“Indolence is the worst enemy that the church has to encounter. Men sleep around her altar, stretching themselves on beds of ease, or sit idly with folded hands looking lazily out on fields white for the harvest, but where no sickle rings against the wheat.”

Harp Song of the Dane Women http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_harp.htm, Stanza 3 (1906).
Puck of Pook's Hill 1906

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 147.

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), The Strenuous Life
Context: If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.

Pearls of Wisdom

England v Sri Lanka, 2007-04-04, BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/6521515.stm,

Part One, One
The Dud Avocado (1958)

Source: Prozac Nation

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: I have given you my definition of blasphemy, and now the question arises, what is worship? Who is a worshiper? What is prayer? What is real religion? Let me answer these questions.
Good, honest, faithful work, is worship. The man who ploughs the fields and fells the forests; the man who works in mines, the man who battles with the winds and waves out on the wide sea, controlling the commerce of the world; these men are worshipers. The man who goes into the forest, leading his wife by the hand, who builds him a cabin, who makes a home in the wilderness, who helps to people and civilize and cultivate a continent, is a worshiper.
Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers; it is the only prayer that deserves an answer, — good, honest, noble work. A woman whose husband has gone down to the gutter, gone down to degradation and filth; the woman who follows him and lifts him out of the mire and presses him to her noble heart, until he becomes a man once more, this woman is a worshiper. Her act is worship.
The poor man and the poor woman who work night and day, in order that they may give education to their children, so that they may have a better life than their father and mother had; the parents who deny themselves the comforts of life, that they may lay up something to help their children to a higher place -- they are worshipers; and the children who, after they reap the benefit of this worship, become ashamed of their parents, are blasphemers.
The man who sits by the bed of his invalid wife, -- a wife prematurely old and gray, -- the husband who sits by her bed and holds her thin, wan hand in his as lovingly, and kisses it as rapturously, as passionately, as when it was dimpled, -- that is worship; that man is a worshiper; that is real religion.

History of the Caliphs, p.275