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

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

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.

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

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

“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.

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.

A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is an invisible labor.