God sells us all things at the price of labor.

“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.

He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.

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.

Plough deep while sluggards sleep.

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

Labor is no disgrace.

It is shameful and inhuman to treat men like chattels to make money by, or to regard them merely as so much muscle or physical power.

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.

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

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 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.

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