All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
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All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy is a proverb. Its meaning is that without time off from work, a person becomes bored and boring.
The sentiment expressed by this proverb was first recorded thousands of years ago by the Egyptian sage Ptahhotep, who wrote in 2400 B.C.,
One that reckons accounts all the day passes not a happy moment. One that gladdens his heart all the day provides not for his house. The bowman hits the mark, as the steersman reaches land, by diversity of aim. He that obeys his heart shall command.[1][unreliable source?]
The more familiar modern saying appeared first in James Howell's Proverbs in English, Italian, French and Spanish (1659), and was included in later collections of proverbs.
Some writers have added a second part to the proverb, as in Harry and Lucy Concluded (1825) by the Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth:
- All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,
All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy.
[edit] In popular culture
The movie The Bridge Over the River Kwai a 1957 Oscar Best Picture film makes use of this phrase as the Japanese Commander tries to blackmail the English Officers into building the bridge at the schedule due date.
The movie The Shining makes use of this phrase. There, Jack Torrance's wife looks over his typewriter to see what he has written, and finds the phrase repeated over and over on hundreds of sheets of paper in various layouts. This marks Jack's descent into insanity.
In "Now You Smurf' Em, Now You Don't", episode 81 of The Smurfs, Papa Smurf says "All work and no play makes Papa a dull Smurf" after chastising the other Smurfs for playing and then engaging in some fun himself.
The cynical version is “All work and no play makes jack. And plenty of it.” "Jack" here is used as a slang term for money.
The phrase also appears as a list of writing that flashes across the screen in a 1997 episode of The Simpsons entitled "The Springfield Files" when Homer Simpson believes that he has encountered an alien. The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror IV" also contained a parody of the phrase when Marge discovers Homer wrote "Feelin' fine" on a typewriter only to see "No TV and no beer make Homer go crazy" written all over the walls.
In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Gone", a recently invisible Buffy Summers decides to haunt a social worker threatening to take away her sister by filling her report with pages consisting entirely of repetitions of "All work and no play makes Doris a dull girl".
[edit] References
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