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Sleep is a powerful seducer, hence the terrifying machinery we have developed to fight it. I mean, the alarm clock. Heavens! What evil genius brought together those two enemies of the idle—clocks and alarms—into one unit?
Such are the architects of our daily life.
How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?
The architects of the Industrial Revolution needed to convince the masses of the benefits of tedious, disciplined toil.
slugabed
We worked hard in our youth in order to work hard again in our adulthood.
The rich did literally turn the poor out of the old guest house on to the road, briefly telling them that it was the road of progress. They did literally force them into factories and the modern wage-slavery assuring them all the time that this was the only way to wealth and civilization.
God was ruthlessly brought in by the capitalists to control the minds of the masses.
The philosophy of low wages was also enthusiastically followed: the lower the wage, the harder the proletariat would toil.
Thomas Carlyle
“Man was created to work, not to speculate, or feel, or dream,” he wrote, adding: “Every idle moment is treason.”
the rich,
“preach the dignity of labour, while taking care themselves to remain undign...
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James Froude. “Think little and read less.”
Problem: anxiety. Solution: money. Method: work.
after working for six days, he rests for all eternity.
modus operandi,
“Often it is at the time when the artist or poet seems the least occupied in their work, that they are plunged in it the deepest.”
It is precisely to prevent us from thinking too much that society pressurizes us all to get out of bed.
Upon arrival at the concentration camps, idlers had a black triangle sewn on to their clothing (political prisoners had a red triangle, Jehovah’s Witnesses a purple, criminals a green and homosexuals a pink).
“delicious diligent indolence,” which
anathema
deferral of pleasure in service of an imaginary future of stability is a bourgeois myth.
The great pleasure of skiving is that you are not working while you are meant to be working.
They are so strong that you practically inhale them. They make only the briefest contact with the stomach before entering the head.
The less you work, the more you produce.
Work expands to fit the time provided.
A nap is a perfect pleasure and it’s useful, too. It splits the day into two halves, making each half more manageable and enjoyable.
It’s time not to do, but to think about doing.
Like many life-improving inventions, tea was discovered during a moment of pure inactivity.
tea was used as a tool to help one do absolutely nothing for as long as possible.
apologist
fact, the preparation is half the fun of the drinking, as cracking melon-seeds between one’s teeth is half the pleasure of eating them.
In 1839 it was considered elegant to take a tortoise out walking. This gives us an idea of the tempo of the flânerie in the arcades.
There is a highly pleasurable feeling of superiority over others and of being in control of one’s own destiny when one simply slows down the pace, and allows oneself to drift.
The cocktail, beer or wine goes straight to the nervous system, unblocked by food.
Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.”
choke a parrot—a Montmartre expression meaning to down a glass of green absinthe, commonly known as a perroquet].”
“Got tight last night on absinthe. Did knife tricks.”
The very thing that seems to make life worth living is also slowly destroying your health.
“Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.”
Mr. Crabtree Goes Fishing (1950),
Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail
Botherers are people who simply cannot help interfering in other people’s lives. They lack imagination, believe in hard work, exploitation and hypocrisy, and make perfect politicians, bureaucrats and fat cats.
I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.
fragile, delicate and overbred
“Mere splendour” is the way of the botherer.
“the three Bs: Bread, beer and bacon.”
Nude messiah rides into Bristol
“when solitary, be not idle, and when idle, be not solitary.”
