Skip to content

What heart can think, or tongue express,
The harm that groweth of idleness?

— John Heywood Idleness (1576)

Another quote →

Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: "Idleness" (circa 1576), as reproduced in Samuel Orchart Beeton and William Michael Rossetti, Encyclopaedia of English and American Poetry, Vol. 1 (1873), No. 400.
Work: Idleness, 1576
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

More by John Heywood

Ye set circumquaques to make me beleue
Or thinke, that the moone is made of gréene chéese.

Proverbs (1546)

Pryde will have a fall;
For pryde goeth before and shame commeth after.

Proverbs (1546)

Let the world wagge, and take mine ease in myne Inne.

Proverbs (1546)

She is nether fish nor flesh, nor good red herring.

Proverbs (1546)

No man ought to looke a given horse in the mouth.

Proverbs (1546)

Men say, kinde will creepe where it may not goe.

Proverbs (1546)

Feare may force a man to cast beyond the moone.

Proverbs (1546)

Now for good lucke, cast an old shooe after me.

Proverbs (1546)

All John Heywood quotes →

More quotes by John Heywood

Who waite for dead men shall goe long barefoote.

Proverbs (1546)

The nere to the churche, the ferther from God.

Proverbs (1546)

Better one byrde in hand than ten in the wood.

Proverbs (1546)

God never sends th' mouth but he sendeth meat.

Proverbs (1546)

Prove your friend ere you have need, but in deed
A friend is never known till a man have need.

Proverbs (1546)

All John Heywood quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Heywood (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.