The Attitude Toward Leisure

"February 25,1956... The greatest change between now and seventy years ago is in the attitude toward leisure. Now there is no such thing... In my experience you can have ability without leisure, but ability only, and not creativeness, Real ideas come to me while relaxed, and brooding, meditative, passive. Then the unexpected happens. An illumination, a combination of words, a revelation for which I made no conscious preparation. And seventy years ago one had time for everything, for[open-hearted] reading, for equally [openhearted] discussion, for activities whose only result was to strengthen, refine, and clarify our own selves as works of art, and not as now to be considered only when producing material results."

Sunset and Twilight by Bernard Berenson

.