He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.

“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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Labor is no disgrace.

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

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

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

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