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

Plough deep while sluggards sleep.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Labor is no disgrace.

“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.

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

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.