Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.

“Work” does not exist in a nonliterate world. The primitive hunter or fisherman did no work, any more than does the poet, painter, or thinker of today. Where the whole man is involved there is no work.

The most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to do nothing.

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat eight hours a day, nor drink for eight hours a day, nor make love for eight hours.

I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

Plough deep while sluggards sleep.

The workers are the saviors of society, the redeemers of the race.

To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

The three little sentences that will get you through life. Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here.

Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.