Nothing is denied to well-directed labor; nothing is ever to be attained without it.
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.
You made your rulers mighty, gave them guards,
So now you groan 'neath slavery's heavy rod.
"Men work together," I told him from the heart,
"Whether they work together or apart."
Lo! all life this truth declares!
Laborare est orare;
And the whole earth rings with prayers.
The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing.
Ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty.
No job is ugly, unless it's made ugly by the person doing it.
A ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees.