“He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Henry David Thoreau 385

1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862

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“If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.”

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Context: If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively. For people to have more time to read, to take part in their civic obligations, to know more about how their government functions and who their officials are might mean in a democracy a great improvement in the democratic processes. Let's begin, then, to think how we can prepare old and young for these new opportunities. Let's not wait until they come upon us suddenly and we have a crisis that we will be ill prepared to meet. (5 November 1958)

“Of a rich man who was niggardly he said, "That man does not own his estate, but his estate owns him."”

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Bion, 3.
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“It is in his pleasures that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.”

Agnes Repplier (1855–1950) American essayist

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“It's not a man's working hours that is important, it is how he spends his leisure time.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

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“It is true that wealth has been greatly increased, and that the average of comfort, leisure, and refinement has been raised; but these gains are not general. In them the lowest class do not share. I do not mean that the condition of the lowest class has nowhere nor in anything been improved; but that there is nowhere any improvement which can be credited to increased productive power.”

Henry George book Progress and Poverty

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Context: It is true that wealth has been greatly increased, and that the average of comfort, leisure, and refinement has been raised; but these gains are not general. In them the lowest class do not share. I do not mean that the condition of the lowest class has nowhere nor in anything been improved; but that there is nowhere any improvement which can be credited to increased productive power. I mean that the tendency of what we call material progress is in nowise to improve the condition of the lowest class in the essentials of healthy, happy human life. Nay, more, that it is still further to depress the condition of the lowest class. The new forces, elevating in their nature though they be, do not act upon the social fabric from underneath, as was for a long time hoped and believed, but strike it at a point intermediate between top and bottom. It is as though an immense wedge were being forced, not underneath society, but through society. Those who are above the point of separation are elevated, but those who are below are crushed down.

“Liberal education was aristocratic in the sense that it was the education of those who enjoyed leisure and political power. If it was the right education for those who had leisure and political power, then it is the right education for everybody today.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

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“Even the pot-bellied abbot, who in the evening sits on his veranda with a paternal air, enjoying his coffee and picking the holes in his teeth, has in his innermost soul the makings of a Torquemada.”

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E o abade pançudo que à tardinha, à varanda, palita o dente furado saboreando o seu café com um ar paterno, traz dentro em si os indistintos restos dum Torquemada.
O Crime do Padre Amaro (1875), ch. 8; translation by Nan Flanagan from The Sin of Father Amaro ([1962] 1985) p. 98.

“Who hath so entire happiness that he is not in some part offended with the condition of his estate?”
Quis est enim tam compositae felicitatis ut non aliqua ex parte cum status sui qualitate rixetur?

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480) philosopher of the early 6th century

Prose IV, line 12
The Consolation of Philosophy · De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book II

“All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

“This has been a big incident, hasn't in. In reality, James Anderson was a B-grade bowler who got his arse-whipped by Australia that many times it's not even funny. Frankly I don't care what he has to say but at least he has improved his bowling, thank goodness”

Matthew Hayden (1971) Australian cricketer

Quoted on Telegraph.co.uk (October 18, 2012), "Matthew Hayden labels England's James Anderson a 'B-Grade bowler' after dressing-room Ashes fracas" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/9617137/Matthew-Hayden-labels-Englands-James-Anderson-a-B-Grade-bowler-after-dressing-room-Ashes-fracas.html

“He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.”

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Henry David Thoreau 385

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