Hard Labour Quotes & Sayings

If at any time all labour should cease, and all existing provisions be equally divided among the people, at the end of a single year there could scarcely be one human being left alive
all would have perished by want of subsistence. — Abraham Lincoln

Scarce any problem will appear more hard and difficult, than that of determining the distance of the Sun from the Earth very near the truth: but even this ... will without much labour be effected. — Edmond Halley

The difference between wanting to write and having written is one year of hard, relentless labour. It's a bridge you have to build all by yourself, all alone, all through the night, while the world goes about its business without giving a damn. The only way of making this perilous passage is by looking at it as a pilgrimage. — Shatrujeet Nath

It is in the hard rockpile labour of seeking to win, hold, or deserve a reader's interest that the pleasant agony of writing comes in. — John Mason Brown

You can't keep your feet on the ground, hoping to enjoy the fruits of your labour. The fruits are on the top; keep climbing till you pluck them with your hands! — Israelmore Ayivor

Now take a man who is sensitive, cultured, and of delicate conscience. What he feels kills him more surely than the material punishment. The judgement which he himself pronounces on his crime is more pitiless than that of the most severe tribunal, the most Draconian law. He lives side by side with another convict, who has not once during all his time in prison reflected on the murder he is expiating. He may even consider himself innocent. Are there not also poor devils who commit crimes in order to be sent to hard labour, and thus escape from a freedom which is much more painful than confinement? — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Cooking and eating at home is made even better by the fact that you don't have to worry about driving after a couple of bottles of very nice wine. For me that's the ideal combination: working hard and enjoying the fruits of your labour. — Patrick Duffy

But there is one thing only at which I have wondered at times, and yet it seemed foolish to think of it. It will happen sometimes when one has worked hard and done all that one can for the purpose before one-it is happened then that I have stood up and been content with the world of things and with what has been done there through me. And this may be pride, or it may be the full stress of the whole being and delight in labour-there are 100 explanations. That I have wondered whether that profound repose was not communicated from some far source and whether the life that is in it was altogether governed by time. And I'm sure that state never comes while I am concerned with myself, and I have thought today that in some strange way that state was itself the Stone. But if so then assuredly none of these men shall find it secret."
"Is that the end of desire?" Chloe said. — Charles Williams

Every day and every hour, every minute, walk round yourself and watch yourself, and see that your image is a seemly one. You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenceless heart. You don't know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love. Brothers, love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labour. For we must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Everyone can love occasionally, even the wicked can. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

One cannot judge of crime with ready-made opinions: its philosophy is a little more complicated than people think. It is acknowledged that neither convict prisons, nor the hulks, nor any system of hard labour ever reformed a criminal. These forms of chastisement only punish him and reassure society against the offences he might commit. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Unless the Labour leadership candidates decide to settle the issue through televised mud-wrestling (Adam Boulton, I think, for referee, and he may even take part) they will find it hard to gain massive attention for their utterances. Nor would the wannabes be wise to sign up to Lord Adonis's optimistic gloom about the coalition not lasting. Watching David Laws this week going about deficit reduction with an avidity bordering on the erotic, I realised that there are very good reasons why the centre should hold. — David Aaronovitch

The danger which threatens us comes from Labour ... Those who think that the Conservative or Unionist Party, standing as such and disavowing its Liberal allies, could return with a working majority are living in a fools paradise and, if they persist, may easily involve themselves and the country in dangers the outcome of which it is hard to predict. — Austen Chamberlain

We're going to fight this battle with everything we have, and we will probably lose. But then we will fight it again, and we will lose a little less, for this battle will win us many supporters. And then we'll lose *again*. And *again*. And we will fight on. Because as hard as it is to win by fighting, it's impossible to win by doing nothing. — Cory Doctorow

The only thing worse than being misquoted is being sentenced to two years' hard labour for buggery — Oscar Wilde

So, verily, with every difficulty, there is relief;
Verily, with every difficulty there is relief.
Therefore, when thou art free (from thine immediate task), still labour hard,
And to thy Lord turn [all] thy attention. — Anonymous

