Labor

"Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice and need."

"Too long, that some may rest, Tired millions toil unblest."

"But when dread Sloth, the Mother of Doom, steals in, And reigns where Labour's glory was to serve, Then is the day of crumbling not far off."

"In books, or work, or healthful play."

"There will be little drudgery in this better ordered world. Natural power harnessed in machines will be the general drudge. What drudgery is inevitable will be done as a service and duty for a few years or months out of each life; it will not consume nor degrade the whole life of anyone."

"Ah, little recks the laborer, How near his work is holding him to God, The loving Laborer through space and time."

"Thine to work as well as pray, Clearing thorny wrongs away; Plucking up the weeds of sin, Letting heaven's warm sunshine in."

"Ah vitam perdidi operse nihil agendo."

"The day is short, the labor long, the workers are idle, and reward is great, and the Master is urgent."

"The most unhappy of all men is the man who cannot tell what he is going to do, who has got no work cut-out for him in the world, and does not go into it. For work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind,—honest work, which you intend getting done."

"Do the day's work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a stand-patter, but don't be a stand-patter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but don't be a demagogue. Don't hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don't hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table. Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong. Don't hurry to legislate. Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation."

"Our greatest weariness comes from work not done."

"If you work for a man, in heaven's name work for him! If he pays you wages that supply you your bread and butter, work for him—speak well of him, think well of him, stand by him and stand by the institution he represents. I think if I worked for a man I would work for him. I would not work for him a part of the time, and the rest of the time work against him. I would give an undivided service or none. If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness."

"In the Great Society, work shall be an outlet for man's interests and desires. Each individual shall have full opportunity to use his capacities in employment which satisfies personally and contributes generally to the quality of the Nation's life."

"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker."

"As good play for nothing, you know, as work for nothing."

"Workers of the world, unite!"

"You must obey this now for a Law, that he that will not worke shall not eate (except by sicknesse he be disabled:) for the labours of thirtie or fortie honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintaine an hundred and fiftie idle loyterers."

"The power of arbitrarily dismissing those in one's employ, is a power exercised in a great degree over a vast number of persons in this country, without their having any redress at law. Put the case of a day labourer or ordinary servant. You may refuse to give him a character, and he has no redress. If you give him a false character, he has the means of redress, but that is of a very different kind. And this is the law of the land."

"The possession of the servant is the possession of the master."

"Apprentices and servants are characters perfectly distinct: the one receives instruction, the other a stipulated price for his labour."

"No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him. There is always work, and tools to work withal, for those who will."

"Let parents who hate their offspring rear them to hate labor, and to inherit riches; and before long they will be stung by every vice, racked by its poison, and damned by its penalty."

"Blessed is the man who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. Know thy work, and do it; and work at it like Hercules. One monster there is in the world, the idle man."

"Labor is sweet, for Thou hast toiled, And care is light, for Thou hast cared; Let not our works with self be soiled, Nor in unsimple ways ensnared. Through life's long day and death's dark night, O gentle Jesus! be our light."

"No man is base who does a true work; for true action is the highest being. No man is miserable that does a true work; for right action is the highest happiness. No man is isolated that does a true work; for useful action is the highest harmony — it is the highest harmony with nature and with souls — it is living association with men — and it is practical fellowship with God."

"Man must work. That is certain as the sun. But he may work grudgingly, or he may work gratefully; he may work as a man, or he may work as a machine. He cannot always choose his work, but he can do it in a generous temper, and with an up-looking heart. There is no work so rude, that he may not exalt it; there is no work so impassive, that he may not breathe a soul into it; there is no work so dull, that he may not enliven it."

"A man's labors must pass like the sunrises and sunsets of the world. The next thing, not the last, must be his care."

"Labor is not, as some have erroneously supposed, a penal clause of the original curse. There was labor, bright, healthful, unfatiguing, in unfallen Paradise. By sin, labor became drudgery — the earth was restrained from her spontaneous fertility, and the strong arm of the husbandman was required, not to develop, but to "subdue" it. But labor in itself is noble, and is necessary for the ripe unfolding of the highest life."

"Labor is the true alchemist that beats out in patient transmutation the baser metals into gold."

"God does not give excellence to men but as the reward of labor."

"Nothing is denied to well-directed labor; nothing is ever to be attained without it."

"The virtues, like the body,become strong more by labor than by nourishment."

"The consistent anarchist, then, should be a socialist, but a socialist of a particular sort. He will not only oppose alienated and specialized labor and look forward to the appropriation of capital by the whole body of workers, but he will also insist that this appropriation be direct, not exercised by some elite force acting in the name of the proletariat."

"They are usually denominated labor-saving machines, but it would be more just to call them labor-doing machines."

"Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor."

"The idea that work is something apportioned out by men leaves people discontent with their portion and dubious about whether work is a good thing at all. … The ancient injunction to labor fades when we regard our work as cut out for us by men, who, by present dogma, are no better than ourselves. That curious modern hypostatization “service” is often called in to substitute for the now incomprehensible doctrine of vocation. It tries to secure subordination by hypothesizing something larger than the self, which turns out, however, to be only a multitude of selfish selves. The familiar change from quality to quantity may again be noted; one serves not the higher part of the self (this entails hierarchy) … but merely consumer demand. And who admires those at the top of a hierarchy of consumption? Man as a consuming animal is thus seen to be not enough."

"The bourgeoisie first betrayed society through capitalism and finance, and now labor betrays it by embracing a scheme of things which sees profit only, not duty and honor, in work. This view will seem hopelessly unrealistic to those who do not admit that sentiment toward the whole is the only ultimate means of measuring value."

"The actual writing of a novel is extremely hard work, but it's very hard to persuade a reader that it is."

"Labor is not a commodity, but a creative force."

"Il est bien malaisé (puisqu’il faut enfin m’expliquer) d’ôter à des insensés des chaînes qu’ils révèrent."

"Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and...Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."

"Nothing tends to materialize man and to deprive his work of the faintest trace of mind more than the extreme division of labor."

"It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?"

"Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction,—a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse."

"This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! ... It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. ... If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, … it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for—business! I think there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business."

"The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter — for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes."

"Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine."

"I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers. Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life-energy. I never paid such a price. On the contrary, I have thrived on my thoughts."

"Laborare est orare. [To work is to pray.] By the Puritan moralist the ancient maxim is repeated with a new and intenser significance. The labor which he idealizes is not simply a requirement imposed by nature, or a punishment for the sin of Adam. It is itself a kind of ascetic discipline, more rigorous than that demanded of any order of mendicants—a discipline imposed by the will of God, and to be undergone, not in solitude, but in the punctual discharge of secular duties. It is not merely an economic means, to be laid aside when physical needs have been satisfied. It is a spiritual end, for in it alone can the soul find health, and it must be continued as an ethical duty long after it has ceased to be a material necessity."