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

Man is a tool-using animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

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

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

I am a friend of the workingman, and I would rather be his friend than be one.

It is shameful and inhuman to treat men like chattels to make money by, or to regard them merely as so much muscle or physical power.

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.

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.

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

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

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

God sells us all things at the price of labor.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.