Il faut travailler sinon par go u" t, au moins par de¤  sespoir, puisque, tout bien ve¤  rifie¤  , travailler est moins ennuyeux que s'amuser. We should work: if not by preference, at least out of despair. All things considered, work is less boring than amusement.

-Baudelaire, Charles
  Mon coeur mis a'   nu, pt.18.

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I canonlycomparetoa stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
Quoted in Hawker Instructions toYoung Sportsmen (1859). The attribution is doubtful, and Swift has also been credited with the remark.

If your daughters are inclined to love reading, do not check their inclination by hindering them of the diverting part of it. It is as necessary for the amusement of women as the reputation of men; but teach them not to expect anyapplause from it† Ignorance is as much the fountain of vice as idleness, and indeed generally produces it. People that do not read or work for a livelihood have many hours they know not how to employ, especially women, who commonly fall into vapours or something worse.

-Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley ne¤  e Pierrepoint
  Letter,  Jan. Collected in R Halsband (ed) Selected Letters of Lady Mary  Wortley Montagu (1970).

But no oneshall find merowing againstthestream.I care not who knows itöI write for the general amusement.

-Scott, Sir Walter
  The Fortunes of Nigel, introductory epistle.