Doing Nothing Quotes

1. "How are we doing, Simon?" she whispered into the small microphone in her collar. "Just about..." Simon started slowly. And then he stopped. "Wow." "What?" she asked, panic in her voice. "Nothing," he said too quickly. "What?" she asked again. "Well...it's just that...your boobs look even bigger on TV." Kat took that opportunity to turn and glare at the nearest security camera. In his bathroom stall thirty feet away, Simon nearly fell off the toilet."
Author: Ally Carter

2. "Mediocrity is always in a rush; but whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with consideration. For genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly."
Author: Amelia E. Barr

3. "Make a list of the work that inspires you. Don't be practical. Don't think about making a living; think about doing something you love. There's nothing that says you have to quit your day job to cultivate meaningful work. There's also nothing that says your day job isn't meaningful work—maybe you've just never thought of it that way. What's your ideal slash? What do you want to be when you grow up? What brings meaning to you?"
Author: Brené Brown

4. "As the unmusical listener wants only the Tune, so the unliterary reader wants only the Event. The one ignores nearly all the sounds the orchestra is actually making; he wants to hum the tune. The other ignores nearly all that the words before him are doing; he wants to know what happened next.He reads only narrative because only there will he find an Event. He is deaf to the aural side of what he reads because rhythm and melody do not help him to discover who married (rescued, robbed, raped, or murdered) whom. He likes 'strip' narratives and almost wordless films because in them nothing stands between him and the Event. And he likes speed because a very swift story is all events."
Author: C.S. Lewis

5. "I am used to doing dramatic work, but its fun to grab a gun, and go running around, getting beat-up. Its fun to do the action stuff, because it is really physical. There is nothing like getting into a character by getting beaten up physically."
Author: Devon Bostick

6. "Ever since I've left, I've been doing nothing but this film and traveling, promoting and doing festivals. So the good thing is that I'm not sitting around pining over whether I made the right choice in leaving. I'm moving and grooving."
Author: Eriq La Salle

7. "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."
Author: George Bernard Shaw

8. "Nothing. My father is very good at doing nothing. He calls it thinking."
Author: George R.R. Martin

9. "Waiting. Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached."
Author: Ian McEwan

10. "Even as I'm shoveling up my hooter, I realize the sad truth. Coke bores me, It bores us all. We're jaded cunts, in a scene we hate, a city we hate, pretending that we're at the center of the universe, trashing ourselves with crap drugs to stave off the feeling that real life is happening somewhere else, aware that all we're doing is feeding that paranoia and disenchantment, yet somehow we're too apathetic to stop. Cause, sadly, there's nothing else of interest to stop for."
Author: Irvine Welsh

11. "I enjoy doing nothing."
Author: Jeffrey Bernard

12. "Uh, what are you doing?""Nothing much. Just erasing all of Calinda's good grades and replacing them with incompletes. Eventually, the administrators will figure out what happened, but I'm making it look like a computer error. Still, I imagine she'll get some nasty lectures from her profs and parents in the meantime."
Author: Jennifer Estep

13. "Being busy is a distraction and I am sure that doing nothing, resting and sleeping are all good cures for modern life. I am not suggesting we all do nothing but sleep, however, sometimes stopping long enough to 'be' can be very powerful."
Author: Joanna Runciman

14. "Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but a Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile."
Author: John Green

15. "Thomas! What are you doing!" and I gestured, "I thought this was Nothing," covering myself with one of my daybooks ,and she said, "It's Something!"
Author: Jonathan Safran Foer

16. "I'm what-iffing! I don't what-if! What-iffing is for growups. They what-if themselves right into doing nothing, and die without ever living."
Author: Karen Marie Moning

17. "There's always that song that brings you back to the past. That makes you pause in the middle of what you're doing just so you could hear it clearly. The words bringing you back to a time that seemed nearly impossible, the words making you think for one moment that time itself has actually stopped. And there's nothing but you & perfect melody that brings you one step closer to what used to be."
Author: Kira Jeffries

18. "My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfilment of which I could consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not have known what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guess of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless."
Author: Leo Tolstoy

19. "To me, meditation sounds a whole lot like doing nothing. I don't do nothing. I pack every second of every day with something that can get done."
Author: Lisa Genova

20. "He finds his way up the side of my neck, biting me just a little, moving lightly back and forth, like he's searching for a special spot. When he finds it, I make small sound I've never heard myself make before, like a gasp. He traces his tongue in slow circles around that spot. I realise my hands are just lying in my lap, doing nothing. I concentrate on lifting my arm and reaching for his face, but he catches my hand and holds it tightly at the wrist. His lips leave the spot and find their way back to my mouth, which is waiting, hoping for his return. He plants a gentle kiss on my lower lip and then whispers in my ear, "I just got lucky, Rose."
Author: Louise Rozett

