“The first is that he must be well-ordered from without in all virtues and unhindered within, just as empty of all outward works as though he were not working. For if he is busy within by any work of virtue, then he is assailed by images. As long as that is going on in him, he cannot contemplate.”

“He is specially deserving of our hatred, in that being wicked he has all the outward signs of virtue.”

Aeschines (-389–-314 BC) Attic orator; statesman

“It's hard, dangerous work, aside from any hate at all, and when a fellow works hard at any line of business he wants to go home and forget about it. He don't want to be afraid to sit near a window or an open door.”

Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster

“See, all creaturely activity and all practice of virtues must fail here, for here what God works is nothing but Himself in the highest nobility of the spirit. And here there is nothing but an eternal contemplation and gazing at the light with the light and in the light. And the coming of the Bridegroom is so rapid that He is always coming and is indwelling with fathomless richness, and that He is coming anew personally, without crease, with such new brightness just as though He had never come before. For His coming consists in an eternal now, without time, which is always received with new lust and in new joy.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

“[T]he ‘total state’ of fascism is not a political alignment within the existing political and social setup, but that it is a revolution which, like all revolutions, works from without.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

“Do not fancy, as too many do, that thou canst praise God by singing hymns to Him in church once a week, and disobeying Him all the week long. He asks of thee works as well as words; and more, He asks of thee works first and words after.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

“When a labourer could no longer work, he had lost the right to live. Work was all they [the landowners] wanted from him; he was to work and hold his tongue, year in and year out, early and late, and if he could not work, why, what was the use of him? It was what he was made for, to labour and toil for his betters, without complaint, on a starvation wage. When no more work could be squeezed out of him, he was no better than a cumberer of other folk's ground, and the proper place for such as he was the churchyard, where he would be sure to lie quiet under a few feet of earth, and want neither food nor wages any more.”

Joseph Arch (1826–1919) British politician

“When the writer (or the artist in general) says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

“The Universe is worked and guided from within outwards.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) occult writer

“He who cannot rest, cannot work; he who cannot let go, cannot hold on; he who cannot find footing, cannot go forward.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American pastor