Great Throughts Treasury

"Be not dilatory in doing, nor confused in conversation, nor vague in thought; leave thyself leisure in thy life." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

"Leisure is empty time." - Anne Vaughan, Countess of Carberry

"What is difficult? To keep a secret, to employ leisure well, to be able to bear an injury." -

"Life is rendered most agreeable by alternate occupation and leisure." - Demophilus NULL

"He that always waits upon God is ready whenever He calls. Neglect not to set your accounts even; he is a happy man who so lives as that death at all times may find him at leisure to die." - Owen Feltham

"The moral and spiritual forces of our country do not lose ground in the hours we are busy on our jobs; their battle is the leisure time. We are organizing the production of leisure. We need better organization of its consumption." - Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover

"Curiosity, or the love of knowledge, has a very limited influence, and requires youth, leisure, education, genius and example to make it govern any person." - David Hume

"We enter our studies, and enjoy a society which we alone can bring together. We raise no jealousy by conversing with one in preference to another; we give no offense to the most illustrious by questioning him as long as we will, and leaving him as abruptly. Diversity of opinion raises no tumult in our presence: each interlocutor stands before us, speaks or is silence, and we adjourn or decide the business at our leisure." - Walter Savage Landor

"It takes a highly intellectual individual to enjoy leisure." -

"Malicious slander never would have leisure to search, with prying eyes, for faults abroad, if all, like me, consider’d their own hearts, and wept the sorrows which they found at home." - Nicolas Rowe

"Leisure without study is death, and the grave of a living man." -

"Temptation rarely comes in working hours. It is in their leisure time that men are made or marred." - William Mackergo Taylor

"All man’s efforts, all his impulses to life, are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness, health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of freedom." -

"The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure; and he that hath little business shall become wise." - Apocrypha NULL

"Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure." -

"Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; men love in haste, but they detest at leisure." -

"The three things most difficult are - to keep a secret, to forget an injury, and to make good use of leisure." - Chilon of Lacedemon NULL

"The best test of the quality of a civilization is the quality of its leisure. Not what the citizens... do when they are obliged to do... but what they do when they can do anything by choice, is the criterion of a people's life." - Irwin Edman

"Have a time and place for everything, and do everything in its time and place, and you will not only accomplish more, but have far more leisure than those who are always hurrying, as if vainly attempting to overtake time that has been lost." - Tyron Edwards

"He who knows not how to use his leisure has more work than when he is working at work." -

"He who always waits upon God, is ready whensoever he calls. He is a happy man who so lives that death at all times may find him at leisure to die." - Owen Feltham

"To devote a portion of one's leisure to doing something for someone else is one of the highest forms of recreation." - Gerald B. Fitzgerald

"Employ thy time well if thou meanest to gain leisure; and since thou art not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour. Leisure is time for doing something useful, and this leisure the diligent man will obtain, but the lazy man never, for a life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things." - Benjamin Franklin

"Desire of knowledge, and arts of peace, inclineth men to obey a common power: for such desire containeth a desire of leisure, and consequently protection from other power than their own." - Thomas Hobbes

"Leisure is the mother of philosophy... The source of every crime , is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions... And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." - Thomas Hobbes

"All intellectual improvement arises from leisure; and a leisure arises from one working for another." -

"The poor and the busy have no leisure for sentimental sorrow." -

"Knowledge is acquired by study and observation, but wisdom cometh by opportunity of leisure; the ripest thought comes from the mind which is not always on the stretch, but fed, at times, by a wise passiveness." - William Matthews

"Much work is merely a way to make money; much leisure is merely a way to spend it." - C. Wright Mills, fully Charles Wright Mills

"Satiety comes of too frequent repetition; and he who will not give himself leisure to be thirsty can never find the true pleasure of drinking." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"The men who are really busiest have the most leisure for everything." - James Payn

"Every person in the world may not become a personage. But every person may become a personality. The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Interesting thoughts can live only in cultivated minds. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays at the theater, good company, good conversation - what are they? They are the happiest people in the world; and they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others." - William Lyon Phelps

"Idleness and the incapacity for leisure correspond with one another; leisure is the contrary of both. Leisure is only possible to a man who is at one with himself and also at one with the world. These are the presuppositions of leisure, for leisure is an affirmation. Idleness, on the other hand, is rooted in the omission of these two affirmations." - John Piper, fully John Stephen Piper

"Love begins but does not end at will... Love cannot be wrested from one, but may slip away... The wound of love is cured by the one who causes it... Love begets worry in the hour of leisure... Compliment, not command, makes love sweet." - Publius Syrus

"Today, thanks to technical progress, the radio and television, to which we devote so many of the leisure hours once spent listening to parlor chatter and parlor music, have succeeded in lifting the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry." - Nathalie Sarraute, fully Nathalie Tcherniak Sarraute

"I'm never less at leisure than when at leisure, or less alone than when alone. " - Scipio Africanus, fully Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus

"Leisure without study is death." -

"Sober speed is wisdom's leisure." - Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell

"Religion is not a fractional thing that can be doled out in fixed weekly or daily measures as one among various subjects in the school syllabus. It is the truth of our complete being, the consciousness of our personal relationship with the infinite; it is the true center of gravity of our life. This we can attain during our childhood by daily living in a place where the truth of the spiritual world is not obscured by a crowd of necessities assuming artificial importance; where life is simple, surrounded by fullness of leisure, by ample space and pure air and profound peace of nature; and where men live with a perfect faith in the eternal life before them." -

"I am doing nothing. I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means." - Alan Bennett

"There can be no education without leisure; and without leisure, education is worthless." -

"There are two benefits, of which the generality of men are losers, and of which they do not know the value, health and leisure." - Muhammad, also spelled Mohammad, Mohammed or Mahomet, full name Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib NULL

"There are two blessings which most people misuse – health and leisure." - Muhammad, also spelled Mohammad, Mohammed or Mahomet, full name Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib NULL

"A people can never rise from low estate as long as the engrossed in the painful struggle for daily bread. On the other hand leisure alone is not sufficient to effect the self-promotion of man." - Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade

"It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self." - Agnes Repplier

"It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self." -

"It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self." -

"Any notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men's taste and capacity to live it, has disappeared. Leisure (has become) entertainment." - Allan Bloom, fully Allan David Bloom

"The end of labor is to gain leisure." - Aristotle NULL

"War must be for the sake of peace, business for the sake of leisure, and all things necessary and useful for the sake of things noble." - Aristotle NULL