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.

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

God sells us all things at the price of labor.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

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

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.

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

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.

Plough deep while sluggards sleep.

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

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.

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.