Quotes
By the work one knows the workman.
Learn fortitude and toil from me, my son,
Ache of true toil. Good fortune learn from others.
Thus to their toils, in early summer, run
The clust'ring bees, and labour in the sun;
Led forth, in colonies, their buzzing race,
Or work the liquid sweets, and thicken to a mass.
The busy nation flies from flow'r to flow'r,
And hoards, in curious cells, the golden store;
A chosen troop before the gate attends,
To take the burdens, and relieve their friends;
Warm at the fragrant work, in bands, they drive
The drone, a lazy robber, from the hive.
So hard and huge a task it was to found the Roman people.
The human race is but a monotonous affair. Most of them labor the greater part of their time for mere subsistence; and the scanty portion of freedom which remains to them so troubles them that they use every exertion to get rid of it.
Nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labor; it is habit lost. A habit easy to abandon, difficult to resume.
A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labour and there is an invisible labour.
"You must certainly have a vast estate," said Candide to the Turk."I have no more than twenty acres of ground," he replied, "the whole of which I cultivate myself with the help of my children; and our labor keeps off from us three great evils — idleness, vice, and want."
"Work then without disputing," said Martin; "it is the only way to render life supportable."
useful hands are preferable to ones that are merely beautiful.
He did the housework as Philopoemen sawed his wood, communicating the simplicity of doing to all his actions, maintaining his dignity, for he seemed to understand that the goal ennobles everything.
Genius begins beautiful works, but only labor finishes them.