Twenty two year old Connie Jones, who had boarded in the home of charismatic Methodist and pacifist Ormond Burton, was a member of the No More War movement and the Christian Pacifist Society. She first attended the Friday night public meetings at which the pacifists argued their case in 1941. She stepped onto the podium, stating, "the Lord Jesus Christ tells us to love one another," and was promptly arrested by Wellington's chief inspector of police. Charged with obstruction under the Emergency Regulations, she was sentenced to three months' hard labour with harsh conditions at the Point Halswell Reformatory - an experience that did nothing to dampen her commitment to pacifism. — Barbara Brookes

If only I could manage, without annoyance to my family, to get imprisoned for 10 years, "without hard labour," and with the use of books and writing materials, it would be simply delightful! — Lewis Carroll

It is rather hard to be accused of shiftlessness and idleness when the accuser closes the avenue of labour and industrial pursuits to us. — George H. White

I have done all the work myself, not assistants. That's why I'm in a wheelchair: I've been doing it physically - it's hard labour - throughout my life. — Yayoi Kusama

I'm not sure filming a birth is as hard as actual labour, but it's a really long, arduous day! — Helen George

Upon this subject, the habits of our whole species fall into three great classes
useful labour, useless labour and idleness. Of these the first only is meritorious; and to it all the products of labour rightfully belong; but the two latter, while they exist, are heavy pensioners upon the first, robbing it of a large portion of it's just rights. The only remedy for this is to, as far as possible, drive useless labour and idleness out of existence. — Abraham Lincoln

Accurate and minute measurement seems to the non-scientific imagination, a less lofty and dignified work than looking for something new. But nearly all the grandest discoveries of science have been but the rewards of accurate measurement and patient long-continued labour in the minute sifting of numerical results. — Lord Kelvin

What I could really use is an older man. A mentor. One who could tell me how things fit together.
He would have asked me to do chores that I felt were meaningless. I would have been impatient and protested, but done them nonetheless. And eventually, after several months of hard labour, I would have realised that there was a deeper meaning behind it all, and that the master had a cunning plan all the time. — Erlend Loe

The Lib Dems found it very hard to decide whether they were Labour or Tory supporters, mostly because they're Lib Dem supporters. I mean had most of them agreed with one of the major parties they would probably have applied to join those parties instead of standing at the back of town halls looking disappointed. — Frankie Boyle

In the back seat the three now silent, soot-smeared children absorbed it all - the choking creosote stench, the roar of wind and flame, the wild rocking of a car being driven that hard, the heat, the emotion so raw and exposed it was like butchered flesh; the tormented, hopeless feeling of two people who lived together in a love not yet love, nor yet not; an unshared life shared; a conspiracy of affections, illnesses, tragedies, jokes and labour; a marriage - the strange, terrible neverendingness of human beings. A family. — Richard Flanagan

If Capitalism has a definition it includes, surely, the concept value for money. You do not spend any more than your have to; you go where labour is cheapest, resources most bountiful, rules most lax, governments most permissive. Yet you also pay an idiot a fortune for doing nothing, and it is hard to see why. And if he is a hereditary idiot, very hard to see why. — Bob Ellis

Everybody was asleep. Everybody except me, James Herriot, creeping sore and exhausted towards another spell of hard labour. Why the hell had I ever decided to become a country vet? I must have been crazy to pick a job where you worked seven days a week and through the night as well. Sometimes I felt as though the practice was a malignant, living entity; testing me, trying me out; putting the pressure on more and more to see just when at what point I would drop down dead. — James Herriot

Satisfied if they themselves can escape from the hard labour of thought, they willingly abandon to others the guardianship of their thoughts. — Friedrich Schiller

Stockholders are used to a certain kind of global capitalism. This version is very hard on the environment and very hard on people below a certain fiscal level. It is a calculated, systematic weakening of people. Many labour, a few benefit. Try talking about cleaning up the place with these people. The hostility is incredible. — Henry Rollins

