Mathematics is the mind's recreation. [ Averoni ]
Pleasure is far sweeter as a recreation than a business. [ Roswell D. Hitchcock ]
He that will make a good use of any part of his life must allow a large portion of it to recreation. [ Locke ]
Amusements to virtue are like breezes of air to the flame - gentle ones will fan it, but strong ones will put it out. [ David Thomas ]
For the bow cannot possibly stand always bent, nor can human nature or human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation. [ Cervantes ]
Spill not the morning (the quintessence of the day) in recreation, for sleep itself is recreation. Add not, therefore, sauce to sauces. [ Fuller ]
Recreation is intended to the mind as whetting is to the scythe, to sharpen the edge of it, which otherwise would grow dull and blunt, - as good no scythe as no edge. [ Bishop Hall ]
Sweet recreation barred, what doth ensue but moody and dull melancholy, kinsman to grim and comfortless despair; and at their heels, a huge infectious troop of pale distemperatures and foes to life. [ William Shakespeare ]
We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did;
and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling. [ Izaak Walton ]
That which I have found the best recreation both to my mind and body, whensoever either of them stands in need of it, is music, which exercises at once both body and soul; especially when I play myself; for then, methinks, the same motion that my hands make upon the instrument, the instrument makes upon my heart. [ J. Beveridge ]
An inoffensive pleasantness is a good quality to improve friendship. It enlivens conversation, relieves melancholy, and conveys advice with better success than naked reprehension. This gilding the pill reconciles the palate to the prescription, without weakening the force of the ingredients, and he who can cure by recreation, and make pleasure the vehicle of health, is a doctor in good earnest. [ R. Hall ]
We must have books for recreation and entertainment, as well as books for instruction and for business; the former are agreeable, the latter useful, and the human mind requires both. The cannon law and the codes of Justinian shall have due honor, and reign at the universities; but Homer and Virgil need not therefore be banished. We will cultivate the olive and the vine, but without eradicating the myrtle and the rose. [ Balzac ]
Men cannot labor on always. They must have intervals of relaxation. They cannot sleep through these interTafs. What are they to do? Why, if they do not work or sleep, they must have recreation. And if they have not recreation from healthful sources, they will be very likely to take it from the poisoned fountains of intemperance. Or, if they have pleasures, which, though innocent, are forbidden by the maxims of public morality, their very pleasures are liable to become poisoned fountains. [ Orville Dewey ]