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Quotes

He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.

—Plautus, c. 200 BC

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

—Oscar Wilde, 1891

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can’t think of anything else to do.

—W.H. Auden, 1946

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

—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175

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.

—Pope Leo XIII, 1891

I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.

—Henry David Thoreau, 1855

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

—Aristotle, c. 330 BC

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

—Théophile Gautier, c. 1835
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