Work Quotes
On this page Carlyle is first by count, followed by Shakespeare, Lincoln, Karl Marx and Albert Pike. The line most worth keeping is Mark Twain’s from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876): work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play of whatever a body is not obliged to do. Emerson’s May-Day and Other Pieces (1867) has a good one on the crowded hour, and Woody Allen’s joke about immortality through not dying is here as well.
Three entries are flagged. “I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours” is credited to Oscar Wilde and marked misattributed. Two sayings credited to Publilius Syrus, about doing nothing both hastily and prudently and about the man who loves labour always having something to do, are disputed.
Clamorous pauperism feasteth
While honest Labor, pining, hideth his sharp ribs.
Civilization has done little for labor except to modify the forms of its exploitation.
In fact, the drive against the Communists is aimed, above all, against the labor movement.
‘Labor contractor’ sounds so much nicer than ‘slave trader,’ wouldn’t you say?
So he with difficulty and labor hard
Mov'd on, with difficulty and labor he.
Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can't even lift them.
We don't want to commodify our people, and we don't want to be tagged as labor-exporting country.