It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
--
Letter to Harrison Blake (16 November 1857)Henry David Thoreau
» Henry David Thoreau - all quotes »
If anybody's going to be a writer, he's got to be able to say, "This has got to come first, to write has to come first." That is, if you have a job, you have to scant your job a little bit. You can't be an industrious apprentice if you're going to be a poet. You've got to pretend to be an industrious apprentice but really steal time from the boss. Or from your wife, or somebody, you see. The time's got to come from somewhere. And also this passivity, this "waitingness," has to be achieved some way. It can't be treated as a job. It's got to be treated as a non-job or an anti-job.
Robert Penn Warren
To do great work a man must be very idle as well as very industrious.
Samuel (novelist Butler
An experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar.
Samuel Langhorne (Mark Twain) Clemens
An experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar.
Mark Twain
I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
Thomas Jefferson
Thoreau, Henry David
Thornbury, George Walter
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