The hard left is a very small section of the British population and I myself am not hard left. I am a traditional Labour left-winger. — George Galloway

private philanthropy is no substitution for hard-fought battles over labour laws and social security, in part because philanthropy can be retracted on a whim, while elected officials, at least in theory, have citizens to answer to. — Linsey McGoey

It is difficult to picture the rich, hard-nosed advisors of James I being overly concerned about the rights of vagabonds and felons. But this was a period that was especially suspicious of arbitrary acts by the Crown against individuals. There was no law enabling the crown to exile anyone, including the baser convict, into forced labour. According to legal scholars, the Magna Carta itself protected even them. The Privy Councillors therefore dressed up what was to befall the convicts and presented the decree authorising their transportation as an act of royal mercy. The convicts were to be reprieved from death in exchange for accepting transportation. (71-71) — Don Jordan

Wouldst thou enjoy a long Life, a healthy Body, and a vigorous Mind, and be acquainted also with the wonderful Works of God? labour in the first place to bring thy Appetite into Subjection to Reason. — Benjamin Franklin

The next Prime Minister walking through that door will be me or (Labour Party leader) Ed Miliband, you can choose an economy that grows, that creates jobs, that generates the money to ensure a properly funded and improving NHS (National Health Service) ... and a government that will cut taxes for 30 million hard-working people ... or you can choose the economic chaos of Ed Miliband's Britain. — David Cameron

As someone who worked hard for a Labour victory in the 90s, do I regret it? Not really. It was bound to happen. And it'll happen with the next government, and the one after it. Because all governments serve us. They serve the filth. — Stephen Fry

Once a rebel, always a rebel. You can't help being one. You can't deny that. And it's best to be a rebel so as to show 'em it don't pay to try to do you down. Factories and labour exchanges and insurance offices keep us alive and kicking - so they say - but they're booby-traps and will suck you under like sinking-sands if you're not careful. Factories sweat you to death, labour exchanges talk you to death, insurance and income tax offices milk money from your wage packets and rob you to death. And if you're still left with a tiny bit of life in your guts after all this boggering about, the army calls you up and you get shot to death. And if you're clever enough to stay out of the army you get bombed to death. Ay, by God, it's a hard life if you don't weaken, if you don't stop that bastard government from grinding your face in the muck, though there ain't much you can do about it unless you start making dynamite to blow their four-eyed clocks to bits. — Alan Sillitoe

I fear being shaken out of them because I am afraid that my peaceful sleep may be followed by hard labour when I wake, and that I shall have to struggle not in the light but in the imprisoning darkness of the problems I have raised. — Rene Descartes

It is acknowledged that neither convict prisons, nor the hulks, nor any system of hard labour ever cured a criminal. These forms of chastisement only punish him and reassure society against the offences he might commit. Confinement, regulation, and excessive work have no effect but to develop with these men profound hatred, a thirst for forbidden enjoyment, and frightful recalcitrations. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

What a labour writing is ... making one sentence do the work of a page; that's what I call hard work. — Virginia Woolf

What is easy to read has been difficult to write. The labour of writing and rewriting, correcting and recorrecting, is the due exacted by every good book from its author, even if he knows from the beginning exactly what he wants to say. A limpid style is invariably the result of hard labour, and the easily flowing connection of sentence with sentence and paragraph with paragraph has always been won by the sweat of the brow. — G. M. Trevelyan

That's not hard work. It's just manual labour," Nagasawa said with finality. "The "hard work' I'm talking about is more self-directed and purposeful. — Haruki Murakami

Well do I remember a friend of mine telling me once--he was then a labourer in the field of literature, who had not yet begun to earn his penny a day, though he worked hard--telling me how once, when a hope that had kept him active for months was suddenly quenched--a book refused on which he had spent a passion of labour--the weight of money that must be paid and could not be had, pressing him down like the coffin-lid that had lately covered the ONLY friend to whom he could have applied confidently for aid--telling me, I say, how he stood at the corner of a London street, with the rain, dripping black from the brim of his hat, the dreariest of atmospheres about him in the closing afternoon of the City, when the rich men were going home, and the poor men who worked for them were longing to follow; and how across this waste came energy and hope into his bosom, swelling thenceforth with courage to fight, and yield no ear to suggested failure. And — George MacDonald

