“To an active mind, indolence is more painful than labor.”
“There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs. ”
“The only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer.”
“Slavery...dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man.”
“The indolent mind is not empty, but full of vermin.”
“You surprise me, Hastings. Do you not know that all celebrated detectives have brothers who would be even more celebrated than they are were it not for constitutional indolence?”