Work

"Has it ever been really noted to what extent a genuinely religious life … requires a leisure class, or half-leisure—I mean leisure with a good conscience, from way back, by blood, to which the aristocratic feeling that work disgraces is not altogether alien—the feeling that it makes soul and body common. And that consequently our modern, noisy, time-consuming industriousness, proud of itself, stupidly proud, educates and prepares people, more than anything else does, precisely for “unbelief.”"

"Labor is life! 'Tis the still water faileth; Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth; Keep the watch wound, for the dark rust assaileth."

"Dum vires annique sinunt, tolerate labores. Jam veniet tacito curva senecta pede."

"And all labour without any play, boys, Makes Jack a dull boy in the end."

"Nothing is impossible to industry."

"Grex venalium."

"Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening."

"When Adam dalfe and Eve spane So spire if thou may spede, Where was then the pride of man, That nowe merres his mede?"

"Hard toil can roughen form and face, And want can quench the eye's bright grace."

"Why, universal plodding poisons up The nimble spirits in the arteries, As motion and long-during action tires The sinewy vigour of the traveller."

"What work's, my countrymen, in hand? where go you With bats and clubs? The matter? speak, I pray you."

"A man who has no office to go to—I don't care who he is—is a trial of which you can have no conception."

"A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose, and due leisure, whether he be painter or ploughman."

"Many faint with toil, That few may know the cares and woe of sloth."

"Ne laterum laves."

"With starving labor pampering idle waste; To tear at pleasure the defected land."

"A workman that needeth not to be ashamed."

"Clamorous pauperism feasteth While honest Labor, pining, hideth his sharp ribs."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We have to say "we are the citizens and owners and stakeholders of this society, we can vote ourselves a dividend, and it's up to us to build an economy that serves us, because... this economy is not designed to serve human beings. It is designed to serve capital efficiency. And for a long time, that also served human beings, but increasingly it's going to be that having lots of humans working for a company is irrelevant, or even negative, for corporate success. And we can see this by the fact that 94% of the new jobs created since 2005 to 2015, were gig economy, temp and contractor jobs, because the employer said "you know what? I'd rather not have a full-time employee, I'd rather not pay health care benefits", and that's why so many Americans right now are in that position. So we have to start recognizing that the economy is changing for good, and that it's up to us, the citizens of this country, to rewrite the rules the economy to serve us. We have to make the market serve us, and not have us all be slaves to the market, because the market is not going to care one whit about us increasingly over time."

"Tools were made and born were hands, Every understands."

"If we expand the notion of work, which is something that a universal basic income would help us do, it would begin to compensate parents and caregivers; it would begin to recognize different forms of work."

"[A universal basic income] would be one of the greatest catalysts to entrepreneurship and creativity we have ever seen, and I've worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs over the years. We have to put more Americans in position to do work that they value intrinsically, instead of as a necessary means to survival."

"It is amazing what can be accomplished when nobody cares about who gets the credit."

"Jesus once said that the dead should let to bury the dead (Luke 9:60). This shows no disrespect for the dead. It shows an awareness that there are some functions in society that will be well taken care of without Christians investing their creativity in those functions. Someone else, in meeting such needs, can make a stable living. Burying the dead is still one of the businesses in which you can make a stable living. There are other such services that we can count on society handling by itself. Leadership in government and business are among these. Let us reserve our limited creativity for functions that will not be taken care of if we do not to it."

"Labour in vain; or coals to Newcastle."

"Qui laborat, orat."

"Hâtez-vous lentement; et, sans perdre courage, Vingt fois sur le métier remettez votre ouvrage."

"The dog that trots about finds a bone."

"Not all the labor of the earth Is done by hardened hands."

"And yet without labour there were no ease, no rest, so much as conceivable."

"All work, even cotton-spinning, is noble; work is alone noble."

"With hand on the spade and heart in the sky Dress the ground and till it; Turn in the little seed, brown and dry, Turn out the golden millet. Work, and your house shall be duly fed: Work, and rest shall be won; I hold that a man had better be dead Than alive when his work is done."

"Earned with the sweat of my brows."

"Quanto mas que cada uno es hijo de sus obras."

"Penelopæ telam retexens."

"Vulgo enim dicitur, Jucundi acti labores: nec male Euripides: concludam, si potero, Latine: Græcum enim hunc versum nostis omnes: Suavis laborum est præteritorum memoria."

"A truly American sentiment recognises the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil."

"American labor, which is the capital of our workingmen."

"Each one’s work will become obvious. For the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire; the fire will test the quality of each one’s work."

"Work thou for pleasure—paint or sing or carve The thing thou lovest, though the body starve— Who works for glory misses oft the goal; Who works for money coins his very soul. Work for the work's sake, then, and it may be That these things shall be added unto thee."

"Better to wear out than to rust out."

"Let us take to our hearts a lesson— No lesson could braver be— From the ways of the tapestry weavers On the other side of the sea."