Life & Wisdom Quote by Natalie Clifford Barney

Leisure, Barney suggests, isn`t the absence of effort; it`s a different kind of work with fewer social props. The line turns a gilded ideal inside out: a "life of leisure" is supposed to be effortless, yet she frames it as something you must tolerate, like a long illness or a tedious relative. That single verb quietly sabotages the fantasy of the idle rich, revealing boredom as its own form of exhaustion.

The wit lands because she treats fatigue as the default state of unstructured freedom. Without deadlines, necessity, or the moral alibi of busyness, you`re left alone with your appetites and your mind. "Inner resources" becomes a loaded phrase: not money, not servants, but psychological stamina, curiosity, discipline, and a capacity for self-invention. It`s a sideways critique of privilege that doesn`t bother moralizing; it just notes the paradox that comfort can be intolerable if you don`t have a private life robust enough to fill it.

Barney wrote from inside elite leisure, not as an outsider throwing stones. As a salonniere in Paris, she watched people with every advantage burn time like fuel, and she also built a life that made idleness productive - turning free hours into networks, art, flirtation, talk. The subtext reads like a warning to her class and a manifesto for her own: if you want leisure without fatigue, you have to earn it internally. Otherwise the emptiness shows up as tiredness, the body complaining on behalf of the underused self.