Quotes about Indolence

If you ask me which is the real hereditary sin of human nature, do you imagine I shall answer pride, or luxury, or ambition, or egotism? No; I shall say indolence. Who conquers indolence will conquer all the rest. Indeed all good principles must stagnate without mental activity.

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.

In indolent vacuity of thought.

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

There is no moment like the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards; they will be dissipated, lost, and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence.

There came a man in days of old, To hire a piece of land for gold, And urged his suit in accents meek- "One crop alone is all I seek; 'That harvest o'er, my claim I yield, And to its lord resign the field." The owner some misgivings felt, And coldly with the stranger dealt, But found his last objection fail, And honied eloquence prevail, So took the proffered price in hand, And for one crop leased out the land. The wily tenant sneered with pride, And sowed the spot with acorns wide; At first like tiny shoots they grew, Then broad and wide their branches threw, But long before the oaks sublime, Aspiring reached their forest rime, The cheated landlord moldering lay Forgotten with his kindred clay. O ye whose years unfolding fair Are fresh with youth, and free from care, Should vice and indolence desire The garden of your souls to hire, No parleys hold-reject the suit, Nor let one seed the soil pollute. My child their first approach beware, With firmness break the insidious snare, Lest as the acorns grew and throve Into a sun-encircled grove, Thy sins, a dark o'ershadowing tree Shut out the light of Heaven from thee.

Though you may have known clever men who were indolent, you never knew a great man who was so; and when I hear a young man spoken of as giving promise of great genius, the first question I ask about him always is, Does he work?

Pray, Mr. Abernethy, what is a cure for gout? ' was the question of an indolent and luxurious citizen. 'Live upon sixpence a day - and earn it,' was the cogent reply.

The greater part of human misery is caused by indolence.

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.

IN AUTUMN, I write of days smoldering like embers to ash, grass, stiff, green-weary, waiting for somnolent winter, everywhere, gathered birds stuck in spindly branches and gardens done with giving. . . of air, over-ripe, indolent, like the last great cluster of grapes on the vine, which winds its way across the wall, tendrils turned to wood.

The secret of the whole matter is that a habit is not the mere tendency to repeat a certain act, nor is it established by the mere repetition of the act. Habit is a fixed tendency to react or respond in a certain way to a given stimulus; and the formation of habit always involves the two elements, the stimulus and the response or reaction. The indolent lad goes to school not in response to any stimulus in the school itself, but to the pressure of his father's will; when that stimulus is absent, the reaction as a matter of course does not occur.

An intelligent class can scarce ever be, as a class, vicious, and never, as a class, indolent. The excited mental activity operates as a counterpoise to the stimulus of sense and appetite.

Indolence and timidity often keep us to our duty, while our virtue carries off all the credit of doing so.

No man deserves to be praised for his goodness unless he has strength of character to be wicked. All other goodness is generally nothing but indolence or impotence of will.

I like the word 'indolence'. It makes my laziness seem classy.

RICH, adj. Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless.

R.I.P. A careless abbreviation of "requiescat in pace", attesting to indolent goodwill to the dead. According to the learned Dr. Drigge, however, the letters originally meant nothing more than "reductus in pulvis".