Quote of the Day

Chapter four of Hodgkinson's How to be Idle is titled "11 a.m.: Skiving for Pleasure and Profit." In it Hodgkinson quotes some greats, including this passage from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer:

"Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. It he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would have now comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to undersand why constructing artficial flowers or performing a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money, but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and they would resign."

My weekend is not too idle: cleaning, shopping, cooking for the week ahead, another cake, writing, and some work-work. Still, I cling to the philosophy Hodgkinson espouses and try and incorporate it more and more.