21. "Here is something no real celebrity will ever tell you: film acting is not very fun. Doing the same thing over and over again until, in the director's eyes, you 'get it right' does not allow for very much creative freedom... In terms of sheer adrenaline, film has absolutely nothing on theater."
Author: Mara Wilson

22. "I do not say making love, because this is not what he's doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven't signed up for. There wasn't a lot of choice, but there was some, and this is what I chose."
Author: Margaret Atwood

23. "Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them."[Twelve Things You Were Not Taught in School About Creative Thinking (The Creativity Post, December 6, 2011)]"
Author: Michael Michalko

24. "To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace."
Author: Milan Kundera

25. "Why is it that a dog's menstruation made her lighthearted and gay, while her own menstruation made her squeamish? The answer seems simple to me: dogs were never expelled from Paradise. Karenin knew nothing about the duality of body and soul and had no concept of disgust. That is why Tereza felt so free and easy with him. (And that is why it is so dangerous to turn an animal into a machina animata, a cow into an automaton for the production of milk. By so doing, man cuts the thread binding him to Paradise and has nothing left to hold or comfort him on his flight through the emptiness of time.)"
Author: Milan Kundera

26. "I don't go out unless I'm working. My quality time is when I'm doing nothing."
Author: Nas

27. "Doing nothing at all is often the very wisest thing ... as the world is a ball and is turning and everything is in fact in motion all the time, doing nothing is not really doing nothing, it's allowing things to mover at their own pace"
Author: Niall Williams

28. "I laughed as I thought of what Savannah would have told me had she been here. "You're capable of anything Jer. You're much stronger than you give yourself credit for. Keep pushing; it'll all be okay in the end." Then I'd turn and smile at her, nudging her in her side as she looked up towards the sky. Whenever she thought of dad, she shifted her attention towards the sky, as if she were looking for him in the clouds. It was the same thing I found myself doing now. Except I wasn't looking for dad, I was searching for her. But there was nothing. The night sky, usually lit up by the moon and the surrounding stars, was empty."
Author: Nicole Sobon

29. "Fuck you."I shrug. "You already have."She rolls her eyes as her cheeks gain color. "So I have."Bethany puts her drink down and her voice drops a few octaves, laughingly, "And what fun i had whilst doing it."I chuckle uncontrollably, at so small a thing? No. Maybe it's the fact I've realized why other men had held nothing more than a vague interest for me "Oh, Beth!" I mock lament, both in reaction to her silliness and my own thoughts.She abruptly stops laughing. "I swear to god, I would kill for your voice. Each time you speak it's like being ear fucked.""Ear fucked," I echo and wince. "No, thank you."
Author: Penelope Fletcher

30. "Each of us assumes everyone else knows what HE is doing. They all assume we know what WE are doing. We don't...Nothing is going on and nobody knows what it is. Nobody is concealing anything except the fact that he does not understand anything anymore and wishes he could go home."
Author: Philip K. Dick

31. "It is better moving up to your goal and falling than not falling doing nothing"
Author: Qaiser Abbas

32. "It is fashionable in some academic circles to exercise scholarly criticism of the Bible. In so doing, scholars place themselves above the Bible and seek to correct it. If indeed the Bible is the Word of God, nothing could be more arrogant. It is God who corrects us; we don't correct Him. We do not stand over God but under Him."
Author: R.C. Sproul

33. "Going to school on the Planet really is doing nothing. Youjust sit in the classes someone else tells you to sit in. Youlearn things you didn't choose to learn from people youdidn't choose to teach you. Then one day they tell you it'sover and you have to go out there and learn the world forreal."
Author: Randy Russell

34. "Thus far the mighty mystery of motherhood is this: How is it that doing it all feels like nothing is ever getting done."
Author: Rebecca Woolf

35. "Technically, anything that a ministry does for the family could be called family ministry but that's actually part of the problem. There is a difference between doing something FOR the family and doing something WITH the family. Family ministry should not be another program you add to your list of programs. It should develop the process that drives how both the church and the home combine their effort to influence the next generation in their faith and character. If you really believe that nothing is more important than someone's relationship with God, it makes sense to combine the influences of the home and church."
Author: Reggie Joiner

36. "In this book I would like to describe how this message of falling down and moving up is, in fact, the most counter-intuitive message in most of the world's religions, including and most especially Christianity. We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. That might just be the central message of how spiritual growth happens; yet nothing in us wants to believe it. I actually think it is the only workable meaning of any remaining notion of "original sin."
Author: Richard Rohr

