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

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

Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will.

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.

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

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

Every man is worth just so much as the things he busies himself with.

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

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.

God sells us all things at the price of labor.

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.

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.

Hang work! I wish that all the year were holiday; I am sure that Indolence—indefeasible Indolence—is the true state of man.