A Quote by Benjamin Franklin

Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues. Be active in business, that temptation may miss her aim; the bird that sits is easily shot.

Benjamin Franklin

Quote Topics

Active Aim Bird Business Dead Easily Her Idleness May Miss Sea Shot Swallows Temptation Virtues

Quote Author

Benjamin Franklin
American - Politician
January 17, 1706 - April 17, 1790

Rather do what is nothing to the purpose than be idle; that the devil may find thee doing. The bird that sits is easily shot, when fliers scape the fowler. Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all the virtues, and the self-made sepulchre of a living man.

Francis Quarles

Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues

Benjamin Franklin

The Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea are made of the same water. It flows down, clean and cool, from the heights of Herman and the roots of the cedars of Lebanon. the Sea of Galilee makes beauty of it, the Sea of Galilee has an outlet. It gets to give. It gathers in its riches that it may pour them out again to fertilize the Jordan plain. But the Dead Sea with the same water makes horror. For the Dead Sea has no outlet. It gets to keep.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

Little miss is taught by her mamma that she must never speak before she is spoken to. On this she sits bridling up her head, looking from one to the other, in hopes of being called to and addressed by the name of pretty miss.... But if this should not happen and no one should take any notice of her, she is ready to cry at the neglect. But should there be another miss in the room caressed and taken notice of whilst she is thus overlooked, it will be impossible for her to contain her tears, and blubbering is the word.

Sarah Fielding

Of all our faults, the one we avow most easily is idleness; we persuade ourselves that it is allied to all the peaceable virtues,and as for the others, that it does not destroy them utterly, but only suspends the exercise of their functions.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Let woman then go on-not asking favors, but claiming as a right the removal of all hindrances to her elevation in the scale of being-let her receive encouragement for the proper cultivation of all her powers, so that she may enter profitably into the active business of life.

Lucretia Mott

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

One of the most humbling gigs I've ever had was I was paid by a neighbor to go get a dead bird out of her house. She was kind of a high up in the music business, and she knew that I needed cash, and I used to do some yard work for her.

Walker Hayes

Song in the Manner of Housman" O woe, woe, People are born and die, We also shall be dead pretty soon Therefore let us act as if we were dead already. The bird sits on the hawthorn tree But he dies also, presently. Some lads get hung, and some get shot. Woeful is this human lot. Woe! woe, etcetera.... London is a woeful place, Shropshire is much pleasanter. Then let us smile a little space Upon fond nature's morbid grace. Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera.

Ezra Pound

It's easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she's never been anything but dead, than to miss her at all the places where she was alive.

John Scalzi

She fell into a deep pool of sticky water, which eventually closed over her head. She saw nothing and heard nothing but a faint booming sound, which was the sound of the sea rolling over her head. While all her tormentors thought that she was dead, she was not dead, but curled up at the bottom of the sea.

Virginia Woolf

But reading is not idleness?it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental.

Stephen Spender

Happiness don't ask to see who you be afore her sits down at your table. 'Er comes and sits with them as know how to welcome her and keep her the willing guest.

Jean Plaidy

Sometimes I screw up in the game, I miss a shot or I miss a rebound, and I fight myself. I am like, 'Why I miss that shot? Come on, what are you doing?' I am fighting myself.