Toil Quotes - Page 13

Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offence and another cause of dishonor to the charge of earlier generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage.

Petrarch

Writing, Hands, Mind

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Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify freedom if these goods and services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear – that is, if they sustain alienation. And the spontaneous reproduction of superimposed needs by the individual does not establish autonomy; it only testifies to the efficacy of the controls.

Herbert Marcuse

Choices, Doe, Needs

Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.10, Routledge

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Long live the weeds that overwhelm
My narrow vegetable realm!
The bitter rock, the barren soil
That force the son of man to toil;
All things unholy, marred by curse,
The ugly of the universe.

Theodore Roethke

Weed, Son, Men

Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.39, Anchor

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That toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain.

William Butler Yeats

Growing Up, Pain, Men

William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.240, Simon and Schuster

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The beautiful in life...
Some talk of it in poetry,
Some grow it from the soil,
Some build it in a steeple,
Some show it through their toil.
Some breathe it into music,
Some mold it into art,
Some shape it into bread loaves...
Some hold it in their hearts.

Bernard Meltzer

Beautiful, Art, Meaning Of Life

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I regard a love for poetry as one of the most needful and helpful elements in the life-outfit of a human being. It was the greatest of blessings to me, in the long days of toil to which I was shut in much earlier than most young girls are, that the poetry I held in my memory breathed its enchanted atmosphere through me and around me, and touched even dull drudgery with its sunshine.

Lucy Larcom

Girl, Memories, Writing

Lucy Larcom (1961). “A New England girlhood”

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High sentiments always win in the end. The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.

George Orwell

Inspirational, Motivational, Leadership

George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.114, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Terence O'Ryan heard him and straightway brought him a crystal cup full of the foaming ebon ale which the noble twin brothers Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun brew ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of deathless Leda. For they garner the succulent berries of the hop and mass and sift and bruise and brew them and they mix therewith sour juices and bring the must to the sacred fire and cease not night or day from their toil, those cunning brothers, lords of the vat.

James Joyce

Brother, Beer, Son

James Joyce (2016). “The Complete Works of James Joyce: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Poetry, Essays & Letters: Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegan’s Wake, Dubliners, The Cat and the Devil, Exiles, Chamber Music, Pomes Penyeach, Stephen Hero, Giacomo Joyce, Critical Writings & more”, p.496, e-artnow

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He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.

Charles Dickens

Lying, Light, Giving

Charles Dickens (2009). “The Complete Works of Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books”, p.31, Cosimo, Inc.

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Toil on, son, and do not lose heart or hope. Let nothing you dismay. You are not utterly forsaken. I, too, am here--here in the darkness waiting, here attentive, here approving of your labor and your dream.

Thomas Wolfe

Dream, Heart, Son

Thomas Wolfe (2016). “You Can't Go Home Again”, p.524, Thomas Wolfe

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He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same words: "Follow thou me!" and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.

Albert Schweitzer

Wise, Time, Men

Albert Schweitzer (2010). “The Quest of the Historical Jesus”, p.401, Lulu.com

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The general must be the first in the toils and fatigues of the army. In the heat of summer he does not spread his parasol nor in the cold of winter don thick clothing. In dangerous places he must dismount and walk. He waits until the army's wells have been dug and only then drinks; until the army's food is cooked before he eats; until the army's fortifications have been completed, to shelter himself.

Sun Tzu

Summer, Art, War

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Reality is a cruel and unintuitive place with frustrating gameplay mechanics.
(Press X to thanklessly toil your life away)

Yahtzee Croshaw

Real, Mechanic, Frustrating

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There are flood and drought over the eyes and in the mouth, dead water and dead sand contending for the upper hand. The parched eviscerate soil gapes at the vanity of toil, laughs without mirth. This is the death of the earth.

T. S. Eliot

Death, Eye, Hands

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Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing.

Ben Hecht

Art, Fall, Writing

Miracle of the Fifteen Murderers

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Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from learning to be wise. There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,- Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.

Samuel Johnson

Wise, Learning, Eye

'The Vanity of Human Wishes' (1749) l. 157

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They envy the distinction I have won; let them therefore, envy my toils, my honesty, and the methods by which I gained it.

Sallust

Inspirational, Honesty, Envy

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My dear, my native soil! For whom my warmest wish to Heav'n is sent, Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!

Robert Burns

Country, Sweet, Son

Robert Burns, P. Austin Nuttall (1866). “The poetical works of Robert Burns”, p.63

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It is sad, no doubt, to exhaust one's strength and one's days in cleaving the bosom of this jealous earth, which compels us to wring from it the treasures of its fertility, when a bit of the blackest and coarsest bread is, at the end of the day's work, the sole recompense and the sole profit attaching to so arduous a toil.

George Sand

Jealous, Doubt, The End Of The Day

George Sand (1800). “The Haunted Pool: (La Mare Au Diable).”, p.17

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But our knowledge, the things we learn, can carry on in others after we are gone...The toil of this journey, our journey, is the map for those who will follow.

Tony DiTerlizzi

Journey, Gone, Maps

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But, when I toil in the field of Jewish culture which I frequently do, I am indeed a Jewish artist.

Theodore Bikel

Artist, Culture, Fields

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Open your eyes and look for some man, or some work for the sake of men, which needs a little time, a little friendship, a little sympathy, a little sociability, a little human toil....It is needed in every nook and corner. Therefore search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity.

Albert Schweitzer

Eye, Men, Humanity

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The Holy Spirit is the source of spiritual unity! He is the Fount of all true joy! We as missionaries need the fullness of this joy. Without it our work will be a burden to us, and we shall toil on with the hearts of slaves; and the hearts of slaves are never strong.

Griffith John

Spiritual, Strong, Heart

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The peasant of early modern France inhabited a world of step-mothers and orphans, of inexorable, unending toil, and of brutal emotions, both raw and repressed.The human condition has changed so much since then that we can hardly imagine the way it appeared to people whose lives really were nasty, brutish, and short. This is why we need to reread Mother Goose.

Robert Darnton

Mother, People, Needs

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That is the charm of a map. It represents the other side of the horizon where everything is possible. It has the magic of anticipation without the toil and sweat of realization. The greatest romance ever written pales before the possibilities of adventure that lie in the faint blue trails from sea to sea. The perfect journey is never finished, the goal is always just across the next river, round the shoulder of the next mountain. There is always one more track to follow, one more mirage to explore. Achievement is the price which the wanderer pays for the right to venture.

Rosita Forbes

Lying, Adventure, Journey

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