Sloth, indeed, does affect ease and quiet, but by affecting them does lose them; it hates labor and trouble, but by hating them does incur them. It is a self-destroying vice, not suffering those who cherish it to be idle but creating much work and multiplying pains unto them; engaging them into diverse necessities and straits which they cannot support with ease; and out of which, without extreme trouble, they cannot extricate themselves.
Diligence, as it relates to trade, is a habitual employment of our bodily and mental powers about our proper callings in a just and happy medium between idleness, supineness, and trifling curiosity on the one hand and slavish drudging and immoderate care on the other.