Toil Quotes - Page 7

• Vineyards and shining harvests, pastures, arbors,
  And all this our very utmost toil
  Can hardly care for, we wear down our strength
  Whether in oxen or in men, we dull
  The edges of our ploughshares, and in return
  Our fields turn mean and stingy, underfed,
  And so today the farmer shakes his head,
  More and more often sighing that his work,
  The labour of his hands, has come to naught.

  Lucretius

  Work, Mean, Men

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• Let observation with extensive view, Survey mankind from China to Peru; Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, And watch the busy scenes of crowded life.

  Samuel Johnson

  Travel, Views, Watches

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1837). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.548

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• Freedom of enterprise was from the beginning not altogether a blessing. As the liberty to work or to starve, it spelled toil, insecurity, and fear for the vast majority of the population. If the individual were no longer compelled to prove himself on the market, as a free economic subject, the disappearance of this freedom would be one of the greatest achievements of civilization.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Business, Blessing, Civilization

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.4, Routledge

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• Business or toil is merely utilitarian. It is necessary but does not enrich or ennoble a human life.

  Aristotle

  Business, Doe, Human Life

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• And but two ways are offered to our will, Toil with rare triumph, ease with safe disgrace, The problem still for us and all of human race.

  James Russell Lowell

  Two, Race, Ease

  James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.806, Delphi Classics

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• The bee is enclosed, and shines preserved, in a tear of the sisters of Phaeton, so that it seems enshrined in its own nectar. It has obtained a worthy reward for its great toils; we may suppose that the bee itself would have desired such a death.

  Martial

  Shining, Tears, May

  Martial (1871). “The Epigrams of Martial”, p.192

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• The cook cares not a bit for toil, toil, if the fowl be plump and fat

  Horace

  Caring, Fowl, Care

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• In Heaven we shall not rest from our work, but from our labors. There will be no toil, no pain in the work.

  David Berg

  Pain, Heaven, Labor

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• All things have rest: why should we toil alone, We only toil, who are the first of things.

  Alfred the Great

  Firsts, Should, All Things

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• There is an old song which asserts 'the best things in life are free.' Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted...and get it without toil, without sweat, without tears. Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Song, Pain, Believe

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Starship Troopers”, p.76, Penguin

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• When you're not involved, other people's unhappiness seems to be about the funniest damn thing on earth because you think you can solve it, that you are God, that you are above this, and that their unhappiness is just such useless toil and agony. If it's you, it ceases to be a comedy.

  Barry Hannah

  Thinking, Agony, People

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• Where grows?--where grows it not? If vain our toil, We ought to blame the culture, not the soil.

  Alexander Pope

  Agriculture, Soil, Blame

  Alexander Pope (1822). “The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope”, p.244

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• I love not knowing what's going to happen next. With work, you never know. You rehearse and strive and get it right sometimes, and still you never know. Some people are like that with their marriages. They work and strive and labour and toil at them. God, what a bore! What an unromantic bore!

  Celia Imrie

  Knowing, People, Next

  Interview with Sally Vincent, www.theguardian.com. March 18, 2005.

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• In all my work I like to convey the fact that I like cooks, that it's noble toil and that it is hard.

  Rocco DiSpirito

  Noble, Facts, Cooks

  "31 More Questions With Tony Bourdain" by Gregory Cartier, www.askmen.com.

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• Rest is a fine medicine. Let your stomachs rest, ye dyspeptics; let your brain rest, you wearied and worried people of business; let your limbs rest, ye children of toil!

  Thomas Carlyle

  Children, Medicine, People

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• How happy he whose toil Has o'er his languid pow'rless limbs diffus'd A pleasing lassitude; he not in vain Invokes the gentle Deity of dreams. His pow'rs the most voluptuously dissolve In soft repose; on him the balmy dews Of Sleep with double nutriment descend.

  John Armstrong

  Dream, Sleep, Deities

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• Tis toil's reward, that sweetens industry, As love inspires with strength the enraptur'd thrush.

  Ebenezer Elliott

  Work, Inspire, Rewards

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• Never imitate the eccentricities of genius, but toil after it in its truer flights. They are not so easy to follow, but they lead to higher regions.

  Charles Dickens

  Genius, Flight, Easy

  Charles Dickens, Jenny Hartley (2012). “The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens”, p.71, Oxford University Press

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• No one can become rich by the efforts of only their toil, but only by the discovery of some method of taxing the labor of others.

  John Ruskin

  Discovery, Effort, Taxation

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• Alack our life, so beautiful to see, With how much ease life losest, in a day, What many years with pain and toil amassed!

  Petrarch

  Beautiful, Pain, Loss

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• Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise. By mountains pil'd on mountains to the skies? Heav'n still with laughter the vain toil surveys, And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.

  Alexander Pope

  Laughter, Ambition, Son

  Alexander Pope, William Warburton (1757). “The Works of Alexander Pope Esq”, p.134

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• In literature, there are only oxen. The biggest ones are the geniuses-the ones who toil eighteen hours a day without tiring.

  Jules Renard

  Writing, Oxen, Genius

  Jules Renard (1964). “The journal of Jules Renard”

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• There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, toil, envy, want, and patron.

  Samuel Johnson

  Envy, Want, Mark

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

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• If there are none [gods], All our toil is without meaning.

  Euripides

  Ifs, Unbelief

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• Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation, - we have fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to despise not Justice, Mercy and Truth, lest the nation be smitten with a curse. Our song, our toil, our cheer and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood. Are not these gifts worth the giving? Is not this worth the striving? Would America have been America without her Negro People?

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Song, Cheer, Blood

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