Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Idleness
As part of his series on curiosity, Horace Jeffery Hodges, Aquinas: Careless Curiosity, quotes St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II. 2, q. 35, a. 4, obj. 3:
At this stage of my life, sloth is the one of the Seven Deadly Sins that tempts me the most, and my curiosity about idleness has led me recently to note some literary descriptions of the sin, which I place here in my electronic filing cabinet:
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[Isidore of Seville] states that from sloth seven things arise, viz. "idleness, drowsiness, uneasiness of the mind, restlessness of the body, instability, loquacity, curiosity."The Latin says:
De acedia vero dicit oriri septem, quae sunt otiositas, somnolentia, importunitas mentis, inquietudo corporis, instabilitas, verbositas, curiositas.Brandon Watson, taking inspiration from Dr. Hodges' post, industriously tackles the question of the Daughters of Sloth.
At this stage of my life, sloth is the one of the Seven Deadly Sins that tempts me the most, and my curiosity about idleness has led me recently to note some literary descriptions of the sin, which I place here in my electronic filing cabinet:
- The Second Nun's Prologue in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
- Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book I, Canto IV, stanzas 18-20
- James Thomson, The Castle of Indolence
- Robert Louis Stevenson, An Apology for Idlers, in Virginibus Puerisque
- Christopher Morley, On Laziness, in Pipefuls
