Jacula Prudentum (1651)
Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)
“He who does not give himself leisure to be thirsty cannot take pleasure in drinking.”
Book I, Ch. 42
Essais (1595), Book I
“He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.”
“No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure.”
Diary entry (29 December 1848).
Context: No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure. If he entrusts the details and smaller matters to subordinates constant errors will occur. I prefer to supervise the whole operations of the government myself rather than entrust the public business to subordinates, and this makes my duties very great.
“God is a foreman with certain definite views
Who orders life in shifts of work and leisure.”
"Docker", line 10, from Death of a Naturalist.
Poetry Quotes, Death of a Naturalist
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 84
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, p. 31
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: A Boy's Own Story (1982), Chapter One (p. 3).
