The art of living is the art of bringing dreams and reality together.
Our dreams take us into other worlds, alternative realities that help us make sense of day-to-day realities.
In a world where you are constantly asked to be ‘committed,’ it is liberating to give yourself the license to be a dilettante. Commit to nothing. Try everything.
Pain will never leave us. Instead of putting energy into destroying pain, we need to put energy into creating pleasure.
Idleness for me is not a giving up on life but a spirited grabbing hold of it.
Labour-saving devices just make us try to cram more pointless activities into each day, rather than doing the important thing, which is to enjoy our life.
A conclusion I’ve come to at the Idler is that it starts with retreating from work but it’s really about making work into something that isn’t drudgery and slavery, and then work and life can become one thing.
Sensible people advise against drinking on an empty stomach, but to my mind it is the best sort of drinking.
Boredom is the very opposite of beauty and truth. Life has been sacrificed to profit, and the result is boredom on a massive scale.
Computers tend to separate us from each other – Mum’s on the laptop, Dad’s on the iPad, teenagers are on Facebook, toddlers are on the DS, and so on.
We no longer sing and dance. We don’t know how to. Instead, we watch other people sing and dance on the television screen. Christmas, which was once a festival of active enjoyment, has turned into a binge of purely passive pleasures.
Laziness works. And the simple way to incorporate its health benefits into your life is simply to take a nap.
Beauty, pleasure, freedom and plenty of sleep: these are the hallmarks of a successful idler’s break. Travel should not be hard work.
All of our technology is completely unnecessary to a happy life.
We have to wonder whether digital technology, rather than making it easier to communicate, is actually doing the opposite. We now sit alone at a keyboard, firing off zeros and ones into the ether. Offices are silent.
Poetry, being supremely useless, by its very existence represents a protest against the so-called ‘real world’ of busy-ness and moneymaking, so we must embrace, salute and support our poets.
Long weekends at festivals, short weeks at home, all summer long: now that is surely preferable to the immense cost and headache of the nuclear family holiday in the sun?