Government cannot do it all. As we work hard to break welfare dependency and get young people ready for the labour market, we need businesses to give them a chance and not just fall back on labour from abroad. — Iain Duncan Smith

Anoop had obviously worked quite hard to earn the money to buy that glitzy little bracelet. He certainly had enough calluses and deep scars on his hands and fingers to show for all his labour, as each was obtained while trying to support his family in the style they were accustom to. Nonetheless she frequently called him a lazy alcoholic, just because he was temporarily out of work, and then left the stupid bracelet out in public as if it were simply a cheap and silly trinket. — Andrew James Pritchard

And, inasmuch [as] most good things are produced by labour, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them. But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government. — Abraham Lincoln

The way I see it, people are working hard. They're working their fingers to the bone. Or am I looking at things wrong?
That's not hard work. It's just manual labour. — Haruki Murakami

That the machine of Heaven is not a hard and impervious body full of various real spheres, as up to now has been believed by most people. It will be proved that it extends everywhere, most fluid and simple, and nowhere presents obstacles as was formerly held, the circuits of the Planets being wholly free and without the labour and whirling round of any real spheres at all, being divinely governed under a given law. — Tycho Brahe

Is anyone serious about the politics of happiness? David Cameron dipped a toe in the water, using the word lightly, but denying the hard policies it implies. Labour shies away from it, but should take up the challenge. — Polly Toynbee

Here, on a human face, appeared all the ruin following upon hopeless labour. Laveuve's unkempt beard straggled over his features, suggesting an old horse that is no longer cropped; his toothless jaws were quite askew, his eyes were vitreous, and his nose seemed to plunge into his mouth. But above all else one noticed his resemblance to some beast of burden, deformed by hard toil, lamed, worn to death, and now only good for the knackers. — Emile Zola

We need to reach out to small 'l' liberal voters who have a modern outlook on life, who want a party that is hard-headed on the economy - more credible on the economy than Labour - but more socially progressive and fairer than the Conservatives. — Nick Clegg

Labour has to deal with the fact that the old working class doesn't exist anymore. The working class has become the middle class. And this middle class is very much prepared to support anyone who has genuinely fallen on hard times but have no sympathy with anyone abusing the system: be it those on welfare, politicians or big corporations. — Brahim Gur

Tis hard to find God, but to comprehend
Him, as He is, is labour without end. — Robert Herrick

Hard labour to succeed in the world? Hard labour no, no, human constitution, human physiology, human intelligence is made of infinite creative potential of Natural Law and therefore no-one has to work hard for success. — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

The earth is not supposed to be developed and civilized by prayers alone, the earth is supposed to be civilized by hard work, labour and diligence. — Sunday Adelaja

Religion has become to many merely a means of doing a little charity work, just to amuse them after a hard day's labour - they get five minutes religion to amuse them. This is the danger with the liberal thought. — Swami Vivekananda

One destructive mind-set that must be altered in our society is the thought that work is a curse. Some people advocate that if you are truly blessed you don't need to work hard. Because as they say "the race is not to the swift", I even had statements like "a day of favour is better than a thousand years of labour". To make things worse, this type of teachings are actually coming from our pulpits. We call ourselves Protestants, but we have totally departed from the teachings of the early Protestants. Martin Luther, John Wesley and John Calvin would turn in their graves, if they hear the kind of teachings we are now feeding the people of God with. — Sunday Adelaja

Here again is one grand element of a preacher's success. He must labour by all means to be understood. It was a wise saying of Archbishop Usher, To make easy things seem hard is every man's work; but to make hard things easy is the work of a great preacher. — J.C. Ryle

So he with difficulty and labour hard Mov'd on, with difficulty and labour he. — John Milton

He had probably never thought about the difference between hard work and manual labour, either. — Haruki Murakami

He was by no means opposed to hard labour on principle, for he would work away at a cricket-match by the day together, - running, and catching, and batting, and bowling, and revelling in toil which would exhaust a galley-slave. — Charles Dickens