Thoughts on the importance of hobbies and leisure from well-known authors, philosophers, characters and thinkers throughout time.
Read these inspiring quotes to remind yourself how important your passions are!
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“If you are losing your leisure, look out! It may be you are losing your soul.”
Virginia Woolf
“It can be coins or sports or politics or horses or music or faith… the saddest people I’ve ever met in life are the ones who don’t care deeply about anything at all. Passion and satisfaction go hand in hand, and without them, any happiness is only temporary, because there’s nothing to make it last.”
Nicholas Sparks, Dear John
“One must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement in life.”
Oscar Wilde, John Cooper, The Importance of Being Earnest
“An absorbing hobby is infinitely more gratifying and life-affirming than love.”
Marty Rubin
“Hard work done for a hobby don’t feel so hard!”
Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words
“If you don’t select any passion voluntarily, boredom will select you involuntarily.”
Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words
“Distractions are magical. Especially the kinds you call hobbies. They take your mind off all the inescapable toxicity and make you feel like there’s so much more to life than just paying credit card installments before due dates.”
Anindita Das, What The Pandemic Learned From Me
“It’s fun to have hobbies, to exercise and get in shape, to play music, and to make and fix things. Life is interesting — there is so much to do that generally we don’t have enough time to do it all.”
Thatcher Wine, The Twelve Monotasks: Do One Thing at a Time to Do Everything Better
“You could do worse than to spend your days staring at blue jays.”
Julie Zickefoose, Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck Jay
“I think it’s bizarre and tragic how society pushes us to say what we are because of the job we do. The question “What do you do?” really means what do they pay you for, as if that’s your defining characteristic. Everything else is a “hobby.” But those are also things you are and do. Just because you don’t make money at it doesn’t mean you’re not doing it. It’s as valid as going to the office, maybe more so.”
Rose McGowan, Brave
A man practices the art of adventure when he breaks the chain of routine and renews his life through reading new books, traveling to new places, making new friends, taking up new hobbies and adopting new viewpoints”
Wilfred Peterson
“Try new hobbies. Develop new interests. Pursue new experiences. When you expand your interests, you increase your opportunities for happiness.”
Richelle E. Goodrich, Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year
“I suppose you’d have to say that my interest in the subject fell somewhere between the Land of Hobbies and the Kingdom of Obsession.”
Stephen King, Everything’s Eventual
“Count yourself blessed if you have something you love to do, but you are rarely able to do it because you’re too busy doing something else you love even more.”
Josh Steimle
“The best hobbies are the ones that take us furthest from our primary occupation.”
Vogel, Dexter
“If you plan to make your hobby your work, make something else your hobby. You will still need hobbies.”
Vineet Raj Kapoor
“To have an extravagant interest in almost anything is to have a decidedly pleasant view of life.”
Charles William Taussig, The Book Of Hobbies Or A Guide To Happiness
“Pay attention to what you wish you were doing when you’re doing something else.”
Joyce Rachelle
“There is comfort, even among strangers, when people find something they are equally passionate about.”
Joyce Rachelle
“Becoming serious is a grievous fault in hobbyists. It is an axiom that no hobby should either seek or need rational justification. To wish to do it is reason enough. To find reasons why it is useful or beneficial converts it at once from an avocation into an industry – lowers it at once to the ignominious category of an ‘exercise’ undertaken for health, power, or profit. Lifting dumbbells is not a hobby. It is a confession of subservience, not an assertion of liberty.”
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac with Essays on Conservation from Round River
“Each of our souls has a deep urge to confess something about its nature. It sits still within us, until we come across a certain song, book, movie or person. Then everything changes, Our soul stirs like it was suddenly awoken from a brief sleep like child running to their mother excited about about a new discovery, words flowing out of their mouth tripping over each other. Its like the calm before the storm and the dancing of a hurricane’s first winds.”
Ilwaad Isa
Get hobbies Experiment, Be interested in various things But stay true to your values Realize though, as you growThose values may change and that is okay As long as you are following your heart And not what others want or expect Because then you are not being true to you.”
