#leisure

Some of the most memorable, and least regrettable, nights of my own youth were spent in coon hunting with farmers. There is no denying that these activities contributed to the economy of farm households, but a further fact is that they were pleasures; they were wilderness pleasures, not greatly different from the pleasures pursued by conservationists and wilderness lovers. As I was always aware, my friends the coon hunters were not motivated just by the wish to tree coons and listen to hounds and listen to each other, all of which were sufficiently attractive; they were coon hunters also because they wanted to be afoot in the woods at night. Most of the farmers I have known, and certainly the most interesting ones, have had the capacity to ramble about outdoors for the mere happiness of it, alert to the doings of the creatures, amused by the sight of a fox catching grasshoppers, or by the puzzle of wild tracks in the snow. ↗

— Wendell Berry

#happiness #hunting #leisure #wilderness #food

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization. ↗

— Arnold J. Toynbee

#able #civilization #fill #intelligently #last

The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods. ↗

— Thorstein Veblen

#basis #community #conspicuous #consumption #gaining

Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal. ↗

— Guy Debord

#become #circulation #considered #consumption #fundamentally

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes. ↗

— James Madison

#any #apt #classes #fill #good

My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don't deny it. I'd rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh -- anything but work. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#leisure #love

The more interesting life becomes, in other words, the more boredom we are doomed to experience. ↗

— Susan Maushart

#leisure #media #experience

I have never sought to displease; I merely seek pleasure and avoid the pain it causes those who work to produce it. That is what it means to live by the leisure principle. ↗

— Bauvard

#humor #leisure #pain #pleasure #funny

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#solitude #life

In the old days, before I was married, or knew a lot of women, I would just pull down all the shades and go to bed for three or four days. I'd get up to shit. I'd eat a can of beans, go back to bed, just stay there for three or four days. Then I'd put on my clothes and I'd walk outside, and the sunlight was brilliant, and the sounds were great. I felt powerful, like a recharged battery. But you know the first bring-down? The first human face I saw on the sidewalk, I lost half my charge right there. ↗

— Charles Bukowski

#sleep #human-rights