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S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Employment

Life will frequently languish, even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms their main pursuit.

Hugh Blair.

Employment, which Galen calls “nature’s physician,” is so essential to human happiness that indolence is justly considered the mother of misery.

Robert Burton.

Exert your talents and distinguish yourself, and don’t think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness, drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.

Dr. Samuel Johnson.

Next to reading, meditation, and prayer, there is nothing that so secures our hearts from foolish passions, nothing that preserves so holy and wise a frame of mind, as some useful, humble employment of ourselves.

William Law.

The great principle of human satisfaction is engagement.

William Paley.

The wise prove, and the foolish confess, by their conduct, that a life of employment is the only life worth leading.

William Paley.