A human being must have occupation, if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world.
—Dorothy L. Sayers, 1947Quotes
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.
—Roald Dahl, 1984Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.
—Ulysses S. Grant, 1877Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.
—Anatole France, 1881Toil 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.
—Herman Melville, 1849I am a friend of the workingman, and I would rather be his friend than be one.
—Clarence Darrow, 1932“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.
—Marshall McLuhan, 1964The most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to do nothing.
—Théophile Gautier, c. 1835He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCEight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will.
—Slogan of the National Labor Union of the United States, 1866You 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.
—Billie Holiday, 1956A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
—Victor Hugo, 1862God sells us all things at the price of labor.
—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500