
“Having the foresight to plan to earn a living, is half of the peace and leisure in life.”
Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 204
General Quotes
A collection of quotes on the topic of leisure, work, working, time.
“Having the foresight to plan to earn a living, is half of the peace and leisure in life.”
Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 204
General Quotes
"Some Thoughts on the Common Toad" http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/commontoad.html, Tribune (12 April 1946)
Context: Certainly we ought to be discontented, we ought not simply to find out ways of making the best of a bad job, and yet if we kill all pleasure in the actual process of life, what sort of future are we preparing for ourselves? If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? What will he do with the leisure that the machine will give him?
Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
Source: Leisure: The Basis Of Culture
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)
“I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.”
“Reading is my favourite occupation, when I have leisure for it and books to read.”
Source: Agnes Grey
“"Loafing" is easy, but "leisure" is difficult.”
Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 185
“Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.”
Speaker's Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms (1955), p. 187.
Attributed
"The Paradox of Our Age"; these statements were used in World Wide Web hoaxes which attributed them to various authors including George Carlin, a teen who had witnessed the Columbine High School massacre, the Dalai Lama and Anonymous; they are quoted in "The Paradox of Our Time" at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/paradox.asp
Words Aptly Spoken (1995)
Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)
“The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich.”
Source: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness
Unpublished (and probably unsent) letter to the Providence Journal (13 April 1934), quoted in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy, edited by J. T. Joshi, pp. 115-116
Non-Fiction, Letters
Hitherto it has grown out of the secure, non-struggling life of the aristocrat. In future it may be expected to grow out of the secure and not-so-struggling life of whatever citizens are personally able to develop it. There need be no attempt to drag culture down to the level of crude minds. That, indeed, would be something to fight tooth and nail! With economic opportunities artificially regulated, we may well let other interests follow a natural course. Inherent differences in people and in tastes will create different social-cultural classes as in the past—although the relation of these classes to the holding of material resources will be less fixed than in the capitalistic age now closing. All this, of course, is directly contrary to Belknap's rampant Stalinism—but I'm telling you I'm no bolshevik! I am for the preservation of all values worth preserving—and for the maintenance of complete cultural continuity with the Western-European mainstream. Don't fancy that the dethronement of certain purely economic concepts means an abrupt break in that stream. Rather does it mean a return to art impulses typically aristocratic (that is, disinterested, leisurely, non-ulterior) rather than bourgeois.
Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (28 October 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 60-64
Non-Fiction, Letters
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, p. 27
As quoted in Summa Theologica Part II of Second Part Q. 182, Art 4
“Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.”
Source: Speech to the Conservatives of Manchester (3 April 1872), cited in The World's Best Orations from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Vol. 1 (eds. David Josiah Brewer, Edward Archibald Allen, William Schuyler), pp. 309-338.
2009, First Inaugural Address (January 2009)
Source: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness.
Speech, (28 March 1923), Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate), on the Damage to Property (Compensation) Bill http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/S/0001/S.0001.192303280011.html
The True Story of My Life http://www.public.asu.edu/~bruce/Taylor57.txt (November 8 - December 13, 1924)
"Science AMA Series: Stephen Hawking AMA Answers!", reddit.com (8 October 2015) https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama_series_stephen_hawking_ama_answers/cvsdmkv/; also quoted in "Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared Of Capitalism, Not Robots" Huffington Post (8 October 2015) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stephen-hawking-capitalism-robots_us_5616c20ce4b0dbb8000d9f15
1910s, Citizenship in a Republic (1910)
§ 243
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)
Context: The greatest part of mankind want leisure or capacity for demonstration, nor can carry a train of proofs, which in that way they must always depend upon for conviction, and cannot be required to assent to till they see the demonstration. Wherever they stick, the teachers are always put upon proof, and must clear the doubt by a thread of coherent deductions from the first principle, how long or how intricate soever that be. And you may as soon hope to leave all the day labourers and tradesmen, the spinsters and dairy-maids, perfect mathematicians, as to have them perfect in ethics this way: having plain commands is the sure and only course to bring them to obedience and practice: the greatest part cannot know, and therefore they must believe. And I ask, whether one coming from heaven in the power of God, in full and clear evidence and demonstration of miracles, giving plain and direct rules of morality and obedience, be not likelier to enlighten the bulk of mankind, and set them right in their duties, and bring them to do them, than by reasoning with them from general notions and principles of human reason?
"Dr. Sanger"
Cocaine Nights (1996)
Context: Our governments are preparing for a future without work, and that includes the petty criminals. Leisure societies lie ahead of us... People will still work — or, rather, some people will work, but only for a decade of their lives. They will retire in their late thirties, with fifty years of idleness in front of them. … But how do you energize people, give them back some sense of community? A world lying on its back is vulnerable to any cunning predator. Politics are a pastime for a professional caste and fail to excite the rest of us. Religious belief demands a vast effort of imaginative and emotional commitment, difficult to muster if you're still groggy from last night's sleeping pill. Only one thing is left which can rouse people, threaten them directly and force them to act together. … Crime, and transgressive behavior — by which I mean all activities which aren't necessarily illegal, but provoke us and tap our need for strong emotion, quicken the nervous system and jump the synapses deadened by leisure and inaction.
“Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure;
Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.”
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)
The Life of Saint Francis of Assisi
Source: Society of the Spectacle (1967), Ch. 7, sct. 168.
“Hate is by far the greatest pleasure; men love in haste, but detest in leisure.”
1910s, A Treatise on Parents and Children (1910)
Context: The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active, which is pleasanter than any happiness until you are tired of it.
“I want leisure to read—an immense amount.”
Source: The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
“He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.”
[38] "Alone Looking at the Mountain"
Variant translations:
The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
"Zazen on Ching-t'ing Mountain", trans. Sam Hamill
Flocks of birds fly high and vanish;
A single cloud, alone, calmly drifts on.
Never tired of looking at each other—
Only the Ching-t'ing Mountain and me.
"Sitting Alone in Ching-t'ing Mountain", trans. Irving Y. Lo
Preface to the First Edition
The Medals of Creation or First Lessons in Geology (1854)
"The Plight of Culture" (1953), pp. 31-32
1960s, Art and Culture: Critical Essays, (1961)
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 148
"Better Days"
Song lyrics, Lucky Town (1992)
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, pp. 3–4
Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 11.
On Kim Beazley's ALP Leadership, Lateline interview, June 7 2007.
“The right kind of leisure is better than the wrong kind of work.”
Más vale el buen ocio que el negocio.
Maxim 247
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)
Source: Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884), p. 134
“"What," say you, "are you giving me advice? Indeed, have you already advised yourself, already corrected your own faults? Is this the reason why you have leisure to reform other men?" No, I am not so shameless as to undertake to cure my fellow-men when I am ill myself. I am, however, discussing with you troubles which concern us both, and sharing the remedy with you, just as if we were lying ill in the same hospital.”
Tu me' inquis 'mones? iam enim te ipse monuisti, iam correxisti? ideo aliorum emendationi vacas?' Non sum tam improbus ut curationes aeger obeam, sed, tamquam in eodem valetudinario iaceam, de communi tecum malo colloquor et remedia communico.
Tu me' inquis 'mones? iam enim te ipse monuisti, iam correxisti? ideo aliorum emendationi vacas?'
Non sum tam improbus ut curationes aeger obeam, sed, tamquam in eodem valetudinario iaceam, de communi tecum malo colloquor et remedia communico.
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXVII
Letter to George Washington (July 1776)
Lawrence Haworth, Autonomy: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology and Ethics (Yale University Press: 1986), pp. 12-13.
Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 37
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, pp. 4–5
"A Young Girl's Primer" (1966)
Speech to Conservative Women's Conference (25 May 1988) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107248
Third term as Prime Minister
p. iii http://books.google.com/books?id=h7JT-QDuAHoC&pg=PR3; Lead paragraph of the Preface; Highlighted section cited in: Patricia R. Allaire and Robert E. Bradley. " Symbolical algebra as a foundation for calculus: DF Gregory's contribution http://poncelet.math.nthu.edu.tw/disk5/js/history/gregory.pdf." Historia Mathematica 29.4 (2002): p. 408
Examples of the processes of the differential and integral calculus, (1841)
Rules for the Preservation of Health, 25
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“No blessed leisure for love or hope,
But only time for grief.”
1840s, The Song of the Shirt (1843)
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)
Quote from Rousseau's letter to Ziem, 1856; as cited in The Barbizon School of Painters: Corot, Rousseau, Diaz, Millet, Daubigny, etc., by D. C. Thomson; Scribner and Welford, New York 1890 – (copy nr. 78), pp. 135-136
The quiet life at Barbizon was at this time broken by the death of the only son of Díaz, and by the mental distortion of Rousseau's own wife
1851 - 1867
Source: The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir (2008), p. 72.
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.
“Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.”
Source: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 57,
"The War-Song of Dinas Vawr", stanzas 1 and 3, from The Misfortunes of Elphin, chapter XI (1829). In the same chapter this is described as "the quintessence of all the war-songs that ever were written, and the sum and substance of all the appetencies, tendencies, and consequences of military glory".
Letter to the city fathers of York in April or early May 1483 as Lord Protector for his nephew, Edward V, reprinted in Richard the Third (1956) http://books.google.com/books?id=dNm0JgAACAAJ&dq=Paul+Murray+Kendall+Richard+the+Third&ei=TZHDR8zXKZKIiQHf2NCpCA
Unidentified ‘member’ of MySpace.com circa 2007–08, quoted in Richard Kennedy The Disgrace of MySpace (self-published [Lulu.com] 23 August 2008, ISBN 9781435760042, page 123. This passage and slight variants of it have been widely attributed to Audrey Hepburn long after her death (for example, in Glamour March 2012, page 78); but no evidence of its existence has been found during Hepburn’s lifetime, attributed to Hepburn or anyone else. It has not been found in print before 2008.
Misattributed