In all forced labour, the work that convicts do is vastly more unpleasant than any work done in freedom, simply because it is forced.[Kаторжная работа несравненно мучительнее всякой вольной, именно тем, что вынужденная.]
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.
If you can’t hide what you are going to do, do it so everybody thinks you are a fool.
If a man love the labour of any trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.
I will work harder!
I know a planet inhabited by a red-faced gentleman. He’s never smelled a flower. He’s never looked at a star. He’s never loved anyone. He’s never done anything except add up numbers. And all day long he says over and over, just like you, ‘I’m a serious man! I’m a serious man!’[translation by Richard Howard]I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved any one. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, just like you: ‘I am busy with matters of consequence![translation by Katherine Woods][Je connais une planète où il y a un Monsieur cramoisi. Il n’a jamais respiré une fleur. Il n’a jamais regardé une étoile. Il n’a jamais aimé personne. Il n’a jamais rien fait d’autre que des additions. Et toute la journée il répète comme toi: “Je suis un homme sérieux! Je suis un homme sérieux!”]
Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.[The Remarkable Rocket]
For our penitence deserves a glimpse only; our toil respite only.
Drudgery is as necessary, to call out the treasures of the mind, as harrowing and planting those of the earth.
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
Civilized society is perpetually threatened with disintegration. The interest of work in common would not hold it together.
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.
