Archive

Quotes

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

—Billie Holiday, 1956

He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.

—Plautus, c. 200 BC

Plough deep while sluggards sleep.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1758

Labor is no disgrace.

—Hesiod, c. 700 BC

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

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

—Slogan of the National Labor Union of the United States, 1866

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.

—Anatole France, 1881

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.

—Henry George, 1879
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