The collection / 14,814 fragments

Work.

Explore passages mentioning work, labour. Topic suggestions use transparent word matching, not scholarly classification. Reviewed editorial meanings may also connect entries to this topic; those assignments are labelled separately from word matching.

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01c. 1751 AD

How blest is he who crowns in shades like these A youth of labour with an age of ease!

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

02c. 1765 AD

Reading what they never wrote, Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work, And with a well-bred whisper close the scene.

William Cowper / quote

03c. 1765 AD

Labour to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire,—conscience.

George Washington / quote

04c. 1777 AD

Auld Nature swears the lovely dears Her noblest work she classes, O; Her 'prentice han' she tried on man, And then she made the lasses, O!

Robert Burns / quote

05c. 1777 AD

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, That makes her loved at home, revered abroad: Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, "An honest man 's the noblest work of God."

Robert Burns / quote

06c. 1798 AD

The frivolous work of polished idleness.

Sir James Mackintosh / quote

07c. 1810 AD

Thou has left behind Powers that will work for thee,—air, earth, and skies! There 's not a breathing of the common wind That will forget thee; thou hast great allies; Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man's unconquerable mind.

William Wordsworth / quote

08c. 1803 AD

Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth, And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny, and youth is vain, And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge / quote

09c. 1804 AD

Who first invented work, and bound the free And holiday-rejoicing spirit down . . . . . . To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? . . . . . . Sabbathless Satan!

Charles Lamb / quote

10c. 1817 AD

Labour in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.

Daniel Webster / quote

11c. 1806 AD

The many still must labour for the one.

Lord Byron / quote

12c. 1806 AD

Sublime tobacco! which from east to west Cheers the tar's labour or the Turkman's rest.

Lord Byron / quote

13c. 1807 AD

Those who inflict must suffer, for they see The work of their own hearts, and this must be Our chastisement or recompense.

Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote

14c. 1814 AD

Come to the sunset tree! The day is past and gone; The woodman's axe lies free, And the reaper's work is done.

Felicia D. Hemans / quote

15c. 1829 AD

No gilded dome swells from the lowly roof to catch the morning or evening beam; but the love and gratitude of united America settle upon it in one eternal sunshine. From beneath that humble roof went forth the intrepid and unselfish warrior, the magistrate who knew no glory but his country's good; to that he returned, happiest when his work was done. There he lived in noble simplicity, there he died in glory and peace. While it stands, the latest generations of the grateful children of America will make this pilgrimage to it as to a shrine; and when it shall fall, if fall it must, the memory and the name of Washington shall shed an eternal glory on the spot.

Edward Everett / quote

16c. 1830 AD

The ugliest of trades have their moments of pleasure. Now, if I were a grave-digger, or even a hangman, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment.

Douglas Jerrold / quote

17c. 1844 AD

Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labour and to wait.

Henry W. Longfellow / quote

18c. 1809 AD

Ah, why Should life all labour be?

Alfred Tennyson / quote

19c. 1851 AD

Ever judge of men by their professions. For though the bright moment of promising is but a moment, and cannot be prolonged, yet if sincere in its moment's extravagant goodness, why, trust it, and know the man by it, I say,—not by his performance; which is half the world's work, interfere as the world needs must with its accidents and circumstances: the profession was purely the man's own. I judge people by what they might be,—not are, nor will be.

Robert Browning / quote

20c. 1851 AD

What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up, And be discharged, and straight wound up anew? No! grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets: May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.

Robert Browning / quote

21c. 1838 AD

Labour itself is but a sorrowful song, The protest of the weak against the strong.

F. W. Faber / quote

22c. 1855 AD

No man is born into the world whose work Is not born with him. There is always work, And tools to work withal, for those who will; And blessed are the horny hands of toil.

James Russell Lowell / quote

23c. 1855 AD

There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded.

James Russell Lowell / quote

24c. 1847 AD

Men must work, and women must weep.

Charles Kingsley / quote