“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.

Labor is no disgrace.

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

I am a friend of the workingman, and I would rather be his friend than be one.

The most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to do nothing.

A human being must have occupation, if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world.

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

The three little sentences that will get you through life. Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here.

One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat eight hours a day, nor drink for eight hours a day, nor make love for eight hours.

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

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.

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

Every man is worth just so much as the things he busies himself with.