In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it.

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

Plough deep while sluggards sleep.

“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.

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

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.

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

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