LABOR QUOTES III

quotations about labor

Labor quote

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 has a bitter root, but a sweet taste.

HALM

attributed, Day's Collacon


The only real riches are labor; everything else is but the sign or abuse of it.

LEMONTEY

attributed, A Concise Exposition of the Doctrine of Association


How happy he who crowns in shades like these, A youth of labour with an age of ease.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

The Deserted Village

Tags: Oliver Goldsmith


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

Tags: Martin Farquhar Tupper


Our experience tells us what is labour and recreation.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


The motto marked upon our foreheads, written upon our door-posts, channeled in the earth, and wafted upon the waves, is and must be, "Labor is honorable, and idleness is dishonorable."

T. CARLYLE

attributed, Life's Common Way


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


Under the regime of property, labor is not a condition, but a privilege.

PIERRE-JOSEPH PROUDHON

What is Property?


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


It is good to labor; it is also good to rest from labor.

HORACE

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Horace


But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.

LEO TOLSTOY

Anna Karenina

Tags: Leo Tolstoy


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


Labor, laughing at difficulties, spans majestic rivers, carries viaducts over marshy swamps, suspends bridges over deep ravines, pierces the solid mountains with the dark tunnel, blasting rocks and filling hollows, and, while linking together all nations of the earth pities the proud fool and laughs him to scorn. He shall pass to dust, forgotten; but Labor will live forever, glorious in its conquests and monuments, and will keep organized no matter how many temporary defeats it endures.

NEWMAN HALL

"The Dignity of Labor", The Golden Treasury of Poetry and Prose


Without work men are utterly undone.

NEVIL SHUTE

Ruined City


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

Tags: Henry Ward Beecher


The qualities of labor, like tools,
Grow brighter when used.

SUSAN H. BOGGS

"Labor", Poems


Labour is the source of every blessing.

AESOP

"The Brazier and His Dog", Aesop's Fables

Tags: Aesop


The lot of man is ceaseless labor, Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder.

T. S. ELIOT

The Rock

Tags: T. S. Eliot


It has been said "that he who works prays;" and certainly one of the best prayers that a working man with a large and young family can offer up is to steadily stick to his work. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, was the son of a working carpenter, and it is believed by many Theologians that our Saviour followed that trade (whatever it was in those days) until he was thirty years of age. If then God's only Son, the right hand of the throne of heaven, the King of men, the only sinless, spotless, perfect child, youth, and man, was a labourer, IS THERE NOT DIGNITY IN LABOUR? The happiest man is the working man, and if there is any real happiness in this world it is in the neat but humble cottage, where peace and love reign, and the industrious wife is the true helpmate of the working man; and not in the palace, where the bloated aristocrat, recovering from an attack of gout or some other punishment for excess, sits, trying to kill time, with bleared eyes (and often of idiotic expression) gazing into vacancy, surrounded by all that wealth can buy or human ingenuity contrive to make him comfortable, but with all not happy.

T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH

"On the Dignity of Labour", Short Essays