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.
When admirals extoll'd for standing still,
Of doing nothing with a deal of skill.
In every rank, or great or small,
'Tis industry supports us all.
Why, Hal, 'tis my vocation. Hal: 'tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation.
Measure not the work
Until the day's out and the labour done,
Then bring your gauges.
LABOR, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
If little labour, little are our gaines:
Man's fortunes are according to his paines.
To labour is the lot of man below;
And when Jove gave us life, he gave us woe.
How blest is he who crowns in shades like these,
A youth of labour with an age of ease.