Have you ever had the feelings of Hazlitt? “Give me,” he said, “the clear blue sky over my head and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours’ march to dinner—and then to thinking! I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for joy.”
Whoever does something that makes the souls of men and women sing within them does more to make this earth habitable and this life tolerable than all the army of them that widen our comforts and increase our luxuries.
IDLENESS THE MOTHER OF PROGRESS
Idleness is the mother of progress. So long as men were busy they had no time to think of bettering their condition.
Idleness is the mother of art. It was when men had leisure from the chase that they decorated the handles of their hunting-knives and the walls of their cave-dwellings.
Idleness is the mother of religion. It is in the relax and rebound from toil that men think of God.
We talk of all men’s right to work. There is a deeper right than that. It is the right to idleness.
The value of what we put upon the page of life depends upon the width of the margin.
The great, useful, redeeming, and lasting work of the world is that work which is a reaction from idleness. The continent of labor is barren. It is the little island of labor that is green and fruitful in the sea of leisure.
The curse of America is its deification of labor. Our little gods are the men who are ceaselessly forthputting.