The collection / 27 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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27 results · Page 1 of 2Play this collection ▷

01Undated

The art of living is the art of bringing dreams and reality together.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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02Undated

Our dreams take us into other worlds, alternative realities that help us make sense of day-to-day realities.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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03Undated

In a world where you are constantly asked to be 'committed,' it is liberating to give yourself the license to be a dilettante. Commit to nothing. Try everything.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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04Undated

...[W]e should be mucking about all the time, because mucking about is enjoying life for its own sake, now, and not in preparation for an imaginary future. It's obvious that the mirth-filled man, the cheerful soul, the childish adult is the one who has least to fear from life.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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05Undated

If Adam and Eve were not hunter-gatherers, then they were certainly gatherers. But, then, consumer desire, or self-embitterment, or the 'itch,' as Schopenhauer called it, appeared in the shape of the serpent. This capitalistic monster awakens in Adam and Eve the possibility that things could be better. Instantly, they are cast out of the garden and condemned to a life of toil, drudgery, and pain. Wants supplanted needs, and things have been going downhill ever since.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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06Undated

Pain will never leave us. Instead of putting energy into destroying pain, we need to put energy into creating pleasure.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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07Undated

Idleness for me is not a giving up on life but a spirited grabbing hold of it.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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08Undated

Labour-saving devices just make us try to cram more pointless activities into each day, rather than doing the important thing, which is to enjoy our life.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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09Undated

A conclusion I’ve come to at the Idler is that it starts with retreating from work but it’s really about making work into something that isn’t drudgery and slavery, and then work and life can become one thing.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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10Undated

Therefore, the idle parent who wants to stop the whining needs to stop whining himself, and one way is to resist the call to work ever longer and harder hours. Throw your BlackBerry into the river. Unslave yourself. Hard work will not lead to health and happiness. Just ask yourself: would you rather spend your child's first few years playing with them or working for the mega-corp in order to make them profits and you money to buy ribbish you don't need in order to dull the pain of overwork?

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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11Undated

Career is just posh slavery.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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12Undated

Life has been reduced to a series of long periods of boredom in the office punctuated by high-octane “experiences” which you can rack up on your list of things to do before you die. That’s not really living: that is slavery with the occasional circus thrown in.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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13Undated

Sensible people advise against drinking on an empty stomach, but to my mind it is the best sort of drinking.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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14Undated

Boredom is the very opposite of beauty and truth. Life has been sacrificed to profit, and the result is boredom on a massive scale.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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15Undated

What is required as we travel towards full unemployment is not new legislation but a gradual change of mental attitude, a shift in values. As our taste for idling grows, we will refuse to work for old-fashioned bosses who demand a five-day, 40-hour, nine-to-five type week, or worse.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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16Undated

Computers tend to separate us from each other - Mum's on the laptop, Dad's on the iPad, teenagers are on Facebook, toddlers are on the DS, and so on.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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17Undated

We no longer sing and dance. We don't know how to. Instead, we watch other people sing and dance on the television screen. Christmas, which was once a festival of active enjoyment, has turned into a binge of purely passive pleasures.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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18Undated

Festivals are fun for kids, fun for parents and offer a welcome break from the stresses of the nuclear family. The sheer quantities of people make life easier: loads of adults for the adults to talk to and loads of kids for the kids to play with.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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19Undated

Being lazy does not mean that you do not create. In fact, lying around doing nothing is an important, nay crucial, part of the creative process. It is meaningless bustle that actually gets in the way of productivity. All we are really saying is, give peace a chance.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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20Undated

Laziness works. And the simple way to incorporate its health benefits into your life is simply to take a nap.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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21Undated

Beauty, pleasure, freedom and plenty of sleep: these are the hallmarks of a successful idler's break. Travel should not be hard work.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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22Undated

One of the least arduous but most productive of gardening jobs, the magic of deadheading never fails to delight me. It was a revelation when the principle was explained to me: that flowers are the attempt by the plant to reproduce itself. So if you cut the heads off before the flower turns into seeds, the plant will continue to flower.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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23Undated

I could happily lean on a gate all the livelong day, chatting to passers-by about the wind and the rain. I do a lot of gate-leaning while I am supposed to be gardening; instead of hoeing, I lean on the gate, stare at the vegetable beds and ponder.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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24Undated

All of our technology is completely unnecessary to a happy life.

Tom Hodgkinson / quote

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