If history is deprived of the Truth, we are left with nothing but an idle, unprofitable tale.
The busy man has few idle visitors; to the boiling pot the flies come not.
To carry the spirit of peace into war is a weak and cruel policy. When an extreme case calls for that remedy which is in its own nature most violent, and which, in such cases, is a remedy only because it is violent, it is idle to think of mitigating and diluting. Languid war can do nothing which negotiation or submission will do better: and to act on any other principle is, not to save blood and money, but to squander them.
And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better - cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?
After visiting several of America's most fashionable playgrounds, I have reached the conclusion that men who work hard enjoy life most. The men at such places can be divided into two classes, first, busy men of affairs. . . and, second, rich loafers. I was impressed by the obvious enjoyment corporation heads and other important executives were deriving from their vacation activities. . . . The idle rich fellows, on the other hand, although indulging in exactly the same activities, palpably were bored.
It is idle to play the lyre for an ass.
The people who are unemployed want to do the work, but the system is such a catastrophic failure that it cannot bring together idle hands and work. This is all hailed as a great success, and it is a great success - for a very small sector of the population.
Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains, if we will only stop the waste and the idle, useless regretting.
I would rather be sick than idle.
When the idle poor become the idle rich, you'll never know just who is who, or which is which.
Man's home is nature; his purposes and aims are dependent for execution upon natural conditions. Separated from such conditions they become empty dreams and idle indulgences of fancy.
Never let the brain idle. ‘An idle mind is the devil’s workshop. ’ And the devil’s name is Alzheimer’s.
There is a working class - strong and happy - among both rich and poor: there is an idle class - weak, wicked, and miserable - among both rich and poor.
Nobody with an IQ higher than emergency-room temperature could ever believe that 'death panels' would be appointed to nudge the elderly toward euthanasia. Yet for idle entertainment, it's hard to beat Sarah Palin's ignorant nattering on the subject.
It had been held that the economic system, any capitalist system, found its equilibrium at full employment. Left to itself, it was thus that it came to rest. Idle men and idle plant were an aberration, a wholly temporary failing. Keynes showed that the modern economy could as well find its equilibrium with continuing, serious unemployment. Its perfectly normal tendency was to what economists have since come to call an underemployment equilibrium.
Idle hands make fretful minds.
Useless, idle, exploitative male chauvinist drone!
I don't understand being idle; I don't have an idle setting. I probably should develop one.
As well might you leave the fairies to plough your land or the idle winds to sow it, as sit down and wait for freedom.
The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement. The great thing is indeed that the muddled state too is one of the very sharpest of the realities, that it also has color and form and character, has often in fact a broad and rich comicality.