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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

Hang work! I wish that all the year were holiday; I am sure that Indolence—indefeasible Indolence—is the true state of man.

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

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

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