He knew now that it was his own will to happiness which must make the next move. But if he was to do so, he realized that he must come to terms with time, that...

I am always on the edge of what I am doing. I do everything badly, sloppily, to get it over with so that I can get on to the next thing that I will do...

They call it “business” because it does not become successful by a person’s “idleness”. Go get busy if you want to do business; but be busy for the right reasons!

Before you are much older…you will have policemen here to stay. A magistrate will be next. Then perhaps even a jail. And the counterparts of those things are hunger and want, and misery and idleness....

Alexandra, my eldest, here, plays the piano, or reads or sews; Adelaida paints landscapes and portraits (but never finishes any); and Aglaya sits and does nothing. I don’t work too much, either.

Shun idleness is the rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.

When I’m working I’m wishing I was doing nothing and when I’m doing nothing I’m wondering if I should be working. I hurry through what I’ve got to do and then, when I’ve got nothing...

If your passion does not keep you sleepless, you can’t be a good beginner. When passion itches, a great hand scratches… Wake up, it’s your time to rise above idleness!

I didn’t want to give up my job and join the ranks of the Doing Fuck All brigade no matter how much money I had in the bank.

I never did anything in life to anyone’s imagination.

Ivanov: I am a bad, pathetic and worthless individual. One needs to be pathetic, too, worn out and drained by drink, like Pasha, to be still fond of me and to respect me. My God,...

Remove the temptation of idleness and cupids bow is useless.

There is no harvest without hard work, therefore never expect chance to solve your problems of abject need for you. You must take deliberate actions!

It’s how I fill the time when nothing’s happening. Thinking too much, flirting with melancholy.

While in pursuit of your dreams, always bear in mind that fears, doubts, Procrastinations, and idleness are your enemies of progress.

People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.

No doubt, having developed the habit, out of idleness, of each day putting off my work until the day after, I thought that death could be dealt with in the same way.

There are two types of patience. One is exercised in hard work and the other in idleness. Patience with hard work is the one that moves mountains. Patience in idleness moves nothing, not even cobwebs.

The art of living is the art of bringing dreams and reality together.

work”.

Idleness is the enemy of the soul; and therefore the brethren ought to be employed in manual labor at certain times, at others, in devout reading.

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...

True blessing comes in the dress of sweats, never delaying to wave bye to the excuses and procrastination. True blessing lies in hard work!

Our dreams take us into other worlds, alternative realities that help us make sense of day-to-day realities.

We may regard certain days as free days. Free days are however fee days. We will pay later

If [a man] spent his money, say, in giving parties for his friends, they (we may hope) would get pleasure, and so would all those upon whom he spent money, such as the butcher, the...

I’d like to do this, or that.

It’s two things; you either choose to take risks through storms and win after the hail or you remain idle and die idle. Once laziness is deliberate; failure is not an accident!

Idleness for me is not a giving up on life but a spirited grabbing hold of it.

Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the sting.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? (Just to give you an idea, Proust’s reply was ‘To be separated from Mama.’) I think that the lowest depth of misery ought to be...

Extreme busyness is a symptom of deficient vitality, and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.

I am well known by my friends to be a workaholic – to their often justifiable annoyance. I am therefore keenly aware that such behavior is at best slightly pathological, and certainly in no sense...

Labour-saving devices just make us try to cram more pointless activities into each day, rather than doing the important thing, which is to enjoy our life.

It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are...

According to his habit, Theodore Roosevelt sought to harness anxiety through action.

I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spend in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not...

There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a...

A conclusion I’ve come to at the Idler is that it starts with retreating from work but it’s really about making work into something that isn’t drudgery and slavery, and then work and life can...

If you are foolish enough to be contented, don’t show it, but grumble with the rest; and if you can do with a little, ask for a great deal. Because if you don’t you won’t...

Inventory:”Four be the things I am wiser to know:Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.Four be the things I’d been better without:Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.Three be the things I shall never attain:Envy, content, and...

To do great work one must be very idle as well as very industrious.

Remove idleness from the world and soon the arts of Cupid would perish.

The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.

Machinery which is not used is not capital.

Go to the ant, thou sluggard, learn to live, and by her busy ways, reform thy own.

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.

Boredom was at the root of Lazare’s unhappiness, an oppressive, unremitting boredom, exuding from everything like the muddy water of a poisoned spring. He was bored with leisure, with work, with himself even more than...

My greatest urge in life is to do nothing. It’s not even an absence of motivation, a lack, for I do have a strong urge: to do nothing. To down tools, to stop. Except I...

His idleness was his refuge, and in this he was like many others in [occupied] France in that period; laziness became political.