Nothing will make me change my principles. Even with the knife at my neck I shall still declare, up to this day, the poor have done everything; it is time for the rich to take their turn... The selfish people, the young idlers, must be made useful, whether they like it or not, and some respite be procured for the useful and respectable worker.
— Jean-Paul Marat
Scandalous Idler quotations
As for the Republicans -- how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, [and] steel their emotions against decent human sympathy.
Sometimes I think that idlers seem to be a special class for whom nothing can be planned, plead as one will with them - their only contribution to the human family is to warm a seat at the common table.
Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.
London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.
An idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless if it goes as when it stands.
Industry has operated against the artisan in favor of the idler, and also in favor of capital and against labor. Any mechanical invention whatsoever has been more harmful to humanity than a century of war.
The only differences one can and should allow in socialism are between hard working people and idlers and between honest people and dishonest people.
The only differences one can and should allow in socialism are between hard working people and idlers and between honest people and dishonest people.
O, once in each man's life, at least, Good luck knocks at his door;
And wit to seize the flitting guest Need never hunger more. But while the loitering idler waits. Good luck beside his fire, The bold heart storms at fortune's gates, And conquers its desire.
A learned man is an idler who kills time by study.
I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers.
Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler.
By amusing myself with all these games, all this nonsense, all these picture puzzles, I became famous... I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time.
No mercy for these enemies of the people, the enemies of socialism, the enemies of the working people! War to the death against the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals; war on the rogues, the idlers and the rowdies!
I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air -- or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.
And they die an equal death — the idler and the man of mighty deeds.
How various his employments whom the world Calls idle;
and who justly in return Esteems that busy world an idler too!
The perfect woman, you see [is] a working-woman;
not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who [uses] her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others.
Vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile.
If I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.
The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.
The wicked can have only accomplices, the voluptuous have companions in debauchery, self-seekers have associates, the politic assemble the factions, the typical idler has connections, princes have courtiers. Only the virtuous have friends.
Sometimes I think that idlers seem to be a special class for whom nothing can be planned, plead as one will with them --their only contribution to the human family is to warm a seat at the common table.
Democracy does not contain any force which will check the constant tendency to put more and more on the public payroll. The state is like a hive of bees in which the drones display, multiply and starve the workers so the idlers will consume the food and the workers will perish.
Love is the idler's occupation, the warrior's relaxation, and the sovereign's ruination.
In my mind nothing is more abhorrent than a life of ease.
None of us has any right to ease. There is no place in civilization for the idler.
The people no longer seek consolation in art.
But the refined people, the rich, the idlers seek the new, the extraordinary, the extravagant, the scandalous.
A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note.
He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted.
He had thrown himself away, he had lost interest in everything, and life, falling in with his feelings, had demanded nothing of him. He had lived as an outsider, an idler and onlooker, well liked in his young manhood, alone in his illness and advancing years. Seized with weariness, he sat down on the wall, and the river murmured darkly in his thoughts.
A line will take us hours maybe; / Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught... Better go down upon your marrow-bones / And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones... For to articulate sweet sounds together / Is to work harder than all these, and yet / Be thought an idler by the noisy set.
For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world.
Most of us have no sympathy with the rich idler who spends his life in pleasure without ever doing any work. But even he fulfills a function in the life of the social organism. He sets an example of luxury that awakens in the multitude a consciousness of new needs and gives industry the incentive to fulfill them.
For the perfect idler, for the passionate observer it becomes an immense source of enjoyment to establish his dwelling in the throng, in the ebb and flow, the bustle, the fleeting and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel at home anywhere; to see the world, to be at the very center of the world, and yet to be unseen of the world, such are some of the minor pleasures of those independent, intense and impartial spirits, who do not lend themselves easily to linguistic definitions. The observer is a prince enjoying his incognito wherever he goes.
The laboring people should unite and should protect themselves against all idlers. You can divide mankind into two classes: the laborers and the idlers, the supporters and the supported, the honest and the dishonest. Every man is dishonest who lives upon the unpaid labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne. All laborers should be brothers.
No man is so methodical as a complete idler, and none so scrupulous in measuring out his time as he whose time is worth nothing.
My experience has taught me, and it has become a principle with me, that it is never any benefit to give out and out, to man or woman, money, food, clothing, or anything else. If they are able-bodied and can work and earn what they need, when there is anything on earth for them to do. This is my principle and I try to act upon it. To pursue a contrary course would ruin any community in the world and make them idlers.
Idlers do not make history: they suffer it!
Through this broad street, restless ever, Ebbs and flows a human tide,Wave on wave a living river;Wealth and fashion side by side;Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.
Do not lounge in the cities! There is room & health in the country, away from the crowds of idlers & imbeciles. Go west, before you are fitted for no life but that of the factory.
Go West, young man, go West. There is health in the country, and room away from our crowds of idlers and imbeciles.
Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fool reform, and mortal men lay hold on heaven.
An idler and a sluggard are as different as a gourmand and a glutton.
Work is as much a necessity to man as eating and sleeping.
Even those who do nothing that can be called work still imagine they are doing something. The world has not a man who is an idler in his own eyes.
Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fools reform.