Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Work
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This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work.
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If I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.
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As a preacher, I should be prompted to tell men, not so much how to get their wheat bread cheaper, as of the bread of life compared with which that is bran. Let a man only taste these loaves, and he becomes a skillful economist at once.
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If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
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Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.
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Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
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Men have become the tools of their tools.
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The boatmen appeared to lead an easy and contented life, and we thought that we should prefer their employment ourselves to many professions which are much more sought after. They suggested how few circumstances are necessary to the well-being and serenity of man, how indifferent all employments are, and that any may seem noble and poetic to the eyes of men, if pursued with sufficient buoyancy and freedom.
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The man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while.
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I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust,... confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of,--sitting there now at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o'clock in the morning.
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It is not worth while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.
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Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
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Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world?
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Those who work much do not work hard.
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He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.
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Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.
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The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.
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What exercise is to the body, employment is to the mind and morals.
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Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction - a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the muse.
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The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
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Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass, - this was my daily work.
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The ways in which most men get their living, that is, live, are mere makeshifts, and a shirking of the real business of life,--chiefly because they do not know, but partly because they do not mean, any better.
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If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?
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Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.
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