No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.

The earliest form found is in Mary Sargent Hopkins’s ‘Out-of-Doors for the Home-Maker’, The Boston Cooking-School Magazine, August 1899 (vol. 4, no. 2, p. 62), which calls it an old saying: ‘There is an old saying that one never needs a vacation so much as the day after returning from one’ (checked in the OCR of the archive.org scan of the 1899–1900 volume). An unattributed filler in the Kenosha Evening News, 10 September 1903, has ‘the man who most needs a vacation is the man who has just had one’ (per Quote Investigator, not seen). Hubbard printed his wording in The Philistine in May 1904 (checked in the OCR of the archive.org scan) and in The Cosmopolitan in February 1905 (per Quote Investigator); compilations from Evan Esar’s Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (1949) onward credit him. Quote Investigator (2025) concludes that the originator is anonymous and that Hubbard helped popularise the quip but did not create it. Searched: Quote Investigator, Wikiquote (which lists it under Hubbard’s Misattributed), archive.org scans of The Boston Cooking-School Magazine (1899–1900) and The Philistine (May 1904).

1. August 1899Earliest found · credited to an old sayingMary Sargent Hopkins, writing on rest for home-makers, quotes it as an old saying.There is an old saying that one never needs a vacation so much as the day after returning from one.Mary Sargent Hopkins, ‘Out-of-Doors for the Home-Maker’, The Boston Cooking-School Magazine, vol. 4, no. 2 (Boston, August 1899), p. 62. Checked in the text of a page scan, not the image. Source
2. 10 September 1903Reworded · credited to no one (‘the saying’)An unattributed newspaper filler gives the ‘man who has just had one’ form.the man who most needs a vacation is the man who has just had oneKenosha Evening News (Kenosha, Wisconsin), 10 September 1903, p. 4 (filler item), p. 4. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand.
3. May 1904Spread · credited to no one (Hubbard uses it as common wisdom)Hubbard uses it in The Philistine, in advice on how to take a vacation.Usually, no man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.Elbert Hubbard, ‘Heart to Heart Talks with Philistines by the Pastor of His Flock’, The Philistine, vol. 18, no. 6 (May 1904), p. 187. Checked in the text of a page scan, not the image. Source
4. February 1905Spread · credited to no one (Hubbard’s article)Hubbard uses it again in ‘Vacations and Health’ in The Cosmopolitan, reprinted in The American Exporter.no man needs a vacation so much as a man who has just had one.Elbert Hubbard, ‘Vacations and Health’, The Cosmopolitan, vol. 38, no. 4 (New York, February 1905), p. 485. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand.
5. 1949Credited to Elbert HubbardEvan Esar’s Dictionary of Humorous Quotations prints it under Hubbard’s name.No man needs a vacation so much as the person who has just had one.Evan Esar (ed.), The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (New York, 1949), p. 101. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand.

Widely quoted as Hubbard’s, and he did use it: in The Philistine of May 1904, advising readers that a vacation of idling and ‘hilarious good fellows’ leaves a man worn out (‘There was too much of a good time. Usually, no man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one’), and again in ‘Vacations and Health’ in The Cosmopolitan in 1905. But the joke was in print before him, and he presented it as common wisdom (‘usually’).

Holidays are often so tiring that people come back needing a rest from them.

• A misquotationNo man needs a vacation so much as the person who has just had one. The form credited to Hubbard in Evan Esar’s Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (1949) and Herbert V. Prochnow’s Speaker’s Treasury (1973), per Quote Investigator. Where it was seen

Wisdom

• Golf is a good walk spoiled. (not found) Mark Twain
• Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. (not found) Oscar Wilde
• Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. (not found) Marcus Tullius Cicero
• I can resist everything except temptation. Oscar Wilde
• Two intelligent people cannot fall in love; true love needs one idiot. (not found) Fyodor Dostoevsky

• quoteinvestigator.com/2025/08/06/vacation-need (Quote Investigator, ‘No One Needs a Vacation So Much as the Person Who Has Just Had One’, 6 August 2025)
• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Elbert_Hubbard (Misattributed: ‘No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.’)

“No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.” Attributed to Elbert Hubbard. No. Hubbard used the quip in The Philistine in 1904 and helped spread it, but it was already called ‘an old saying’ in 1899; who first said it is unknown. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/no-man-needs-a-vacation-so-much/ (checked 23 October 2026).

Have a different wording, or a source we missed? Check it or submit it.

Do you hold the rights to anything on this page? Tell us.