What you can do, or think you can, begin it." [3]

There is a Turkish proverb that the Devil tempts the Idle man, but the
Idle man tempts the Devil. I remember, says Hilliard, "a satirical poem,
in which the Devil is represented as fishing for men, and adapting his
bait to the tastes and temperaments of his prey; but the idlers were the
easiest victims, for they swallowed even the naked hook."

The mind of the idler indeed preys upon itself. "The human heart is like a
millstone in a mill; when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds and
bruises the wheat to flour; if you put no wheat, it still grinds on--and
grinds itself away." [4]

It is not work, but care, that kills, and it is in this sense, I suppose,
that we are told to "take no thought for the morrow." To "consider the
lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
and yet even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and
to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye
of little faith?" It would indeed be a mistake to suppose that lilies are
idle or imprudent. On the contrary, plants are most industrious, and
lilies store up in their complex bulbs a great part of the nourishment of
one year to quicken the growth of the next. Care, on the other hand, they
certainly know not. [5]

"Hours have wings, fly up to the author of time, and carry news of our
usage. All our prayers cannot entreat one of them either to return or
slacken his pace. The misspents of every minute are a new record against
us in heaven. Sure if we thought thus, we should dismiss them with better
reports, and not suffer them to fly away empty, or laden with dangerous