quotations about leisure
When leisure is a selfish luxury, its very activity, when it stirs, is apt to be only a kind of indolence taking exercise, that it may the better digest its selfishness.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Most of us, lured and coerced into the hegemony of the daily crust, see leisure as a kind of indulgence, amoral idleness or, more usually, a time to keep fit and so live longer. Quantity beats quality to the finishing line every time. The notion of fertile solitude where we allow our minds to wander, to contemplate and enrich our being by not doing, is becoming increasingly taboo. When your colleagues gather round the kettle at work on a Monday morning and ask what you did at the weekend, we feel apologetic about saying: "Oh, nothing much, really." Then comes the comparative shame when they tell you that they ran 10K, went to the cinema, made cupcakes and re-tiled their bathroom. And then went to the gym again. Somehow your walk around the botanic gardens, culminating in an hour or so of unburdened contemplation on a nice old wooden bench, doesn't quite cut it compared to their cornucopia of leisure activities.
VAL BURNS
"Make the most of your leisure time ... by doing nothing", Scotland Herald, May 28, 2016
We can say without exaggeration that the present national ambition of the United States is unemployment. People live for quitting time, for weekends, for vacations, and for retirement; moreover, this ambition seems to be classless, as true in the executive suites as on the assembly lines. One works not because the work is necessary, valuable, useful to a desirable end, or because one loves to do it, but only to be able to quit.
WENDELL BERRY
Bringing It to the Table
If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
This Is My Story
If their work is satisfying people don't need leisure in the old-fashioned sense. No one ever asks what Newton or Darwin did to relax, or how Bach spent his weekends.
J. G. BALLARD
Super-Cannes
Take care of your leisure moments; do not suffer them to pass away in wanton idleness; you may make them seasons of great profit and gain.
J. W. BARKER
attributed, Day's Collacon
We toil for leisure only to discover, when we have succeeded in our object, that leisure is a great toil.
HORACE SMITH
The Tin Trumpet: Or, Heads and Tails for the Wise and Waggish
Leisure: fun taken seriously.
MARY ADDINK
Treasury of Gems: Humor and Wisdom Collected Over a Lifetime
One of the most ironic paradoxes of our time is this great availability of leisure that somehow fails to be translated into enjoyment.
MILHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI
Television and the Quality of Life
Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence.
JOSEF PIEPER
Leisure: The Basis of Culture
The essence of leisure is not to assure that we may function smoothly but rather to assure that we, embedded in our social function, are enabled to remain fully human.
JOSEF PIEPER
Josef Pieper: An Anthology
Leisure is often the powder-keg which explodes; the essence of human nature as encompassing the character trait of laziness -- but what does that really mean? Does it imply and denote that there is a genetic predisposition to refuse further growth, or merely an observation that, given the bifurcated duality of false alternatives, most of us would choose the easier path with the least amount of resistance? If the latter, then it is merely a harmless tautology of observation, for it is self-evident that work and toil, as opposed to pleasure and enjoyment, are the lesser models of preference.
ROBERT R. MCGILL
"FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Hey, at least he has a nice hairstyle", Lawyers, June 2, 2016
To resist the social pressure now put even on one's leisure time, requires a tougher upbringing and a more obstinate willfulness about going one's own way, than ever before.
ROBERT GRAVES
introduction, Selected Poems of Robert Frost
Work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.
GEORGE MACDONALD
Wilfrid Cumbermede: An Autobiographical Story
The illustrious and noble ought to place before them certain rules and regulations, not less for their hours of leisure and relaxation than for those of business.
CICERO
attributed, Day's Collacon
I'm a man of leisure. That's because I have an English degree and can't get a job.
JAROD KINTZ
At Even One Penny, This Book Would Be Overpriced
Leisure is labor's necessary and self-interested dispensation; it is the temporal space we guard jealously, but ultimately the space that must be monetized to justify otherwise extravagant or pointless goods and services under production -- and the jobs they sustain.
STUART WHATLEY
"Entertain Yourself", L.A. Review of Books, May 18, 2016
Life lived amidst tension and busyness needs leisure. Leisure that recreates and renews. Leisure should be a time to think new thoughts, not ponder old ills.
C. NEIL STRAIT
attributed, Treasury of Gems: Humor and Wisdom Collected Over a Lifetime
In a culture where work is God, work is love, work is the justifier of our very being, the notion of leisure, let alone the practice of it, has become distorted, shabbied under the cold examination light of workaholism.
VAL BURNS
"Make the most of your leisure time ... by doing nothing", Scotland Herald, May 28, 2016
Most of us have no sympathy with the rich idler who spends his life in pleasure without ever doing any work. But even he fulfills a function in the life of the social organism. He sets an example of luxury that awakens in the multitude a consciousness of new needs and gives industry the incentive to fulfill them.
LUDWIG VON MISES
Liberalism