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Shun idleness. It is a rust that attaches itself to the most
brilliant metals.
Voltaire
Winter comes fast on the lazy.
Irish Proverb
Idleness is the sepulcher of a living man.
He is idle that might be better employed.
Idle folks have the least leisure.
Idleness rusts the mind.
Of idleness comes no goodness.
Idle folks lack no excuses.
All days are short to Industry and long to Idleness.
The lazy servant, to save one step, goes eight.
There is more trouble in having nothing to do than in having
much to do.
People who have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own
company.
In all labour there is profit: but the talk of the
lips tendeth only to penury.
Prov 14:23
As vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes,
So is the lazy man to those who send him.
Prov 10:26
The hand of the diligent will rule,
But the lazy man will be put to forced labor.
Prov 12:24
The lazy man says, "There is a lion outside!
I shall be slain in the streets!"
Prov 22:13
The slothful man roasts not that which he took in hunting,
but the substance of the diligent man is precious.
Prov 12:27
The soul of a lazy man desires, and has nothing;
But the soul of the diligent shall be made rich.
Prov 13:4
The way of the lazy man is like a hedge of thorns,
But the way of the upright is a highway.
Prov 15:19
A lazy man buries his hand in the bowl,
And will not so much as bring it to his mouth again.
Prov 19:24
The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold;
Therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing.
Prov 20:4
The lazy man says, "There is a lion in the road!
A fierce lion is in the streets!"
As a door turns on its hinges,
So does the lazy man on his bed.
The lazy man buries his hand in the bowl;
It wearies him to bring it back to his mouth.
The lazy man is wiser in his own eyes
Than seven men who can answer sensibly.
Prov 26:13-16
The desire of the lazy man kills him,
For his hands refuse to labor.
He covets greedily all day long,
But the righteous gives and does not spare.
Prov 21:26
I went by the field of the lazy man,
And by the vineyard of the man devoid of understanding;
And there it was, all overgrown with thorns;
Its surface was covered with nettles;
Its stone wall was broken down.
When I saw it, I considered it well;
I looked on it and received instruction:
A little sleep, a little slumber,
A little folding of the hands to rest;
So shall your poverty come like a prowler,
And your need like an armed man.
Prov 24:30-34
Do not love sleep, lest you come to poverty;
Open your eyes, and you will be satisfied with bread.
Prov 20:13
He who gathers in summer is a wise son;
He who sleeps in harvest is a son who causes shame.
Prov 10:5
A sluggard takes an hundred steps because he would not take one
in due time.
He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand.
Sloth is the mother of poverty.
A slothful hand makes a slender estate.
A slothful man never has time.
Nothing falls into the mouth of a sleeping fox.
An idle brain is the devil's workshop.
Laziness begins with cobwebs and ends with iron chains.
It is a great weariness to do nothing.
Idle people are generally busybodies.
A lazy spirit is a losing spirit.
To do nothing teaches to do ill.
Standing pools gather filth.
Idleness is the root of all evil.
Idleness teacheth much evil.
A young man idle, an old man needy.
Idleness always envies industry.
Idleness is the greatest prodigality in the world.
He that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a
great waster.
The man with time to burn never gave the world any light.
Enjoyment stops where indolence begins.
Care and diligence bring luck.
Industry is the parent of virtue.
Employment brings enjoyment.
It is a very waste of life to be and not to do.
Think of ease but work on.
He that gathereth by labor shall increase.
Prov. 13:11
The mill gains by going, and not by standing still.
Industry is the parent of success.
If pains be a pleasure to you profit will follow.
Labor overcometh all things.
God gives all things to industry.
Labor --- all labor is noble and holy.
He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand:
But the hand of the diligent maketh rich.
Prov 10:4
It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is:
What are we busy about?
Thoreau
Idleness is the bane of body and mind, the nurse of
naughtiness, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven
deadly sins, the cushion upon which the devil chiefly reposes,
and a great cause not only of melancholy, but of many other
diseases; for the mind is naturally active; and if it is not
occupied about some honest business, it rushes into mischief or
sinks into melancholy.
Burton
Idleness is the hot-bed of temptation, the cradle of disease,
the waster of time, the canker-worm of felicity. To him who
has no employment, life in a little while will have no novelty;
and when novelty is laid in the grave, the funeral of comfort
will soon follow.
Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is
the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable,
distracting musings; while labor profiteth others and
ourselves.
Baxter
If idleness do not produce vice or malevolence, it commonly
produces melancholy.
Sydney Smith
In idleness there is perpetual despair.
Carlyle
The first external revelations of the dry-rot in men is a
tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street corners without
intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be
about many places rather than any; to do nothing tangible but
to have an intention of performing a number of tangible duties
to-morrow or the day after.
Dickens
Troubles spring from idleness, and grievous toils from needless
ease: many without labor would live by their own wits only, but
they break for want of stock.
Franklin
Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man's time much
more completely, and leaves him less his own master, than any
sort of employment whatsoever.
Burke
It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only,
such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness,
languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all
our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys
both passions and virtues.
Rochefoucald
If you are idle you are on the way to ruin, and there are few
stopping places upon it. It is rather a precipice than a road.
H. W. Beecher
To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches; and
therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his
poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.
Johnson
A man who is able to employ himself innocently is never
miserable. It is the idle who are wretched. If I wanted to
inflict the greatest punishment on a fellow-creature I would
shut him alone in a dark room without employment.
