L is for LEISURE

We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace.

- Aristotle



Life is rendered most agreeable by alternate occupation and leisure.

- Demophilus



Leisure is gone,--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow wagons, and the peddlers, who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons.

- George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans Cross)



And leave us leisure to be good.

- Thomas Gray, Hymn--Adversity (sc. 3)



He hath no leisure who useth it not.

- George Herbert



Leisure is the mother of philosophy.

- Thomas Hobbes



To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time.

- Victor Hugo



I pant beyond expression for two days of absolute and unbroken leisure. If it were not for my love of beautiful nature and poetry, my heart would have died within me long ago.

- Lord Francis Jeffrey



Retired Leisure
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.

- John Milton, Il Penseroso (l. 49)



Remove but the temptations of leisure, and the bow of Cupid will lose its effect.

- Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)



Leisure will always be found by persons who know how to employ their time; those who want time are the people who do nothing.

- Madame Jeanne Marie Phlipon de La Platiere Roland



To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.

- Bertrand Arthur William Russell



I am never less at leisure than when at leisure, nor less alone than when I am alone.

- Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major



Leisure, the highest happiness upon earth, is seldom enjoyed with perfect satisfaction, except in solitude. Indolence and indifference do not always afford leisure; for true leisure is frequently found in that interval of relaxation which divides a painful duty from an agreeable recreation; a toilsome business from the more agreeable occupations of literature and philosophy.

- Johann Georg von Zimmermann



Leisure only means a chance to do other jobs that demand attention.

~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.



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

~Agnes Repplier



The real problem of leisure time is how to keep others from using yours.

~Arthur Lacey



He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.

~Henry David Thoreau



Leisure: A fancy word for people who don't want to admit they're bored.

~Gene Perret



If you are losing your leisure, look out; you may be losing your soul.

~Logan P. Smith



I would not exchange my leisure hours for all the wealth in the world.

~Comte de Mirabeau



Leisure can be both a problem and a solution.

~Nathaniel LeTonnerre, translated