“According to Cato the Elder, Scipio Africanus was wont to say that he was never less at leisure than when at leisure, nor less alone than when alone.”

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 160

32 Dionysius
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders

1990s and beyond, "The Agenbite of Outwit" (1998)

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 153. Often quoted as: "If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live."

The Shoe workers' journal, Volume 16‎ (1915) p. 4
Variant: What does labor want? We want more school houses and less jails. More books and less guns. More learning and less vice. More leisure and less greed. More justice and less revenge. We want more … opportunities to cultivate our better natures.

Más vale el buen ocio que el negocio.
Maxim 247
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

Of Time, Work, and Leisure (1962)

My Day (1935–1962)
Source: This is My Story
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)

Source: Agnes Grey