On Consideration

Idleness, trifling, and profitless conversation to be shunned

22. The wise man rightly admonishes us that if we are to write words of wisdom we must have leisure ; * still we must be on our guard even against leisure itself. We must accord ingly shun idleness, the mother of trifles, the step- mother of virtues. With men of the world trifles are trifles ; in the mouth of a priest they are blasphemies. Yet, if sometimes they occur in conversation, we must perhaps put up with them ; reply to them in the same strain we never ought. Rather we ought cautiously and prudently to put a stop to trifling. We should do our best to break out into something serious to which the company would listen not only with profit, but with pleasure, and refrain from idle talk. You have consecrated your mouth to the Gospel ; to open it for such things is unlawful, to accustom it to them is sacrilege. ' The lips of the priest,' says one, ' keep knowledge, and men look for the law from his mouth ' ; a certainly not trifles, or idle tales. It is not enough that buffoonery, which they glorify as wit and polish, be removed far from your mouth ; it ought also to be banished far from your ear. It is an

1 Ecclus. xxxviii. 35. - NU1. ii. 7-

6 4 On Consideration

abomination that you are moved to laughter, it is more abomin able for you to move others. But whether it is more dam nable to disparage a man, or listen to a disparager, I could not easily tell.