
“1781. Half a Loaf is better than no Bread.”
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.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
"Little Breeches", Pike County Ballads and Other Pieces (1873).
“To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.”
Les feuilles d'automne (1831)
Variant: To divinise is human, to humanise is divine.
Source: Les Misérables
“"Loafing" is easy, but "leisure" is difficult.”
Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 185
“It takes a heap of loafing to write a book.”
Song of Myself, 1
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Interviewed in 2004 http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65688,00.html
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.”
"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.