quotations about labor
It is good to labor; it is also good to rest from labor.
HORACE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Providence has decreed that those common acquisitions, money, gems, plate, noble mansions, and dominion, should be sometimes bestowed on the indolent and unworthy; but those things which constitute our true riches, and which are properly our own, must be procured by our own labor.
ERASMUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Labor, with its coarse raiment and its bare right arm, has gone forth in the earth, achieving the truest conquests and rearing the most durable monuments. It has opened the domain of matter and the empire of the mind. The wild beast has fled before it, and the wilderness has fallen back.... its triumphal march is the progress of civilization.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
In proportion as labor is divided, arts are perfected.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Labour is the source of every blessing.
AESOP
"The Brazier and His Dog", Aesop's Fables
Pleasure is labour too, and tires as much.
WILLIAM COWPER
Hope
Labour is good for a man, bracing up his energies to conquest,
And without it life is dull, the man perceiving himself useless.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
He that labors is tempted by one devil; he that is idle, by a thousand.
ITALIAN PROVERB
There is no right more universal and more sacred, because lying so near the root of existence, than the right of men to their own labor.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.
LEO TOLSTOY
Anna Karenina
One of the huge disadvantages of being an American is that most of the hard labor is done for us.
JOSH DAFFERN
"10 Things That Will Ruin Your 2016 If You're Not Careful", Patheos, February 17, 2016
I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER
remarks at the 75th Anniversary Celebration of Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn., "To Men of Vision and High Purpose", May 3, 1941
Labour is the root of riches.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The qualities of labor, like tools,
Grow brighter when used.
SUSAN H. BOGGS
"Labor", Poems
Without work men are utterly undone.
NEVIL SHUTE
Ruined City
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
attributed, A Martin Luther King Treasury
Labour, though it was at first inflicted as a curse, seems to be the gentlest of all punishments, and is fruitful of a thousand blessings.
JOHN ROGERS PITMAN
"Goodness of God", A Second Course of Sermons for the Year
Our experience tells us what is labour and recreation.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Under the regime of property, labor is not a condition, but a privilege.
PIERRE-JOSEPH PROUDHON
What is Property?
The general tendency towards an eight-hour working day has undoubtedly been healthful, and it is wise for the State to set a good example as an employer of labor, both as to the number of hours of labor exacted and as to paying a just and reasonable wage.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
memorandum filed with Assembly Bill number 2222 entitled "An Act to amend chapter four hundred and fifteen of the laws of eighteen hundred and ninety-seven, entitled 'An Act in relation to labor'"