3821. IDLENESS, Evils of.—
Nothing
can contribute more to your future happiness
(moral rectitude always excepted), than the
contracting a habit of industry and activity.
Of all the cankers of human happiness none
corrodes with so silent, yet so baneful an influence
as indolence. Body and mind both
unemployed, our being becomes a burden, and
every object about us loathsome, even the
dearest. Idleness begets ennui, ennui the
hypochondriac, and that a diseased body.—
To Martha Jefferson.
Ford ed., iv, 372.
(1787)
