Man must be doing something, or fancy that he is doing something, for in him throbs the creative impulse; the mere basker in the sunshine is not a natural, but an abnormal man.

Plough deep while sluggards sleep.

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper that did his job well.

Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is an invisible labor.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Labor is no disgrace.

He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.

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

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

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.

A human being must have occupation, if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world.

I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.