Labour Quotes - Page 34

• Under a Labour government, there's virtually nowhere you can put your savings where they would be safe from the state. ... If you put money in a sock they'd probably nationalize socks.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Government, Would Be, Saving

  6 Copy quote

• The poet must be alike polished by an intercourse with the world as with the studies of taste; one to whom labour is negligence, refinement a science, and art a nature.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Art, World, Taste

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 605-09, Literary Character of Men of Genius, Vers de Société, 1922.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If the land was divided among all the inhabitants of a country, so that each of them possessed precisely the quantity necessary for his support, and nothing more; it is evident that all of them being equal, no one would work for another. Neither would any of them possess wherewith to pay another for his labour, for each person having only such a quantity of land as was necessary to produce a subsistence, would consume all he should gather, and would not have any thing to give in exchange for the labour of others.

  Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune

  Country, Land, Giving

  "Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth". Book by Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (§ 1), 1766.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Without wishing in the slightest degree to disparage the skill and labour of breadmakers by trade, truth compels us to assert our conviction of the superior wholesomeness of bread made in our own homes.

  Eliza Acton

  Food, Home, Skills

  Eliza Acton (1868). “Modern Cookery, for Private Families: Reduced to a System of Easy Practice, in a Series of Carefully Tested Receipts, in which the Principles of Baron Liebig and Other Eminent Writers Have Been as Much as Possible Applied and Explained”, p.594

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• If there is to be any romance in marriage woman must be given every chance to earn a decent living at other occupations. Otherwise no man can be sure that he is loved for himself alone, and that his wife did not come to the Registry Office because she had no luck at the Labour Exchange.

  Rebecca West

  Men, Wife, Office

  Rebecca West, Jane Marcus (1982). “The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17”, New York : Viking Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Demosthenes, when taunted by Pytheas that all his arguments "smelled of the lamp," replied, "Yes, but your lamp and mine, my friend, do not witness the same labours.

  Plutarch

  Lamps, Argument, Witness

  "Life of Demosthenes". Book by Plutarch,

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Tis hard to find God, but to comprehend
  Him, as He is, is labour without end.

  Robert Herrick

  God, Ends, Hard

  Robert Herrick (1891). “The Hesperides & Noble Numbers”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• under a monopolistic economic system the opportunity to earn a living by one's labour comes to be regarded as a privilege instead of a natural right. Women are simply held to be less entitled to this privilege than men.

  Suzanne La Follette

  Work, Opportunity, Men

  9 Copy quote

• It always seems to me that one of the saddest things about the death of a literary man is the fact that the breaking-up of his collection of books almost invariably follows; the building up of a good library, the work of a lifetime, has been so much labour lost, so far as future generations are concerned. Talent, yes, and genius too, are displayed not only in writing books but also in buying them, and it is a pity that the ruthless hammer of the auctioneer should render so much energy and skill fruitless.

  Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

  Book, Writing, Men

  Stuart Dodgson Collingwood (1898). “The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (Rev. C.L. Dodgson)”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In vain our labours are, whatsoe'er they be, unless God gives the Benediction.

  Robert Herrick

  Giving, Action, Vain

  5 Copy quote

• In thy discourse, if thou desire to please;
  All such is courteous, useful, new, or wittie:
  Usefulness comes by labour, wit byease;
  Courtesie grows in court; news in the citie.

  George Herbert

  Desire, News, Courtesy

  George Herbert (1861). “The Poetical Works of G. H. and R. Heber. With Memoir”, p.9

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we have discovered a continent, or crossed a chain of mountains, it is only to find another ocean or another plain upon the further side. . . . O toiling hands of mortals! O wearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Travel, Ocean, Feet

  'Virginibus Puerisque' (1881) 'El Dorado'

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What a labour writing is ... making one sentence do the work of a page; that's what I call hard work.

  Virginia Woolf

  Hard Work, Writing, Pages

  Virginia Woolf (1975). “The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1932-1935”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you meet anyone in the flesh you realize immediately that he is a human being and not a sort of caricature embodying certain ideas. It is partly for this reason that I don't mix much in literary circles, because I know from experience that once I have met and spoken to anyone I shall never again be able to feel any intellectual brutality towards him, even when I feel I ought to - like the Labour M.P.s who get patted on the back by dukes and are lost forever more.

