Labor Quotes - Page 23

• The white man has settled like a locust over Africa, and, like the locusts in early morning, cannot take flight for the heaviness of the dew on their wings. But the dew that weights the white man is the money that he makes from our labor.

  Doris Lessing

  Morning, Men, White Man

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• Where love is there is no labor; and if there be labor, that labor is loved.

  Jane Austen

  Love Is, Ifs

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• the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.

  Agnes Repplier

  Essentials, Critics, Reader

  Agnes Repplier (1888). “Books and Men”

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• If you want knowledge, you must toil for it; if food, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it: toil is the law.

  John Ruskin

  Law, Toil, Want

  John Ruskin (1871). “Selections from the Writings of John Ruskin”, p.439

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• But if, indeed, there be a nobler life in us than in these strangely moving atoms; if, indeed, there is an eternal difference between the fire which inhabits them, and that which animates us,--it must be shown, by each of us in his appointed place, not merely in the patience, but in the activity of our hope, not merely by our desire, but our labor, for the time when the dust of the generations of men shall be confirmed for foundations of the gates of the city of God.

  John Ruskin

  Moving, Men, Fire

  John Ruskin (1873). “The Ethics of the Dust: Ten Lectures to Little Housewives on the Elements of Crystallisation”, p.237

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• There is large difference between indolent impatience of labor and intellectual impatience of delay, large difference between leaving things unfinished because we have more to do or because we are satisfied with what we have done.

  John Ruskin

  Differences, Leaving, Intellectual

  John Ruskin (1855). “Modern Painters: pt. 4. Of many things”, p.82

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• domestic work is the most elementary form of labor. It is suitable for those with the intelligence of rabbits. All it requires is cleanlines, tidiness and quickness - not moral or intellectual qualities at all, but merely the outward and visible signs of health.

  Rebecca West

  Intellectual, Quality, Rabbits

  Rebecca West (1982). “The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17”

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• After days and nights of incredible labor and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life. Nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Night, Causes, Generations

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1869). “Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus”, p.41

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• nothing is more common than to mistake the sign for the thing itself; nor is any practice more frequent than that of endeavoring to acquire the exterior mark, without once thinking to labor after the interior grace.

  Hannah More

  Mistake, Thinking, Practice

  Hannah More (1835). “The works of Hannah More”, p.365

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• Duty itself is supreme delight when love is the inducement and labor. By such a principle the ignorant are enlightened, the hard-hearted softened, the disobedient reformed, and the faithful encouraged.

  Hosea Ballou

  Love Is, Faithful, Ignorant

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• a great deal of the wealth at the top is built on the low-wage labor of the poor. Take Wal-Mart, our largest private employer and premiere exploiter of the working class. ... You think it's a coincidence that this union-busting low-wage retail empire happens to have generated a $65 billion family fortune?

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Thinking, Class, Retail

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2008). “Going to Extremes: Notes from a Divided Nation”, Granta Books (UK)

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• Labor is like motherhood to most of our political leaders: a calling so fine and noble that it would be sullied by talk of vulgar, mundane things like pay.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Work, Motherhood, Leader

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• Health lies in labor, and there is no royal road to it but through toil.

  Wendell Phillips

  Lying, Health, Toil

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.54

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• To-day Massachusetts; and the whole of the American republic, from the border of Maine to the Pacific slopes, and from the Lakes to the Gulf, stand upon the immutable and everlasting principles of equal and exact justice. The days of unrequited labor are numbered with the past. Fugitive slave laws are only remembered as relics of that barbarism which John Wesley pronounced "the sum of all villainies," and whose knowledge of its blighting effects was matured by his travels in Georgia and the Carolinas.

  Horace Mann

  Past, Lakes, Law

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• In our country and in our times no man is worthy the honored name of statesman who does not include the highest practicable education of the people in all his plans of administration. He may have eloquence, he may have a knowledge of all history, diplomacy, jurisprudence; and by these he might claim, in other countries, the elevated rank of a statesman: but unless he speaks, plans, labors, at all times and in all places, for the culture and edification of the whole people, he is not, he cannot be, an American statesman.

  Horace Mann

  Country, Men, Names

  Horace Mann (1845). “Lectures on Education”, p.162

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• The villager, born humbly and bred hard,
  Content his wealth, and poverty his guard,
  In action simply just, in conscience clear,
  By guilt untainted, undisturb'd by fear,
  His means but scanty, and his wants but few,
  Labor his business, and his pleasure too,
  Enjoys more comforts in a single hour
  Than ages give the wretch condemn'd to power.

  Charles Churchill

  Mean, Giving, Guilt

  Charles Churchill (1783). “The Poetical Works of C. Churchill: In Three Volumes. with the Life of the Author”, p.90

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• The erotic element always present in fashion, the kiss of loving labor on the body, is now overtly expressed by language. Belts hug or clasp; necklines plunge; jerseys bind. The word exciting tingles everywhere.

  Mary McCarthy

  Fashion, Kissing, Clothes

  Mary McCarthy (1961). “On the contrary”, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy

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• History ... with its long, leisurely, gentlemanly labors, the books arriving by post, the cards to be kept and filed, the sections to be copied, the documents to be checked, is the ideal pursuit for the New England mind.

  Elizabeth Hardwick

  Book, Long, History

  Elizabeth Hardwick (1962). “A View of My Own: Essays on Literature and Society”

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• Shall you complain who feed the world? Who clothe the world? Who house the world? Shall you complain who are the world, Of what the world may do? As from this hour You use your power, The world must follow you!

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  House, Complaining, World

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Illustrated)”, p.1525, Delphi Classics

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• All of the progress that the US has made over the last couple of centuries has come from unemployment. It has come from figuring out how to produce more goods with fewer workers, thereby releasing labor to be more productive in other areas. It has never come about through permanent unemployment, but temporary unemployment, in the process of shifting people from one area to another.

  Milton Friedman

  Couple, People, Progress

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• He thus reaps the full fruits which result from his toil and labors with the incentive of free enterprise to maximize his effort to achieve increasing production. Representing over a half of Japan's total population, the agriculture workers have become an invincible barrier against the advance of socialistic ideas which would relegate all to the indignity of state servitude.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Wisdom, Japan, Ideas

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• Many companies are disappointing the citizens of this world by manipulating labor rates, putting horse meat instead of beef out there, or thinking it's totally acceptable to make a T-shirt from a collapsing factory. Increasingly, people don't want to work for these companies, and consumers don't want to buy from them.

  Paul Polman

  Horse, Thinking, People

  "Unilever chief Paul Polman wants to orient company for the long term". Interview with Lillian Cunningham, www.smh.com.au. May 25, 2015.

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• I myself am a very, very peaceful person. Throughout our history, from our own American revolution to the resistance against apartheid in South Africa, to labor strikes in the US, people have resorted to violence to achieve a more progressive society, from time to time.

  Tom Morello

  People, Peaceful, Progressive Society

  Interview with Robin Grearson, logger.believermag.com. August 27, 2013.

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• Labor is the law of happiness.

  Abel Stevens

  Law

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• Is that all? The mountain in labor has brought forth a mouse.

  May Agnes Fleming

  Disappointment, Mountain, Mice

  May Agnes Fleming (2014). “The Baronet's Bride: Or a Woman's Vengeance”, p.38, The Floating Press

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