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

God sells us all things at the price of labor.

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

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

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

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.

Labor is no disgrace.

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.

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

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.

“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.

Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.

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