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.

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

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.

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

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

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

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.