Idleness among children, as among men, is the root of all evil,
and leads to no other evil more certain than ill temper.
Hannah More
So long as idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the
sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and
there is but little room for temptation.
Jeremy Taylor
Laziness grows on people; it begins in cobwebs and ends in iron
chains. The more business a man has to do the more he is able
to accomplish, for he learns to economize his time.
Sir M. Hale
It would be thought a hard government that should tax its
people one-tenth part of their time, to be employed in its
service; but idleness taxes many of us much more; sloth, by
bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like
rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is
always bright. Dost thou love life, then do not squander time,
for that is the stuff life is made of. How much more than is
necessary do we spend in sleep, forgetting that the sleeping
fox catches no poultry, and there will be sleeping enough in
the grave!
Franklin
By nature's laws, immutable and just, enjoyment stops where
indolence begins.
Pollok
I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is
efficiently destroyed, though the appetite of the brute may
survive.
Cicero
The idle levy a very heavy tax upon the industrious when, by
frivolous visitations, they rob them of their time. Such
persons beg their daily happiness from door to door, as beggars
their daily bread. A mere gossip ought not to wonder if we are
tired of him, seeing that we are indebted for the honor of his
visit solely to the circumstance of his being tired of himself.
Much bending breaks the bow; much unbending the mind.
Bacon
Employment, which Galen calls "Nature's physician," is so
essential to human happiness that indolence is justly
considered as the mother of misery.
Burton
The way to be nothing is to do nothing.
Howe
The busy man is troubled with but one devil; the idle man by a
thousand.
Spanish proverb
Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry, all things
easy. He that rises late must trot all day, and shall scarce
overtake his business at night, while laziness travels so
slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.
Franklin
Evil thoughts intrude in an unemployed mind, as naturally as
worms are generated in a stagnant pool.
Idleness is an inlet to disorder, and makes way for
licentiousness. People who have nothing to do are quickly
tired of their own company.
Collier
Idleness is the burial of a living man.
Jeremy Taylor
Absence of occupation is not rest; a mind quite vacant is a
mind distressed.
Cowper
Idleness travels very slowly, and poverty soon overtakes her.
Hunter
Idleness is the gate of all harms. An idle man is like a house
that hath no walls; the devils may enter on every side.
Chaucer
It is an undoubted truth that the less one has to do the less
time one finds to do it in. One yawns, one procrastinates, one
can do it when one will, and, therefore, one seldom does it at
all; whereas, those who have a great deal of business must
buckle to it; and then they always find time enough to do it.
Chesterfield
Do not allow idleness to deceive you; for while you give him
today he steals tomorrow from you.
Crowquill
Go to the ant, thou sluggard, learn to live, and by her busy
ways, reform thine own.
Smart
Ten thousand harms more than the ills we know, our idleness
doth hatch.
Shakespeare
What men want is not talent; it is purpose; in other words,
not the power to acheive, but the will to labor.
Bulwer
If you ask me what is the real hereditary sin of human nature,
do you think I would answer pride, or luxury, or ambition, or
egotism? No: I shall say indolence. Who conquers indolence
will conquer all the rest. Indeed all good principles must
stagnate without mental activity.
Zimmermann
There is no art or science that is too difficult for industry
to attain to; it is the gift of tongues, and makes a man
understood and valued in all countries, and by all nations; it
is the philosopher's stone, that turns all metals, and even
stones, into gold, and suffers no want to break into its
dwellings; it is the northwest passage, that brings the
merchant's ships as soon to him as he can desire: in a word, it
conquers all enemies, and makes fortune itself pay
contribution.
Clarendon
Like the bee, we should make our industry our amusement.
Goldsmith
In every rank, both great and small, it is industry that
supports us all.
Gay
God has so made the mind of man that a peculiar deliciousness
resides, in the fruits of personal industry.
Wilberforce
Industry need not wish, and he that lives upon hopes will die
fasting. There are no gains without pains. He that hath a trade
hath an estate, and he that hath a calling hath an office of
profit and honor; but then the trade must be worked at, and the
calling followed, or neither the estate nor the office will
enable us to pay our taxes. If we are industrious, we shall
never starve; for, at the workingman's house hunger looks in,
but dares not enter. Nor will the bailiff or the constable
enter, for industry pays debts, while idleness and neglect
increase them.
Franklin
There is always hope in a man who actually and earnestly works.
In idleness alone is there perpetual despair.
Carlyle
The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the
more leisure we have.
Hazlitt
Industry is not only the instrument of improvement, but the
foundation of pleasure. He who is a stranger to it may possess,
but cannot enjoy, for it is labor only which gives relish to
pleasure. It is the indispensable condition of possessing a
sound mind in a sound body, and is the appointed vehicle of
every good to man.
Blair
A man should inure himself to voluntary labor, and not give up
to indulgence and pleasure, as they beget no good constitution
of body nor knowledge of mind.
Socrates
Industry keeps the body healthy, the mind clear, the heart
whole, and the purse full.
C. Simmons
An hour's industry will do more to produce cheerfulness,
suppress evil humors, and retrieve one's affairs, than a
month's moaning. It sweetens enjoyments, and seasons our
attainments with a delightful relish.
Barrow
A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for
them better than by giving them a fortune.
Whately
The chiefest action for a man of spirit is never to be out of
action; the soul was never put into the body to stand still.
J. Webster
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