Hosea Ballou Quotes

Idleness is the sepulchre of a living man.

Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues

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.

I hadn't done anything in six years; I was just vegetating.

I know how deeply slothful I am.

Trouble Springs From Idleness.

The idle mind knows not what it wants.

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

There is no curse equal to the curse of idleness. It destroys the man, the group, the people, or the nation who suffer under it.

The indolent mind is not empty, but full of vermin.

An idle man has a constant tendency to torpidity. He has adopted the Indian maxim that it is better to walk than to run, and better to stand than to walk, and better to sit than to stand, and better to lie than to sit. He hugs himself into the notion, that God calls him to be quiet.

In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in about 2:55, when you know you've taken all the baths that you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.

Pain, indolence, sterility, endless ennui have also their lesson for you, if you are great.

Want of occupation is the bane of both men and women, perhaps more especially of the latter.

The long days seduce all thought away, and we lie like the lizards in the sun, postponing our lives indefinitely.

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

Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.

What heart can think, or tongue express, The harm that groweth of idleness?

An idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless if it goes as when it stands.

Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

The frivolous work of polished idleness.

The greater part of human misery is caused by indolence.

Of all our faults, the one that we excuse most easily is idleness.

You want useless, you have come to the right guy. I can be useless for hours at a time. Weeks even. I'm currently closing in on a month of being totally useless, which is by way of being a personal best.