You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.
To an active mind, indolence is more painful than labor.
It is through madness that we hate an enemy, and think of revenging ourselves; and it is through indolence that we are appeased, and do not revenge ourselves.
The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name. Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.
Indolence and stupidity are first cousins.
Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients: action, pleasure and indolence.
Nothing is difficult; it is only we who are indolent.
A useless life is an early death. [Ger. , Ein unnutz Leben ist ein fruher Tod. ]
Not indolence but congenial work is man's Divinely allotted portion.
He who would not be idle, let him fall in love.
Bountiful as is the hand of Providence, its gifts are not so bestowed as to seduce us into indolence, but to rouse us to exertion.
When you and I are inclined to nestle down in indolence and self indulgence. God "stirs up our nests" and bids us fly upward.
It takes character to withstand the rigours of indolence.
The love of indolence is universal, or next to it.
I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetites of the brute may survive.
I will tell you what to hate. Hate hypocrisy, hate cant, hate indolence, oppression, injustice; hate Pharisaism; hate them as Christ hated them with a deep, living, godlike hatred.
the most dangerous temptations are not due to the active, sudden flames of desire, 'the lusts of the flesh,' but to the disinclinations of the flesh, its indolence and sluggishness, our tendency to become creatures of habit.
The sluggard is a living insensible.
What is public opinion? It is private indolence.
The greater part of human misery is caused by indolence.
