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    work-life balance


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‘Tis for little Souls, that truckle under the Weight of Affairs, not to know how clearly to disengage themselves, and not to know how to lay them aside, and take them up again.
 
[C’est aux petites ames ensevelies du poix des affaires, de ne s’en sçavoir purement desmesler : de ne les sçavoir et laisser et reprendre.]

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 3, ch. 13 “On Experience [De l’Experience]” (1588) (3.13) (1595) [tr. Cotton (1686)]
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(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

It is for base and pettie mindes, dulled and overwhelmed with the weight of affaires, to be ignorant how to leave them, and not to know how to free themselves from them; nor how to leave and take them againe.
[tr. Florio (1603)]

’Tis for little souls, that truckle under the weight of affairs, not from them to know how clearly to disengage themselves, not to know how to lay them aside and take them up again.
[tr. Cotton/Hazlitt (1877)]

It is for small souls, buried under the weight of affairs, not to know how to free themselves therefrom entirely; not to know how to leave them and return to them.
[tr. Ives (1925)]

It is for little souls, buried under the weight of business, to be unable to detach themselves cleanly from it or to leave it and pick it up again.
[tr. Frame (1943)]

It is for petty souls overwhelmed by the weight of affairs to be unable to disentangle themselves for them completely, not knowing how to drop them and then take them up again.
[tr. Screech (1987)]

 
Added on 6-Mar-24 | Last updated 14-Mar-24
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Efficiency is a thief of time when it leaves no leisure.

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Marcelene Cox (1900-1998) American writer, columnist, aphorist
“Ask Any Woman” column, Ladies’ Home Journal (1949-02)
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Added on 13-Sep-22 | Last updated 27-Mar-23
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The crucial disadvantage of aggression, competitiveness, and skepticism as national characteristics is that these qualities cannot be turned off at five o’clock.

Margaret Halsey
Margaret Halsey (1910-1997) American writer
The Folks at Home, “The Five O’Clock Shadow over the United States” (1952)
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Added on 31-Mar-22 | Last updated 31-Mar-22
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It occurs to me that there is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much. It may be that I set my sights too high and so repeatedly end a day in depression. Not easy to find the balance, for it one does not have wild dreams of achievement, there is no spur even to get the dishes washed. One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

May Sarton
May Sarton (1912-1995) Belgian-American poet, novelist, memoirist [pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton]
Journal of a Solitude, “February 4th” (1973)
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Added on 19-Oct-21 | Last updated 19-Oct-21
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No one on his deathbed ever said, “I wish I had spent more time on my business.”

Paul Tsongas
Paul Tsongas (1941-1997) American politician
Heading Home (1984), quoting Arnold Zack
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Often misattributed directly to Tsongas, this was quoted from a letter from Zack, a Massachusetts lawyer and old friend, during Tsongas' battle with cancer.
 
Added on 16-Jul-21 | Last updated 16-Jul-21
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The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life or of the work.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Irish poet and dramatist
“The Choice” (1933)
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Added on 25-Jan-21 | Last updated 25-Jan-21
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Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“An Apology for Idlers” (1881)
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Added on 19-Feb-09 | Last updated 13-Nov-20
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Do Business, but be not a Slave to it.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #1304 (1732)
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Added on 27-Jan-09 | Last updated 26-Jan-21
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When I had youth I had no money; now I have the money I have no time; and when I get the time, if I ever do, I shall have no health to enjoy life. I suppose it’s the discipline I need; but it’s rather hard to love the things I do, and see them go by because duty chains me to my galley. If I ever come into port with all sails set, that will be my reward perhaps.

Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) American writer
(Attributed) (1873)

Quoted in M. Saxton, Louisa May, ch. 17 (1977).
 
Added on 7-Oct-08 | Last updated 16-Apr-19
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