“Idleness is hell's fishhook for catching souls.” — St. Ignatius of Loyola

“From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality.” — Henry David Thoreau

“Sloth is sluggishness of the mind which neglects to begin good...it is evil in its effect, if it so oppresses man as to draw him away entirely from good deeds.” — St. Thomas Aquinas

“Diligence overcomes difficulties; sloth makes them.” — Benjamin Franklin

“Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright.” — Benjamin Franklin

“Flee sloth; for the indolence of the soul is the decay of the body.” — Cato the Younger

“Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues.” — Charles Caleb Colton

“Sloth is the desire for ease, even at the expense of doing the known will of God. Whatever we do in life requires effort. Everything we do is to be a means of salvation. The slothful person is unwilling to do what God wants because of the effort it takes to do it. Sloth becomes a sin when it slows down and even brings to a halt the energy we must expend in using the means to salvation.” — John Hardon

“Sloth is most often evidenced in busyness...in frantic running around, trying to be everything to everyone, and then having no time to listen or pray, no time to become the person who is doing these things.” — Eugene H. Peterson

“An unclean person is universally a slothful one.” — Henry David Thoreau

“No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Knowledge is praised and desired by multitudes whom her charms could never rouse from the couch of sloth; whom the faintest invitation of pleasure draws away from their studies; to whom any other method of wearing the day is more eligible than the use of books, and who are more easily engaged by any conversation than such as may rectify their notions or enlarge their comprehension.” — Samuel Johnson

“Don't yield to that alluring witch, laziness, or else be prepared to surrender all that you have won in your better moments.” — Horace

"Be sure that you live not idly, but in some constant business of a lawful calling, so far as you have bodily strength. Idleness is a constant sin, and labour is a duty. Idleness is but the devil’s home for temptation, and for unprofitable, distracting musings. Labour profiteth others and ourselves; both soul and body need it. Six days must thou labour, and must not eat 'The bread of idleness.' (Prov. 31:13-27.) God hath made it our duty, and will bless us in His appointed way. I have known grievous, despairing melancholy cured and turned into a life of godly cheerfulness, principally by setting upon constancy and diligence in the business of families and callings.” — Richard Baxter

“The proud person is Satan’s throne, and the idle man his pillow.” — Charles Bridges

“By doing nothing men learn to do evil things. It is easy slipping out of an idle life into an evil and wicked life. Yes, an idle life is of itself evil, for man was made to be active, not to be idle. Idleness is a mother-sin, a breeding-sin; it is the devil’s cushion – on which he sits; and the devil’s anvil – on which he frames very great and very many sins.” — Thomas Brooks

“It is not how you feel that determines how you act. It is how you act that determines how you feel.” — William James

“The devil visits idle men with his temptations. God visits industrious men with His favors.” — Matthew Henry

“God has hidden every precious thing in such a way that it is a reward to the diligent, a prize to the earnest, but a disappointment to the slothful soul. All nature is arrayed against the lounger and the idler. The nut is hidden in its thorny case; the pearl is buried beneath the ocean waves; the gold is imprisoned in the rocky bosom of the mountains; the gem is found only after you crush the rock which encloses it; the very soil gives its harvest as a reward to the laboring farmer. So truth and God must be earnestly sought.” — A.B. Simpson

“Be an uncommon Christian. Average Christian is ‘half way up between the valley and the peak…halfway where we used to be and where we ought to be.’ When we hear the call to take up the cross and follow toward the hills we begin to bargain with God like a huckster. What will it cost me in work? What will it cost me in money? What will it cost me in relationships? Is it safe? Is it convenient? Is it fun? Is it popular? – You’ll never be more than the common Christian until you give up your own interests and cease to defend yourself and put yourself in the hands of God and let Him alone. We want to help God out. No, no give yourself to God. Turn yourself over to God and say, ‘Father, I’m sick of being a common Christian. I’m sick of this mediocrity. I’m sick of being half-way up to where I want to be.’” — A.W. Tozer

“In order to succeed in prayer, it should be done when we first awaken, when our whole being is calm and recollected. We need to make our meditation before anything else.” — St. Peter Julian Eymard

“Awake, my soul, awake! show thy spirit, arouse thy senses, shake off the sluggishness of that deadly heaviness that is upon thee, begin to take care for thy salvation. Let the idleness of vain imaginations be put to flight, let go of sloth, hold fast to diligence. Be instant in holy meditations, cleave to the good things which are of God: leaving that which is temporal, give heed to that which is eternal. Now in this godly employment of thy mind, to what canst thou turn thy thoughts more wholesomely and profitably than to the sweet contemplations of thy Creator’s immeasurable benefits toward thee.” — St. Anselm of Canterbury