A Quote by Plato

Prefer diligence before idleness, unless you esteem rust above brightness.

Plato

Quote Topics

Above Before Brightness Diligence Esteem Idleness Prefer Rust Unless

Quote Author

Plato
Greek - Philosopher
427 BC - 347 BC

The soul is made for action, and cannot rest till it be employed. Idleness is its rust. Unless it will up and think and taste and see, all is in vain.

Thomas Traherne

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

Just as gold tarnished in depth (cf. Jms. 5:3) cannot be properly purified and restored to its proper brightness unless it is cast in the fire and thoroughly hammered with mallets, so when the soul has been tarnished with the rust of sin and become thoroughly useless it cannot be cleansed and recover its original beauty unless it meets many trials and enter into the furnace of tribulations.

Symeon the New Theologian

As brightness is to rustiness, so labor excelleth idleness.

Thales

Idleness is to the human mind like rust to iron.

Ezra Cornell

Idleness is to the human mind like rust to iron

Ezra Cornell

Boredom is a certain sign that we are allowing our faculties to rust in idleness.

William Ralph Inge

Shun idleness. It is rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.

Voltaire

Life is not an easy matter... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.

Leon Trotsky

Anxiety is the rust of life, destroying its brightness and weakening its power. A childlike and abiding trust in Providence is its best preventive and remedy.

Tryon Edwards

Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes.

Miguel de Cervantes

Idleness of the mind is much worse than that of the body: wit, without employment, is a disease - the rust of the soul, a plague, a hell itself.

Samuel Smiles

Why should Canada, wild and unsettled as it is, impress us as an older country than the States, unless because her institutions are old? All things appeared to contend there, as I have implied, with a certain rust of antiquity, such as forms on old armor and iron guns,--the rust of conventions and formalities. It is said that the metallic roofs of Montreal and Quebec keep sound and bright for forty years in some cases. But if the rust was not on the tinned roofs and spires, it was on the inhabitants and their institutions.