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

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

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

“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.

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

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.

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.

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