Leisure

What, then, shall we do? someone may ask. What else, indeed, than devote ourselves to the care of our souls, keeping all our leisure free from other things.

— Leisure

As Western nations became more prosperous, leisure, which had been put off for several centuries in favor of the pursuit of property, the means to leisure, finally began to be of primary concern. But, in the meantime, any notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men’s taste and capacity to live it, had disappeared.

— Leisure

I think that the sweetest freedom for a man on earth consists in being able to live, if he likes, without having the need to work.

— Leisure

Do not say, "when I have leisure I will study," for you may never have leisure.

— Leisure

The superficiality of the American is the result of his hustling. It needs leisure to think things out; it needs leisure to mature. People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.

— Leisure

With the abolition of otium and of the ego no aloof thinking is left. … Without otium philosophical thought is impossible, cannot be conceived or understood.

— Leisure

Has it ever been really noted to what extent a genuinely religious life … requires a leisure class, or half-leisure—I mean leisure with a good conscience, from way back, by blood, to which the aristocratic feeling that work disgraces is not altogether alien—the feeling that it makes soul and body common. And that consequently our modern, noisy, time-consuming industriousness, proud of itself, stupidly proud, educates and prepares people, more than anything else does, precisely for “unbelief.”

— Leisure

In our bourgeois Western world total labor has vanquished leisure. Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for non-activity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture—and ourselves.

— Leisure

The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich.

— Leisure

Knowledge is the product of leisure. The members of a very primitive society have no time to amass knowledge; their days are fully occupied with the provision of the bare necessities of life. But as soon as a community begins to accumulate wealth, and so becomes able to support a leisured class (priests, instructors of rich men's children), an opportunity is created for those who desire knowledge to devote their lives to its acquirement. Out of this 'curiosity to know' science is born.

— Leisure

There is no wisdom without leisure.

— Leisure

And leave us leisure to be good.

— Leisure

No blessed leisure for Love or Hope,But only time for Grief.

— Leisure

Retired Leisure,That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.

— Leisure

Mend when thou canst; be better at thy leisure.

— Leisure

Leisure is pain; take off our chariot wheels,To fly that tyrant, thought.

— Leisure