Just now, when every one is bound, under pain of a decree in absence convicting them of lèse-respectability, to enter on some lucrative profession, and labour therein with something not far short of enthusiasm, a cry from the opposite party, who are content when they have enough, and like to look on and enjoy in the meanwhile, savours a little of bravado and gasconade. And yet this should not be. Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet

Essay (1877-07), “An Apology for Idlers,” Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 36
    (Source)

Collected in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, ch. 3 (1881).