Posted on September 2, 2019 at 8:00 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
We’ve rounded up several quotes from wordsmiths that include the word labor, in honor of today’s holiday.
We don’t promise they have any further relevance to Labor Day beyond the shared word, however.
Enjoy the light reading and what we hope is a day off! (And, as always, thank you to those who keep the country running on holidays.)
The glass is half-full ...
“Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.” ― James Baldwin
“To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.” ― Samuel Johnson
“A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.” — Victor Hugo
... the glass is half-empty
“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.” — Albert Camus
“Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.” — Robert Browning
From the pages of a book
“Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another. ” ― Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
“I've always been amused by the contention that brain work is harder than manual labor. I've never known a man to leave a desk for a muck-stick if he could avoid it.” ― John Steinbeck, America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction
“Butter was plastered on to the roll with no regard for the hard labor of the cow.” ― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life
“It is hard to understand why work should be called a curse — until one remembers what bitterness forced or uncongenial labor is. But the work for which we are fitted—which we feel we are sent into the world to do — what a blessing it is and what fullness of joy it holds.” ― L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest
“But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.” ― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“Our labor preserves us from three great evils — weariness, vice, and want.” ― Voltaire, Candide
“To create a little flower is the labor of ages.” ― William Blake, The Complete Poetry and Prose