Leisure: The Basis of Culture
Aristotle argued that true leisure—by which he meant self-reflection and philosophical contemplation—was among the very highest of virtues because it was worth choosing for its own sake, whereas other virtues, like courage in war, or noble behavior in government, were virtuous only because they led to something else. The Latin word for business, ne... See more
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Man is a luxury-loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.
Eric Hoffer • Reflections on the Human Condition
For Aquinas, too, the life devoted to inner stillness and spiritual knowledge, the vita contemplativa, is the highest form of human activity. He concedes that the daily life, the vita activa, of the average person, is also valuable, and it leads to well-being (beatitudo), provided—and this qualification is crucial—that the aim toward which all one’
... See moreErich Fromm • To Have or To Be? (Continuum Impacts)
The regrettable consequence of justifying leisure only in terms of its usefulness for other things is that it begins to feel vaguely like a chore – in other words, like work in the worst sense of that word. This was a pitfall the critic Walter Kerr noticed back in 1962, in his book The Decline of Pleasure: ‘We are all of us compelled,’ Kerr wrote,
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