F R Leavis - Benjamin Disraeli - Samuel Johnson - Cicero - Hannah More - Ovid - Allan Bloom - Lawrence Haworth - Eric Hoffer - Friedrich Nietzsche - Bertrand Russell - John Milton - William Shakespeare - W B Yeats - Thomas Gray -
For the industrial masses their work has no human meaning in itself. And offers no satisfying interest. They save their living for their leisure but don’t know how to use it except in the bingo hall, filling pools forms, spending money, eating fish and chips in Spain. Nothing but emptiness that has to be filled with drink, sex, eating, background music, and what the papers and telly supply. F R Leavis, public lecture recorded BBC
Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man. Benjamin Disraeli, speech Manchester 3rd April 1872
All intellectual improvement arises from leisure. Samuel Johnson
The thing which is the most outstanding and chiefly to be desired by all healthy and good and well-off persons is leisure with honour. Cicero, 106-43 B.C.
Many cannot be trusted with a life of leisure. Hannah More, 1745-1833, Christian Morals
In our leisure we reveal what kind of people we are. Ovid
As Western nations became more prosperous, leisure, which had been put off for several centuries in favor of the pursuit of property, the means to leisure, finally began to be of primary concern. But, in the meantime, any notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men’s taste and capacity to live it, had disappeared. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
Certain ways of life, especially leisureliness and contemplation, are said to be marked by ‘self-sufficiency’ (Aristotle). Here there is a double connotation of not needing much from others to carry on such a life, and of the life itself having the character of finality. Both connotations suggest forms of independence. Not needing much from others means being independent of them. And ‘finality’ implies that the activity of thinking, or, more generally, of being leisurely has intrinsic worth. Thus the leisurely person is independent in the sense that the value of his leisure does not depend on any consequence it may have, for example, the consequence that it restores his energy for the next day’s work. Lawrence Haworth, Autonomy, 1986
The superficiality of the American is the result of his hustling. It needs leisure to think things out; it needs leisure to mature. People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility. Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954
Has it ever been really noted to what extent a genuinely religious life ... requires a leisure class, or half-leisure – I mean leisure with a good conscience, from way back, by blood, to which the aristocratic feeling that work disgraces is not altogether alien – the feeling that it makes soul and body common. And that consequently our modern, noisy, time-consuming industriousness, proud of itself, stupidly proud, educates and prepares people, more than anything else does, precisely for ‘unbelief’. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness, 1932
Retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure. John Milton, Il Penseroso l49
Mend when thou canst; be better at thy leisure. William Shakespeare, King Lear II iv 232
There is no wisdom without leisure. Ancient Jewish Proverb, cited W B Yeats
And leave us leisure to be good. Thomas Gray, Hymn, Adversity III