Emily Dickinson Quotes

The ant is knowing and wise, but he doesn't know enough to take a vacation.

As to that leisure evening of life, I must say that I do not want it. I can conceive of no contentment of which toil is not to be the immediate parent.

I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach?

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.

We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure.

The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.

Some are "industrious," and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to suchI have at present nothing to say. Those who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard as they do,--work till they pay for themselves, and get their free papers.

Personally I regard idling as a virtue, but civilized society holds otherwise.

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.

I'm not a fan of idleness, except in small doses.

I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.

They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.

I think being idle is quite hard for me to do.

I think the man who eats the bread of idleness is under a certain obligation to speak well of labor.

Work is no disgrace: it is idleness which is a disgrace.

I do like being busy. I'm not the kind of person who just sits around and goes to a spa when I'm not working.

I don't think I am a workaholic. I prefer to keep busy. It is better than the alternative.

I work like a dog when I have to, but when I'm not working, I get terribly lazy and could sit around all day.

It's good to be busy. I prefer that than sitting back and enjoying life.

Workin' so hard every night and day and now we get to lay back.

I suppose that there is no point wasting time being lazy, though of course indolence in a divine way, actually has its advantages.

Idlers cannot even find time to be idle, or the industrious to be at leisure. We must always be doing or suffering

We seldom enjoy leisure we haven't earned.

Few women and fewer men have enough character to be idle.

Indeed I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do.