Robert Bolt Quotes

Omission to do what is necessary Seals a commission to a blank of danger; And danger, like an ague, subtly taints Even then when we sit idly in the sun.

The worst thing we can do is to do nothing.

Sloth, not ill-will, makes me unjust.

Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep.

Of all the cankers of human happiness, none corrodes with so silent, yet so baneful a tooth as indolence.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but [Calvin] Coolidge only snores.

For all the evils in the world, I think apathy is one of the most dangerous.

The vigorous man industriously striving for the improvement of his condition acts neither more nor less than the lethargic man who sluggishly takes things as they come. For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events.

The only time anyone has ever gotten into serious trouble was when he decided he could do nothing about something.

The biggest sin is sitting on your ass.

It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.

Indolence, languid as it is, often masters both passions and virtues.

The one path that never works is the most common one: doing nothing at all.

Men fall into a routine when they are tired and slack: it has all the appearance of activity with few of its burdens.

American tyranny has come gradually, like a slow rising river. Each of us does not realize the danger until the water comes to our door. Until then, it is merely someone elses problem and a problem that we fool ourselves into thinking won't reach us.

To sit home, read one's favorite paper, and scoff at the misdeeds of the men who do things is easy, but it is markedly ineffective. It is what evil men count upon the good men's doing.

It was not an eventful day. I should have done extraordinary things. I should have sucked the marrow out of life. But on that day, I slept eighteen hours out of a possible twenty-four.

Indolence is the dry rot of even a good mind and a good character; the practical uselessness of both. It is the waste of what might be a happy and useful life.

Most people sleep themselves stupid.

Nine-tenths of the miseries and vices of mankind proceed from idleness.

Oh, if only I did nothing simply as a result of laziness.

I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide.

Prosperity engenders sloth.

The know-nothings are, unfortunately, seldom the do-nothings.

Women all want to be ladies, which is simply to have nothing to do, but listlessly to go they scarcely care where, for they cannot tell what.