quotations about leisure
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?
WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES, "Leisure"
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A man must break his back to earn his day of leisure.
THE BEATLES, "Girl"
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Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
JOHN LUBBOCK, The Use of Life
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The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays
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My conception of America is a land where men and women may walk in ordered freedom in the independent conduct of their occupations; where they may enjoy the advantages of wealth, not concentrated in the hands of the few but spread through the lives of all; where they build and safeguard their homes, and give to their children the fullest advantages and opportunities of American life; where every man shall be respected in the faith that his conscience and his heart direct him to follow; where a contented and happy people, secure in their liberties, free from poverty and fear, shall have the leisure and impulse to seek a fuller life.
HERBERT HOOVER, speech, Oct. 22, 1928
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Unemployment diminishes people. Leisure enlarges them.
MASON COOLEY, City Aphorisms
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Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain, It, makes us wander, wander earth around, To fly that tyrant Thought. As Atlas groan'd The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour.
EDWARD YOUNG, Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality
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Our leisure is the time the devil seizes upon to make us work for him; and the only way we can avoid conscription into his ranks, is to keep all our leisure moments profitably employed.
JAMES ELLIS, attributed, Day's Collacon
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The political nature of leisure is rarely examined or explained, but leisure is the very antithesis of the logic of capitalism because it rejects the very ideas and values that sustain capitalism, that is, constant productivity and efficiency in the name of profit.
NICHOLE MARIE SHIPPEN, Decolonizing Time: Work, Leisure, and Freedom
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In my mind nothing is more abhorrent than a life of ease. None of us has any right to ease. There is no place in civilization for the idler.
HENRY FORD, introduction, My Life and Work
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When leisure is a selfish luxury, its very activity, when it stirs, is apt to be only a kind of indolence taking exercise, that it may the better digest its selfishness.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Life Thoughts
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The early ascendancy of leisure as a means of reputability is traceable to the archaic distinction between noble and ignoble employments. Leisure is honourable and becomes imperative partly because it shows exemption from ignoble labour.
THORSTEIN VEBLEN, The Theory of the Leisure Class
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The wise are never less at leisure than when at leisure.
SCIPIO, attributed, Day's Collacon
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To choose one's leisure is to choose one's life.
J. P. TONER, Leisure and Ancient Rome
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Work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.
GEORGE MACDONALD, Wilfrid Cumbermede: An Autobiographical Story
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Leisure is the mother of philosophy; and commonwealth, the mother of peace and leisure.
THOMAS HOBBES, Leviathan
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Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.
ALDOUS HUXLEY, Crome Yellow
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If their work is satisfying people don't need leisure in the old-fashioned sense. No one ever asks what Newton or Darwin did to relax, or how Bach spent his weekends.
J. G. BALLARD, Super-Cannes
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Too much leisure is unearned time.
GEORGE TORKILDSEN, Leisure and Recreation Management
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What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do in our leisure hours determines what we are.
GEORGE EASTMAN, Image Magazine, 1952
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