Idleness is worst, Idleness alone is without hope: work earnestly at anything, you will by degrees learn to work at almost all things.
 Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present (1843). copy citation

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Author Thomas Carlyle
Source Past and Present
Topic idleness hope
Date 1843
Language English
Reference
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Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13534/pg13534-images.html

Context

“about one thing we are entirely in earnest: The making of money. Working Mammonism does divide the world with idle game-preserving Dilettantism:—thank Heaven that there is even a Mammonism, anything we are in earnest about! Idleness is worst, Idleness alone is without hope: work earnestly at anything, you will by degrees learn to work at almost all things. There is endless hope in work, were it even work at making money. True, it must be owned, we for the present, with our Mammon- Gospel, have come to strange conclusions. We call it a Society; and go about professing openly the totalest separation, isolation.” source