A Quote by Frances Sargent Osgood

Labor is life! 'Tis the still water faileth; Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth; Keep the watch wound, for the dark rust assaileth.

Frances Sargent Osgood

Quote Topics

Dark Ever Idleness Keep Labor Life Rust Still Tis Watch Water Wound

Quote Author

Frances Sargent Osgood
American - Poet
June 18, 1811 - May 12, 1850

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 profit others and ourselves.

Anne Baxter

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 profit others and ourselves

Anne Baxter

It is idleness that is the curse of man - not labour. Idleness eats the heart out of men as of nations, and consumes them as rust does iron.

Samuel Smiles

There is my father whispering in my ear, Be still still still. And yet you change everything. What was the marsh like, waiting for the storm before you came and kneeled in the water? It was nothing. Watch after you leave the water, now cold and regretful, miles from home, certain of the belt on your backside, the cold shoulder, the extra chores; watch. Watch the water heal itself of your presence--not to repair injury but to offer itself again should you care to risk another strapping [...].

Paul Harding

In the practice of art... it is necessary to keep a watchful and jealous eye over ourselves; idleness, assuming the specious disguise of industry... may be employed to evade and shuffle off real labor - the real labor of thinking.

Joshua Reynolds

How beautiful the water is! To me 'tis wondrous fair-- No spot can ever lonely be If water sparkle there; It hath a thousand tongues of mirth, Of grandeur, or delight, And every heart is gladder made When water greets the sight.

Elizabeth Oakes Smith

Slavery...dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man.

Alexis de Tocqueville

A wound in the soul, coming from the rending of the spiritual body, strange as it may seem, gradually closes like a physical wound. And once a deep wound heals over and the edges seem to have knit, a wound in the soul, like a physical wound, can be healed only by the force of life pushing up from inside. This was the way Natasha's wound healed. She thought her life was over. But suddenly her love for her mother showed her that the essence of life - love - was still alive in her. Love awoke, and life awoke.

Leo Tolstoy

Everyone should be taught the nobility of labor, the heroism and splendor of honest effort. As long as it is considered disgraceful to labor, or aristocratic not to labor, the world will be filled with idleness and crime, and with every possible moral deformity.