37. "Why?" He asked. " because it was the closest I could get to doing this."He reached out and pulled me to him, one hand on my waist and the other behind my neck. He tipped my head up and lowered his lips on mine. I closed my eyes and melted as my whole body was consumed in that kiss. I was nothing. I was everything. Chills ran over my skin, and fire burnt inside me. His body pressed closer to mine, and I wrapped my arms around his neck. His lips were warmer and softer than anything I could have imagined, yet fierce and powerful at the same time. Mine responded hungrily, and I tightened my hold on him. His fingers slid down the back of my neck, tracing its shape, and every place they touched was electric.But perhaps the best part of all that was that I, Sydney Katherine Sage, guilty of constantly analyzing the world around me, well, I stopped thinking.And it was glorious.At least, it was until I started thinking again."
Author: Richelle Mead

38. "Just as He had been doing even before the moment I consciously embarked on this journey, He revealed to me that it was all about love. It always has been—before the foundations of the earth—and it always will be—throughout eternity. The answers I was seeking were found in love, the healing I desperately needed also found in love. The love I sought and so desperately wanted to give was enabled, empowered, and actualized by His divine love. So nothing remains but for me to LOVE as an expression of my appreciation for His love for me: L-live an O-openly V-virtuous E-existence."
Author: Riisa Renee

39. "If I have to spend prolonged periods of time in a trailer, I go mad. Stuck in a metal box doing nothing, I lie there paralysed with boredom."
Author: Romola Garai

40. "When I came out, Jackson was laying out a few things on the bed. "What are you doing?"He smiled sheepishly and pointed out a few candles, a bottle of some pinkish liquid, and a bottle of what I could only assume was champagne. "I thought I'd get everything ready so that when we came back after dinner, there'd be nothing to ruin the flow.""Oh." Flow? What was this supposed to be, the virgin pipeline? "Good thinking."
Author: S.L. Naeole

41. "The ideal holiday for the truly active man is one doing nothing in beautiful surroundings . . . and the ideal exercise for this best form of leisure is the old, natural, spontaneous movement of the body -- the walk."
Author: Salvador De Madariaga

42. "You see, you're doing it again. Telling me nothing. (Tory)You know, trust is always a good idea…for someone else. Every time I've ever made the mistake of trusting someone…it was a mistake that I regretted and paid for dearly. I'm really happy that no one has ever hurt you badly. I haven't been so lucky, okay? (Acheron)"
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

43. "There are hazards in anything one does but there are greater hazards in doing nothing."
Author: Shirley Williams

44. "After all those years of doing a live, hour-and-a-half show every week, I've got nothing more I need to prove."
Author: Sid Caesar

45. "In a region with a growing population, if you're doing nothing, you're losing ground."
Author: Stewart Udall

46. "You're Shane, right?'He inched away from her and managed a quick nod as he twisted the rag he held in his fingers. 'Heidi sad you were willing to teach me how to ride.' Her expression shifted from entertained to confused, as if she was wondering why no one had mentioned he was a can or two shy of a six-pack. 'A horse,' he clarified, then wanted to kick himself. What else but a horse? Did he think she was here to learn to ride his mother's elephant? One corner of Annabelle's perfect, full mouth twitched. 'A horse would be good. You seem to have several.'He wanted to remind himself that he was usually fine around women. Smooth even. He was intelligent, funny and could, on occasion, be charming. Just not now, with his blood pumping and his brain doing nothing more than shouting "it's her, it's her" over and over again. Chemistry, he thought grimly. It could turn the smartest man into a drooling idiot. Here he was, proving the theory true."
Author: Susan Mallery

47. "I have my hormones balanced. Most doctors are giving women synthetic hormones, which just eliminate the symptoms, but it's doing nothing to actually replace the hormones you have lost. Without our hormones we die."
Author: Suzanne Somers

48. "I admire an actor that can do a lot with doing nothing really, for the most part. I like doing a lot by doing so little."
Author: Taylor Kitsch

49. "I love travelling and going on wildlife safaris. I have an interest in astronomy. I like reading on current affairs, business and science. I love doing nothing if I can help it."
Author: Viswanathan Anand

50. "When they had finished they made me take notes of whatever conversation they had quoted, so that I might have the exact words, and got up to go, and when I asked them where they were going and what they were doing and by what names I should call them, they would tell me nothing, except that they had been commanded to travel over Ireland continually, and upon foot and at night, that they might live close to the stones and the trees and at the hours when the immortals are awake."
Author: W.B. Yeats

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