  George Orwell

  Circles, Ideas, Forever

  6 Copy quote

• Nothing falls into a man's lap from heaven.  It is from labour that life grows.

  Adolf Hitler

  Fall, Men, Heaven

  45 Copy quote

• Man preys on man; and you mourn for the idle tapestry that decorated a gothic pillar, and the dronish bell that summoned the fat priest to prayer. You mourn for the empty pageant of a name, when slavery flaps her wing, ... Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave? - Hell stalks abroad; - the lash resounds on the slave's naked sides; and the sick wretch, who can no longer earn the sour bread of unremitting labour, steals to a ditch to bid the world a long good night.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Good Night, Prayer, Men

  35 Copy quote

• If the helplessness and isolation of labour, who have nothing to sell but their labour, can be totally removed by connecting labour with capital through a universal credit system, we'll then have other kinds of actors on the economic scene different from what the existing capitalist world would allow us to bring out.

  Muhammad Yunus

  Different, Credit, Actors

  4 Copy quote

• Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold... has its natural and its market price.

  David Ricardo

  Wisdom, Politics, Economy

  David Ricardo (1821). “On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation”, p.86

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is preferable to regard labour, including, of course, the personal services of the entrepreneur, and his assistants, as the sole factor of production, operating in a given environment of technique, natural resources, capital equipment and effective demand. This is why we have been able to take labour as the sole physical unit which we require in our economic system, apart from units of money and of time.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Entrepreneur, Technique, Demand

  John Maynard Keynes (2006). “General Theory Of Employment , Interest And Money”, p.193, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Men Wanted for Dangerous Expedition: Low Wages for Long Hours of Arduous Labour under Brutal Conditions; Months of Continual Darkness and Extreme Cold; Great Risk to Life and Limb from Disease, Accidents and Other Hazards; Small Chance of Fame in Case of Success.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Funny, Clever, Smart

  374 Copy quote

• Every man that tried to destroy the Government, every man that shot at the holy flag in heaven, every man that starved our soldiers... every man that wanted to burn the negro, every one that wanted to scatter yellow fever in the North, every man that opposed human liberty, that regarded the auction-block as an altar and the howling of the bloodhound as the music of the Union, every man who wept over the corpse of slavery, that thought lashes on the naked back were a legal tender for labour performed, every one willing to rob a mother of her child - every solitary one was a Democrat.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Mother, Children, War

  "Political speeches of Robert G. Ingersoll" by Robert Green Ingersoll, C. P. Farrell, (p. 341), 1914.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many leave the labours of half their life to their executors and to chance, because they will not send them abroad unfinished, and are unable to finish them, having prescribed to themselves such a degree of exactness as human diligence can scarcely ontain.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Degrees, Half

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An essay on his life and genius”, p.262

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• He that condemns himself to compose on a stated day will often bring to his task attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with disease: he will labour on a barren topic till it is too late to change it; or, in the ardour of invention, diffuse his thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer judgment to examine or reduce.

  Samuel Johnson

  Memories, Writing, Imagination

  Samuel Johnson (1823). “The Works of Samuel Johnson: An essay on the life and genius of Dr. Johnson [by A. Murphy] Poems.- v. 2-4. The rambler.- v. 5. The idler. History of Rasselas, prince of Abissinia.- v. 6-8. The lives of the English poets.- v. 9. Lives of eminent persons. Letters, selected from the collection of Mrs. Piozzi and others. Prayers and meditations.- v. 10. Philological tracts, &c.- v. 11. Miscellaneous tracts, &c. Dedications. Reviews and criticisms. Tales of imagination. The adventurers.-”, p.59

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgement of his own works. On that which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain: what has been produced without toilsome efforts is considered with delight as a proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work, whatever it be, has necessarily most of the grace of novelty.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Thinking, Effort

  Samuel Johnson (1787). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with His Life, and Notes on His Lives of the Poets, by Sir John Hawkins, Knt. In Eleven Volumes ...”, p.136

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Invention is almost the only literary labour which blindness cannot obstruct.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Invention, Blindness

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper”, p.288

  4 Copy quote

  Show source