“Idleness is emptiness; the tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless.”
Hosea Ballou (1771–1852) American Universalist minister (1771–1852)
Manuscript, Sermons; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 384.
Misattributed
“Idleness is emptiness; the tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless.”
Hosea Ballou (1771–1852) American Universalist minister (1771–1852)
Manuscript, Sermons; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 384.
Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion
Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 27 (p. 578)
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XXI Letters. Personal Records. Dated Notes.
Vitruvius book De architectura
Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter IX, Sec. 3
Context: In felling a tree we should cut into the trunk of it to the very heart, and then leave it standing so that the sap may drain out drop by drop throughout the whole of it.... Then and not till then, the tree being drained dry and the sap no longer dripping, let it be felled and it will be in the highest state of usefulness.
Raymond Smullyan (1919–2017) American mathematician
An Epistemological Nightmare (1982)
“He ransacked his memory like a thief going through another man’s billfold.”
Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan
Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 1 “Between Timid and Timbuktu” (p. 22)