Leisurely Pursuits Quotes

As soon as you set foot on a yacht you belong to some man, not to yourself, and you die of boredom.

Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by someone I do not know. I admire lolling on a lawn by a water-lilied pond to eat white currants and see goldfish: and go to the fair in the evening if I'm good. There is not hope for that -one is sure to get into some mess before evening.

But I think a life of raising prize cattle, going shooting two or three times a year, fishing in the summer, and interspersing the whole thing with some golf and bridge - and whenever I felt like talking or writing, doing it with abandon and with no sense of responsibility whatsoever - maybe such a life wouldn't be so bad.

Wasting time has an esthetics to it.

Sometimes I can think of nothing more blissful than going to Berkeley and reading Byron for three years.

Love is the natural occupation of the man of leisure.

The frivolous work of polished idleness.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book.

I must admit I like to muck around a bit; I always have.

He rides in the row at ten o clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don't call that leading an idle life, do you?

Ah, it was a fine night, a warm night, a wine-drinking night, a moony night, and a night to hug your girl and talk and spit and be heavengoing.

Alas! What boots it with uncessant care To tend the homely slighted Shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless muse; Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life.

Dr. Johnson ... sometimes employed himself in chymistry, sometimes in watering and pruning a vine, and sometimes in small experiments, at which those who may smile, should recollect that there are moments which admit of being soothed only by trifles.

They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.

What the eye delights in, no longer dictates My greed to enjoy: boys, grass, the fenced-off deer. It leaves those figures that distantly play On the horizon's rim: they sign their peace, in games.

Life was certainly more entertaining when people were indulging their vices as opposed to going to meetings to indulge in a new vice: discussing their innermost thoughts in public.