If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper that did his job well.

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

He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.

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.

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

I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.

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.

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.

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

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

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can’t think of anything else to do.

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