You are worried about seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing. What! Is it nothing to be happy? Nothing to skip, play, and run around all day long? Never in his life will he be so busy again.

                  – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When I asked him what he did around there he looked up at the clouds and over at the river and down at the ground between his boots; thinking hard, and finally said, “Nothing.”

A good and sufficient answer. Taking the hint, I went away from there, leaving him in peace. My own ambition, my deepest and truest ambition, is to find within myself someday, somehow, the ability to do likewise, to do nothing — and find it enough.

                  – Edward Abbey, “How It Was”

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

                  – Gertrude Stein

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

                  – Zen proverb

I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be.

                  – Peter Gibbons in “Office Space”

Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.

                  – Winnie the Pooh

There’s nothing as American as doing nothing and getting away with it.

                  – from Dumb and Dumberer

I don’t understand people who like to work and talk about it like it was some sort of goddamn duty. Doing nothing feels like floating on warm water to me. Delightful, perfect.

                  – Ava Gardner

I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust.

                  – Henry David Thoreau, “Walden”

Jon: Getting some rest?
Garfield: Nope… I’m doing nothing. The two can appear amazingly similar to the untrained eye.

                  – Jim Davis

Well, we can’t stand around here doing nothing, people will think we’re workmen.

                  – Spike Milligan