“Ther n' is no werkman whatever he be,
That may both werken wel and hastily. 4
This wol be done at leisure parfitly.”
The Merchant's Tale, l. 585
The Canterbury Tales
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Geoffrey Chaucer99
English poet 1343–1400Related quotes
L. P. Jacks (1860–1955) British educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister
Misattributed to Chateaubriand on the internet and even some recently published books, this statement actually originated with L. P. Jacks in Education through Recreation (1932)
Misattributed
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
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)
Owen Feltham (1602–1668) English writer
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 180.
“Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure;
Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.”
William Congreve The Old Bachelor
Act V, scene viii. Compare: "Who wooed in haste, and means to wed at leisure", William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Act iii, scene 2
The Old Bachelor (1693)
“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.”
P. Scipionem [...] dicere solitum scripsit Cato [...] numquam se minus otiosum esse, quam cum otiosus; nec minus solum, quam cum solus esset.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman
Book III, section 1
De Officiis – On Duties (44 BC)
“Man works when he is partially involved. When he is totally involved he is at play or leisure.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …
1990s and beyond, "The Agenbite of Outwit" (1998)
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
Lawrence Haworth (1926) American-Canadian philosopher
Lawrence Haworth, Autonomy: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology and Ethics (Yale University Press: 1986), pp. 12-13.