Melody Lee, Vine: Book of Poetry
“It is such an agreeable feeling to be busy with something one is only half-competent to do that nobody should criticize the dilettante for taking up an art he will never learn, or blame the artist who leaves the territory of his own art for the pleasure of trying himself in a neighbouring one.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities
“Hobbies are like flowers on plant. They make the plant look beautiful and feel proud.”
Sukant Ratnakar, Open The Windows: To the World around You
“Time is a game played beautifully by children.“
Heraclitus, Fragments
“This is very important — to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you’re gonna lose everything…just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That’s why they’re all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful.“
Charles Bukowski
“Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don’t deny it. I’d rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh — anything but work.“
Abraham Lincoln
“Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.”
George MacDonald, Wilfrid Cumbermede
“Every man with a little leisure and enough money for railway tickets, every man, indeed, who knows how to read, has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.”
Aldous Huxley, Jesting Pilate
“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both.”
James A. Michener
“It’s not a man’s working hours that is important, it is how he spends his leisure time.”
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
“In modern society most of us don’t want to be in touch with ourselves; we want to be in touch with other things like religion, sports, politics, a book – we want to forget ourselves. Anytime we have leisure, we want to invite something else to enter us, opening ourselves to the television and telling the television to come and colonize us.”
Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace #1
“I want leisure to read—an immense amount.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
“My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.”
Francine Jay, Miss Minimalist: Inspiration to Downsize, Declutter, and Simplify
“Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes.”
Plato, The Republic
“Leisure is the mother of Philosophy”
Thomas Hobbes
“The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. And they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others.”
William Lyon Phelps
“The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.”
Ezra Pound
“All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.“
John Gunther
“Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence.”
Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture
“We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations
If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.”
Eleanor Roosevelt, This is My Story
“If I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
“He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul’s estate.”
Henry David Thoreau
“The job of feets is walking, but their hobby is dancing.”
Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words
“Sunday, the day for the language of leisure.”
Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher
“The right kind of leisure is better than the wrong kind of work.”
Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom
“Art matters. It is not simply a leisure activity for the privileged or a hobby for the eccentric. It is a practical good for the world. The work of the artist is an expression of hope – it is homage to the value of human life, and it is vital to society. Art is a sacred expression of human creativity that shares the same ontological ground as all human work. Art, along with all work is the ordering of creation toward the intention of the creator.”
Michael Gungor, The Crowd, The Critic And The Muse: A Book For Creators
“So he said, ‘What would you like to do? What is your desire really?’ I said, ‘Doctor, I don’t think you’re going to find this very healthy and clear, but I really would like to stop working forever–never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I’m doing now–and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to museums and see friends.”
Allen Ginsberg
“Western man had relearned-what the rest of the world had never forgotten-that there was nothing sinful in leisure as long as it did not degenerate into mere sloth.”
Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End
“To resist the social pressure now put even on one’s leisure time, requires a tougher upbringing and a more obstinate willfulness about going one’s own way, than ever before.”
Robert Graves
“Life lived amidst tension and busyness needs leisure. Leisure that recreates and renews. Leisure should be a time to think new thoughts, not ponder old ills.”
C. Neil Strait
“The finest thing about a hobby is that you can’t do any pretending about it. You either like it or you don’t.”
Dorothy Draper
“A hobby is only fun if you don’t have time to do it.”
Leo Beenhakker
“Hobbies are great distractions from the worries and troubles that plague daily living.”
Bill Malone
“In our leisure we reveal what kind of people we are.”
Ovid
“Today is life – the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.”
Dale Carnegie
“Surround yourself with what you love, whether it’s family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever.”
George Carlin
“Sometimes, the inessential is essential.”
T.L. Rese
“Hard work done for a hobby doesn’t feel so hard!”
Amit Kalantri
“In their time away from work and the hassles of daily life, people tend to display their passions and personal interests. Someone’s hobbies can reveal a lot about their personality.”
David S. Walton
“When you meet someone, ask about what hobby they have, not what they do. People always ask me about cooking, but I prefer to talk about tennis or boxing”
Wolfgang Puck
“Always re-invent yourself. Always try new things; new food, new hobbies, meet new people. That will keep your life from becoming stagnant and boring. And you will have a lot more fun!”
Lisa Bedrick
“We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace.”
Aristotle
