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Leisure

  • Leisure's like a mirage. Lovely when it ain't there. When you are, it's a desert. Right?

  • No country can reach a high stage of civilization without a leisure class ...

  • I wish you could arrange your life so as to have a little more leisure. I do not want you to be lazy, but the passive conditions of the mind are quite as valuable as the active conditions.

  • People would have more leisure time if it weren't for all the leisure-time activities that use it up.

  • Leisure is to life what water is to fish.

  • Idleness is righteous if it is comfortable. Uncomfortable idleness is sin & sinful waste.

  • It is in his pleasures that a man really lives, it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.

  • Leisure, some degree of it, is necessary to the health of every man's spirit.

  • ... although I love a rich life, I hate an overcrowded life. I believe in rumination and lose half the beauty of all things when I am deprived of the time to ruminate.

    • Anaïs Nin,
    • 1927, Linotte, the Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, vol. 3 ()
  • The simple idea that everyone needs a reasonable amount of challenging work in his or her life, and also a personal life, complete with noncompetitive leisure, has never really taken hold.

  • But to be quite oneself one must first waste a little time.

  • ... the wasting of time is the most personal, most private, most intimate form of conversation with oneself, as well as with another.

  • Doing nothing is something. ... Downtime is where we become ourselves ... I don't believe you can write poetry, or compose music, or become an actor without downtime, and plenty of it, a hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuel creativity. ... There is also ample psychological research suggesting that what we might call 'doing nothing' is when human beings actually do their best thinking, and when creativity comes to call.

  • Leisure and the cultivation of human capacities are inextricably interdependent.


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  • ... what we lack is not so much leisure to do as time to reflect and time to feel. What we seldom 'take' is time to experience the things that have happened, the things that are happening, the things that are still ahead of us ...

    • ,
    • in Margaret Mead and Rhoda Metraux, A Way of Seeing ()
  • People who work hard often work too hard. ... May we learn to honor the hammock, the siesta, the nap and the pause in all its forms.

  • Chaos is the penance for leisure.

  • People who know how to employ themselves, always find leisure moments, while those who do nothing are forever in a hurry.

    • Marie-Jeanne Roland,
    • 1792, in Lydia Maria Child, Memoirs of Madame de Staël and of Madame Roland ()
  • Rest is not rust.

  • ... the multi-billion-dollar entertainment and leisure industries notwithstanding, Americans have not learned how to use large amounts of leisure in noncompulsive, personally satisfying ways.

  • It is always wise to remember that others will survive even if we are not there taking care of them. I found out that I feel so much better when I take an hour a day, just to take care of me and love myself. It keeps me from feeling so put upon by everything and everybody and helps me get through the day. By taking my hour early in the morning, I feel like I get my love first and I get it when I am at my best.

  • Part of the twentieth-century's problem is the confusion of 'leisure' with 'laziness.'

  • If people take a breather and enjoy themselves, you'll get a thousand times more work from them. The best work is done when people are motivated, and enjoyment is a major factor.

    • Janice LaRouche,
    • in Janice LaRouche and Regina Ryan, Janice LaRouche's Strategies for Women at Work ()
  • You can speed up your life if you want to — that's easy. Winding down is what's hard.

  • Because it is less structured than work, leisure time leaves workaholics at a loss for what to do. Workaholics practicallly climb the wall when they can't work.

  • ... leisure is an attitude of mind, not simply remission of work.

  • Leisure for reverie, gay or sombre, does much to enrich life.

  • Leisure requires the evidence of our own feelings, because it is not so much a quality of time as a peculiar state of mind. ... What being at leisure means is more easily felt than defined.

  • There can be no education without leisure; and without leisure, education is worthless.

    • Sarah Josepha Hale,
    • in Ruth Ebright Finley, The Lady of Godey's, Sarah Josepha Hale ()
  • Those people of the eighteenth century (Queen Anne's) knew much better what they were about than we do. They had time for things, wrote drooling long letters, had some knowledge of each other's characters, and what books they had, they read. They had a thing called 'Leisure' which we don't possess, although, to be sure, they, even then, regarded themselves as being in a hurry, and spent much time and paper in explaining why they didn't write oftener; the facts being they had nothing to communicate, and as a general thing, wrote much too frequently for comfort either to themselves or their correspondents.

    • Susan Hale,
    • letter (1909), in Caroline P. Atkinson, ed., Letters of Susan Hale ()
  • I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It's hollow.

  • Only those who have earned leisure know how to use it profitably.

  • Are you taking time — making time — for fun and relaxation? Do you spend time on any recreational activities or hobbies? The word 'recreation' divided into two parts becomes 're-creation.' And that's just what we do when we spend time doing something we enjoy. Recreation helps us charge our batteries, re-create our energy, and continue to give our best at work.

    • Connie Podesta,
    • in Connie Podesta and Jean Gatz, How to Be the Person Successful Companies Fight to Keep ()
  • Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.