There is nothing like employment, active indispensable employment, for relieving sorrow.
Source: Mansfield Park (1814)
Topic
Activity is the basic condition of a life engaged with the world — the opposite of stagnation, the proof of aliveness. The quotes gathered here celebrate purposeful action while examining its complications. Many voices here make the case for doing over waiting, for engagement over observation, for the tested idea over the merely imagined one. There is a vigorous pragmatism running through these reflections: the conviction that most things are learned by doing them, that most problems are solved through sustained effort rather than perfect planning, and that a bias toward action is generally a productive default. But the collection also includes counterweights — the wisdom of the pause, the value of reflection before acting, the danger of busyness that substitutes motion for progress. These tensions are productive rather than contradictory. They define the art of knowing when to move and when to wait — one of the most important and least formally taught capacities in any domain.
There is nothing like employment, active indispensable employment, for relieving sorrow.
Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavor.
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
The thinker serves it by his intellect, and as a light upon its path.
You live in your dressing gown, the great enemy of liberty and activity.
I would like to give you a little of my sleep that nothing, not even a cannon, can disturb.
Civilization should be something added to this, not substituted for it,
This story is really nothing at all, and the scratch is nothing too, but from one thing and another you'll perhaps understand what I mean, namely that of late everything had a je ne sais quoi that made one feel like scribbling it down on paper.
One becomes calmer regarding many things, and precisely because of that one is more fit for one's work.
Absence of occupation is not rest, A mind quite vacant is a mind distress'd.
I was very seldom idle, but having regularly divided my time according to the several daily employments that were before me, such as: first, my duty to God, and the reading the Scriptures.
Business is really pleasanter than pleasure, though it does not look so.
I can study, play, or sleep in a tempest.