a heap of loafing to write a book.”
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist
Song of Myself, 1
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Jeff Tweedy (1967) musician
Interviewed in 2004 http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65688,00.html
Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter
Quote (1899), # 67, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1895 - 1902
“Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.”
Jack London (1876–1916) American author, journalist, and social activist
"Getting into Print", first published in 1903 in The Editor magazine
Variant: You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
Context: Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.
Context: Fiction pays best of all and when it is of fair quality is more easily sold. A good joke will sell quicker than a good poem, and, measured in sweat and blood, will bring better remuneration. Avoid the unhappy ending, the harsh, the brutal, the tragic, the horrible - if you care to see in print things you write. (In this connection don't do as I do, but do as I say.) Humour is the hardest to write, easiest to sell, and best rewarded... Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen. Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.