Quotes about Diligence

Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much more - restful.

God always works with workers and moves with movers, but He does not sit with sitters.

I am much afraid that the universities will prove to be the great gates of hell, unless they diligently labour in explaining the Holy Scriptures, and engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not unceasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt.

Hence the best service that anybody can render God is diligently to hear and read God's Word.

It is indeed pitiful that a monk who does nothing else night and day except chastise his body achieves nothing by this diligence than to be cast into the flames of hell.

In the same way, people who sleep when they should be working are testing God. Because God promised to take care of them, they assume that God will find a way. But in Proverbs, God told them to work: "Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth" (Proverbs 10:4).

Even if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry; sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, "Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well."

All play and no work make Jack a poor boy.

Rest as if you'll live forever; work as if you'll die today.

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

Hard work and diligence are essential to success, but they require an internal motivation. That internal motivation is vision.

Running taught me valuable lessons. In cross-country competition, training counted more than intrinsic ability, and I could compensate for a lack of natural aptitude with diligence and discipline. I applied this in everything I did. Even as a student, I saw many young men who had great natural ability, but who did not have the self-discipline and patience to build on their endowment.