Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XXII : Knight of the Royal Axe, or Prince of Libanus, p. 341
Context: Whatsoever of morality and intelligence; what of patience, perseverance, faithfulness, of method, insight, ingenuity, energy; in a word, whatsoever of Strength a man has in him, will lie written in the Work he does. To work is to try himself against Nature and her unerring, everlasting laws: and they will return true verdict as to him. The noblest Epic is a mighty Empire slowly built together, a mighty series of heroic deeds, a mighty conquest over chaos. Deeds are greater than words. They have a life, mute, but undeniable; and grow. They people the vacuity of Time, and make it green and worthy.
Labor is the truest emblem of God, the Architect and Eternal Maker; noble Labor, which is yet to be the King of this Earth, and sit on the highest Throne. Men without duties to do, are like trees planted on precipices; from the roots of which all the earth has crumbled. Nature owns no man who is not also a Martyr. She scorns the man who sits screened from all work, from want, danger, hardship, the victory over which is work; and has all his work and battling done by other men; and yet there are men who pride themselves that they and theirs have done no work time out of mind. So neither have the swine.
“Labor is not, as some have erroneously supposed, a penal clause of the original curse. There was labor, bright, healthful, unfatiguing, in unfallen Paradise. By sin, labor became drudgery — the earth was restrained from her spontaneous fertility, and the strong arm of the husbandman was required, not to develop, but to " subdue " it. But labor in itself is noble, and is necessary for the ripe unfolding of the highest life.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 367.
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William Morley Punshon 29
English Nonconformist minister 1824–1881Related quotes
Addenda, "Relative and Absolute Surplus Value" in Economic Manuscripts (1861-63)
Source: Principles of industrial organization, 1913, p. 48
“Life without labor is crime, and labor without art is brutality.”
Said in 1914 during an exhibit at Allen Chapel in Indianapolis; cited in William Edward Taylor, Harriet Garcia Warkel and Margaret Taylor Burroughs, A Shared Heritage, Indianapolis Museum of Art
Cf. John Ruskin: "Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality," from Lectures on Art (1870), lecture III
2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
(1847)
“Labor is itself a pleasure.”
Labor est etiam ipse voluptas.
Variant translation (reading ipsa): Even pleasure itself is a toil.
Book IV, line 155. Explained by Housman ad loc. The first reading is the correct one in the context.
Astronomica
Joel Blau and Mimi Abramovitz, The Dynamics of Social Welfare Policy (Oxford University Press: 2010) p. 68