“753. By doing nothing we learne to do ill.”
George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
“By doing nothing men learn to do ill.”
Maxim 318
Compare Ecclesiasticus 33:27 (KJV): "idleness teacheth much evil".
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave
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Latin writerRelated quotes
“He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things.”
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections
“I was raised to feel that doing nothing was a sin. I had to learn to do nothing.”
Jenny Joseph (1932–2018) Poet
The Observer, 19 April, 1998, p. 23
“Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
1860s, Cooper Union speech (1860)
Context: It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Even though the southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can.
“False men and shams talk big and do nothing.”
Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory
Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus
“There is nothing nameable but that some men will undertake to do it for pay.”
Herman Melville book Billy Budd, Sailor
Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 21
Context: Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. In pronounced cases there is no question about them. But in some supposed cases, in various degrees supposedly less pronounced, to draw the exact line of demarcation few will undertake tho' for a fee some professional experts will. There is nothing nameable but that some men will undertake to do it for pay.
“I learned a little of beauty-- enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth…”
F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned
Source: The Beautiful and Damned
William Zinsser (1922–2015) writer, editor, journalist, literary critic, professor
Source: On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976), Chapter 13, Bits & Pieces, p. 136.