#laziness

Procrastination is my sin. It brings me naught but sorrow. I know that I should stop it. In fact, I will--tomorrow ↗

— Gloria Pitzer

#procrastination #procrastination

It was a good thing, we told ourselves; the eyes grow weary with looking at new things; sleeping late, we said, has its genuine therapeutic value; we would be better for it, would be able to work more effectively. We have little doubt that all this was true, but we wish we could build as good a rationalization every time we are lazy. For in some beastly way this fine laziness has got itself a bad name. It is easy to see how it might have come into disrepute, if the result of laziness were hunger. But it rarely is. Hunger makes laziness impossible. It has even become sinful to be lazy. We wonder why. One could argue, particularly if one had a gift for laziness, that it is relaxation pregnant of activity, a sense of rest from which directed effort may arise, whereas most busy-ness is merely a kind of nervous tic. ... How can such a process have become a shame and a sin? Only in laziness can one achieve a state of contemplation which is a balancing of values, a weighing of oneself against the world and the world against itself. A busy man cannot find time for such balancing. We do not think a lazy man can commit murders, nor great thefts, nor lead a mob. He would be more likely to think about it and laugh. And a nation of lazy contemplative men would be incapable of fighting a war unless their very laziness were attacked. Wars are the activities of busy-ness. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#contemplation #laziness #war #business

His idleness was his refuge, and in this he was like many others in [occupied] France in that period; laziness became political. ↗

— Iain Pears

#laziness #occupation #occupied-france #politics #war

I'm a lazy man. With lazy dreams. I need Tai to wake me up, make me vibrate, irritate me. I need my angry woman, my unforgiving friend. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#laziness #marriage #dreams

Shahid was the free spirit of the Kamal family: a dreamer, an idealist, a wanderer on the face of the earth--or, as Ahmed would put it, a lazy fuckwit. ↗

— John Lanchester

#families #free-spirits #idealists #laziness #wanderers

When we hold back out of laziness, that is when we tie ourselves into knots of boredom. ↗

— Walter Annenberg

#boredom #hold #into #knots #laziness

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness - to save oneself trouble. ↗

— Agatha Christie

#arises #directly #i #idleness #in my opinion

I like the word 'indolence'. It makes my laziness seem classy. ↗

— Bern Williams

#i #indolence #laziness #like #makes

Failure is not our only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others. ↗

— Jules Renard

#failure #laziness #only #others #our

Users of clichés frequently have more sinister intentions beyond laziness and conventional thinking. Relabelling events often entails subtle changes of meaning. War produces many euphemisms, downplaying or giving verbal respectability to savagery and slaughter. ↗

— Patrick Cockburn

#conventional-thinking #euphemism #language #laziness #savagery