“A man can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him Nothing-To-Do; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative.”

1850s, Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society (1859)

"Brotherhood: Homage to Claudius Ptolemy"

In Search of the Miraculous (1949)

Country Sentiment (1920)
Context: I am an old man
With my bones very brittle,
Though I am a poor old man
Worth very little,
Yet I suck at my long pipe
At peace in the sun,
I do not fret nor much regret
That my work is done.

"Brittle Bones".

"Brittle Bones"
Country Sentiment (1920)

A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Two: Over the Treaty Wall. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1982, 6).

Source: My Life and Work (1922), p. 2

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings