When ill news comes too late to be serviceable to your neighbor, keep it to yourself. [ Zimmermann ]

It is thought and digestion which makes books serviceable, and gives health and vigor to the mind. [ T. Fuller ]

Every real master of speaking or writing uses his personality as he would any other serviceable material. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]

God overrules all mutinous accidents, brings them under His laws, of fate, and makes them all serviceable to His purpose. [ Marcus Antoninus ]

No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again. [ John Ruskin ]

Thou mayst as well expect to grow stronger by always eating, as wiser by always reading. It is thought and digestion which make books serviceable, and give health and vigor to the mind. [ Thomas Fuller ]

So also it is good not always to make a friend of the person who is expert in twining himself around us; but, after testing them, to attach ourselves to those who are worthy of our affection and likely to be serviceable to us. [ Plutarch ]

Business in a certain sort of men is a mark of understanding, and they are honored for it. Their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being rocked in a cradle. They may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their friends as troublesome to themselves. No one distributes his money to others, but every one therein distributes his time and his life. There is nothing of which we are so prodigal as of those two things, of which to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful. [ Montaigne ]