Leisure
The Basis of Culture
Josef Pieper
This book inspired me to write my article "What We Really Miss Out Living a Total Work Life". It's an invitation to give leisure its due place in our lives and to not let work take over our entire existence. Without leisure, we can neither know ourselves nor apprehend the spiritual realm.
Three notes from the book:
1- Leisure is a mental and spiritual attitude--it is not simply the result of external factors, it is not the inevitable result of spare time, a holiday, a weekend or a vacation. It is, in the first place, an attitude of mind, a condition of the soul.
2- The pause is made for the sake of work and in order to work, and a man is not only refreshed from work but for work. Leisure is an altogether different matter.
3- There is in fact no room in the world of "total labor" either for divine worship, or for a feast: because the "worker's" world, the world of "labor" rests solely upon the principle of rational utilization.