"753. By doing nothing we learne to do ill."

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More by George Herbert

“Wit's an unruly engine, wildly strikingSometimes a friend, sometimes the engineer.”

“A verse may finde him,who a sermon fliesAnd turns delight into a sacrifice.”

“It (my book) is a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed between God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus, my Master, in whose service I have now found perfect freedom.”

“By no means run in debt: take thine own measure.Who cannot live on twenty pound a year,Cannot on forty.”

“Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie:A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby.”

“Drink not the third glass, which thou canst not tame,When once it is within thee.”

Resonant Thoughts

"If you wish at once to do nothing and to be respectable now-a-days, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study."

— Leslie Stephen

Social Activism1832–1904

#knowledge

"What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing. It is not included in man's knowledge. Of course the void is nothingness. By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does no…"

— Miyamoto Musashi

Literature1583–1645

#knowledge

"All relatively complete knowledge is formed in two stages: the first stage is perceptual knowledge, the second is rational knowledge, the latter being the development of the former to a higher stage."

— Mao Zedong

Politics1893–1976

#knowledge

"Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money, — he never knows. He doesn't make it to do anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it. "What will you make of what you have got?" …"

— John Ruskin

Art1819–1900

#knowledge