This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Decay is inherent in all component things. Work out your own salvation with diligence." - Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL
"Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness — its opposite — never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes." - Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
"Diligence is the mother of good luck, and God gives all thins to industry. Then plough deep while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and to keep." - Benjamin Franklin
"If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality, since lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough always proves little enough. Let us then be up and doing, and doing to the purpose; so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity." - Benjamin Franklin
"The fruit we wish to pick tomorrow lies hidden in the seed of today. The goals we are to reach and the problems we are to solve tomorrow depend on today's diligence, hope and faith, today's conviction of the almightiness of good." - Ralph E. Johnson
"To do nothing is in every man’s power; we can never want an opportunity of omitting duties. The lapse to indolence is soft and imperceptible, because it is only a mere cessation of activity; but the return to diligence is difficult, because it implies a change from rest to motion, from privation to reality." -
"Wealth is nothing in itself, it is not useful but when it departs from us; its value is found only in that which it can purchase, which, if we suppose it put to its best use by those that posses it, seems not much to deserve the desire or envy of a wise man. It is certain that, with regard to corporal enjoyment, money can neither open new avenues to pleasure, nor block up the passages to anguish. Disease and infirmity still continue to torture and enfeeble, perhaps exasperated by luxury, or promoted by softness. With respect to the mind, it has rarely been observed, that wealth contributes much to quicken the discernment, enlarge the capacity, or elevate the imagination; but may, by hiring flattery, or laying diligence asleep, confirm error, and harden stupidity." -
"Humility, liberality, chastity, meekness, temperance, brotherly love, and diligence, are the virtues contrary to the Seven Capital Sins... Prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, are the Four Cardinal Virtues." - John McCaffrey
"I will this day try to live a simple, sincere, and serene life; repelling promptly every thought of discontent, anxiety, discouragement, impurity, and self-seeking; cultivating cheerfulness, magnanimity, charity, and the habit of holy silence; exercising economy in expenditure, carefulness in conversation, diligence in appointed service, fidelity to every trust, and a childlike trust in God." - John H. Vincent, fully John Heyl Vincent
"Accuracy and diligence are much more necessary to a lawyer than great comprehension of mind, or brilliancy of talent." - Daniel Webster
"I know no such thing as genius; it is nothing but labor and diligence." - William Hogarth
"Wealth is nothing in itself; it is not useful but when it departs from us; its value is found only in that which it can purchase. As to corporeal enjoyment, money can neither open new avenues of pleasure, nor block up the passages of anguish. Disease and infirmity still continue to torture and enfeeble, perhaps exasperated by luxury, or promoted by softness. With respect to the mind, it has rarely been observed that wealth contributes much to quicken the discernment or elevate the imagination, but may, by hiring flattery, or laying diligence asleep, confirm error and harden stupidity." -
"Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do which must be done, whether you like it or not. Being forced to work, or forced to do your best, will bred in you temperance, self-control, diligence, strength of will, content, and a hundred other virtues which the idle never know." - Charles Kingsley
"Diligence overcomes Difficulties: Sloth makes them." - Benjamin Franklin
"What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"What is the use of such terrible diligence as many tire themselves out with, if they always postpone their exchange of smiles with Beauty and Joy to cling to irksome duties and relations?" - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
"Let a wise man, like a driver of horses, exert diligence in restraint of his senses, straying among seductive sensual objects." - Laws of Manu, Manava-dharma-sastra NULL
"Diligence is the Mother of Good luck." - Benjamin Franklin
"Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence." - Abigail Adams
"Few things are impossible to diligence and skill... Great works are performed, not by strength, but perseverance." - Author Unknown NULL
"I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time." - Charles Dickens, fully Charles John Huffam Dickens
"The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention." - Francis Bacon
"I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease." - John Donne
"Want is a bitter and hateful good, because its virtues are not understood; yet many things, impossible to thought, have been by need to full perfection brought; the daring of the soul proceeds from thence, sharpness of wit and active diligence; prudence at once, and fortitude it gives; and, if in patience taken, mends our lives." - John Dryden
"All things are attained by diligence and toil." - Menander, aka Menander of Athens NULL
"He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor." - Menander, aka Menander of Athens NULL
"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention." - Francis Bacon
"Nothing is so difficult that diligence cannot master it." - Madagascan Proverbs
"If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. ... I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor." - Nikola Tesla
"Equal diligence and severity are to be used in examining and selecting candidates for Holy Orders. For, far from the clergy be the love of novelty! God hateth the proud and obstinate mind." - Pope Pius X, aka Saint Pope Pius X and Pope of the Eucharist, born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto NULL
"If experience has established any one thing in this world, it has established this: that it is well for any great class and description of men in society to be able to say for itself what it wants, and not to have other classes, the so-called educated and intelligent classes, acting for it as its proctors, and supposed to understand its wants and to provide for them.... A class of men may often itself not either fully understand its wants, or adequately express them; but it has a nearer interest and a more sure diligence in the matter than any of its proctors, and therefore a better chance of success." - R. H. Tawney, fully Richard Henry Tawney
"Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know." - Charles Kingsley
"Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance." - Robertson Davies
"With all this wide and beautiful creation before me, the restless soul longs to enjoy its liberty and rest beyond its bound." - Saint Teresa of Ávila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL
"Give, expecting nothing thereof." - Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis
"Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Ignorance is a mere privation, by which nothing can be produced; it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence - an exemption granted only to invariable virtue." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Were a man not to marry a second time, it might be concluded that his first wife had given him a disgust to marriage; but by taking a second wife, he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"All the things in this world are gifts of God, created for us, to be the means by which we can come to know him better, love him more surely, and serve him more faithfully." - Ignatius Loyola, aka Saint Ignatius of Loyola
"Excessive taxation... will carry reason and reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election." - Thomas Jefferson