He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

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