Idleness is a necessity for the mind, as much as work. Talent is ruined by writing too much, and rusted by not writing at all.
[L’oisiveté est nécessaire aux esprits, aussi bien que le travail. On se ruine l’esprit à trop écrire; on se rouille à n’écrire pas.]Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist, philosopher, essayist, poet
Pensées [Thoughts], ch. 23 “Des Qualités de l’Écrivain [Of the Qualities of Writers],” ¶ 53 (1805) (1850 ed.) [tr. Lyttelton (1899), ch. 22, ¶ 20]
(Source)
(Source (French)). Alternate translations:The mind must rest as well as work. To write too much ruins it; to leave off writing rusts it.
[tr. Attwell (1896), ¶ 336]One ruins the mind with too much writing. One rusts it by not writing at all.
[tr. Auster (1983), 1805 entry]
Quotations about:
rust
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How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
