IDLENESS
IS A BANE, NOT A BOON
Idleness is a state of
being lazy and unwillingness to work. It is not rest or relaxation. Its antonym
is activity. Laziness is a bane because it is disadvantageous. Activity is a
boon because it is beneficial.
Man is duty bound to be
active and industrious. English orator Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield (1694-1773)
said: idleness is only the refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools.
According to the American
writer Richard Burton (1861-1940): Idleness is the bane of body and mind, the
nurse of naughtiness, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly
sins, the cushion upon which the devil chiefly reposes, and a great cause not
only of melancholy, but of many other diseases; for the mind is naturally
active; and if it be not occupied about some honest business, it rushes into
mischief or sinks into melancholy.
English author Hannah
More (1745-1833) believes that life is a short day; but it is a working day.
Activity may lead to evil, but inactivity cannot lead to good.
A Spanish proverb says :
The busy man is troubled with but one devil; the idle man by a thousand.
English poet Christopher
Smart (1722-1771) advises : Go to the ant, thou sluggard, learn to live, and by
her ways , reform thine own.
English poet Geoffrey
Chaucer (1340-1400) found: Idleness is gate of all harms. An idle man is like a
house that hath no walls; the devils may enter on every side.
In “Ulysses” a poem
written by the English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-92}, Ulysses says:
All experience is an arch
wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world,
whose margin fades
For ever and for ever
when I move.
How dull it is to pause,
to make an end
To rust unburnished, not
to shine in use!
As though to breathe were
life.
Finally, these words of former New York Senator Ezra Cornell, (1807-1874) d : Idleness is to the human mind
like rust to iron.
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G.R.Kanwal
28 November 2024
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