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

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

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

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.

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

Hang work! I wish that all the year were holiday; I am sure that Indolence—indefeasible Indolence—is the true state of man.

I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.

“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.