Labors Quotes & Sayings

He only wishes there were something that would heal the scars in his mind, which he can still feel. He sees his mind now as an archipelago of islands that he labors to build bridges between - and while he's had great success engineering the most spectacular of bridges, he suspects there are some islands that he'll never reach. — Neal Shusterman

The lover of education labors first of all to educate himself. — John Lancaster Spalding

[I]nfectious disease is merely a disagreeable instance of a widely prevalent tendency of all living creatures to save themselves the bother of building, by their own efforts, the things they require. Whenever they find it possible to take advantage of the constructive labors of others, this is the path of least resistance. The plant does the work with its roots and its green leaves. The cow eats the plant. Man eats both of them; and bacteria (or investment bankers) eat the man ... — Hans Zinsser

Rebuffed, but always persevering; self-reproached, but ever regaining faith; undaunted, tenacious, the heart of man labors toward immeasurably distant goals. — Helen Keller

The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another; and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture. — Samuel Johnson

Our work is great; our time is short; the consequences of our labors are infinite. — John Newton

The human mind, in proportion as it is deprived of external resources, sedulously labors to find within itself the means of happiness, learns to rely with confidence on its own exertions, and gains with greater certainty the power of being happy. — Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann

The slave labors, but with no cheer-it is not the road to respectability, it will honor him with no citizens' trust, it brings no bread to his family, no grain to his garner, no leisure in after-days, no books or papers to his children. It opens no school-house door, builds no church, rears for him no factory, lays no keel, fills no bank, earns no acres. With sweat and toil and ignorance he consumes his life, to pour the earnings into channels from which he does no drink, into hands that never honor him. But perpetually rob and often torment. — Henry Ward Beecher

I think it's always wrong of writers to make too much of the pains of their labors, because most people have much worse jobs and suffer such indignities and hardships. — Richard Flanagan

Today I will surrender to discipline. I realize that sometimes it takes time to see the fruits of my labors, yet I still need to practice discipline. Help me to remember, God, that I'm moving forward, and that I'm learning the very important art of discipline. — Melody Beattie

When you're living by instinct, then you will naturally enhance everything and everyone around you. In other words, success will come naturally! When both your intellect and instincts are aligned, then producing the fruits of your labors brings satisfaction beyond measure. — T.D. Jakes

I should write for the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night's labors should be burnt every morning and no eye shine upon them. — John Keats

Now, apparently strengthened as by a new spirit, with "might in the inner man," he labored with renewed energy and zeal; and new and singular blessings descended upon his labors. In two years, his ten preaching places in Anglesea were increased to twenty, and six hundred converts were added to the church under his immediate care. — Christmas Evans

By the death of Mr. O. Chanute the world has lost one whose labors had to an unusual degree influenced the course of human progress. If he had not lived the entire history of progress in flying would have been other than it has been. — Wilbur Wright

That part of a work of one author found in another is not of itself piracy, or sufficient to support an action; a man may adopt part of the work of another; he may so make use of another's labors for the promotion of science and the benefit of the public. — Edward Law, 1st Earl Of Ellenborough

But he alone having reached our deep corruption, he alone having taken upon himself our labors, he alone having suffered the punishments due for our impieties, having recovered us who were not half dead merely, but were already in tombs and sepulchers, and altogether foul and offensive, saves us, both anciently and now, by his beneficent zeal, beyond the expectation of any one, even of ourselves, and imparts liberally of the Father's benefits - he who is the giver of life and light, our great Physician and King and Lord, the Christ of God. — Eusebius

A true Christian lives and labors on earth not for himself but for his neighbor. Therefore the whole spirit of his life him impels him to do even that which he needs not do, but which is profitable and necessary for his neighbor. — Martin Luther

No missionary can determine the lasting effects of his or her labors. — Richard G. Scott

I have overlived the generation with which mutual labors & perils begat mutual confidence and influence. — Thomas Jefferson

I know that our efforts all come to nothing. I know the end of us all is nothing, I know that at the end of Time, the reward of our toil will be nothing - and again nothing. I know that all our handiwork will be destroyed. I know that not even ash will be left from the fires that consume us. I know that our ideals, even those we achieve, will vanish in the eternal darkness of oblivion and final non-being. There is no hope, none, in my heart. No promise, none, can I make to myself and to others. No recompense can I expect for my labors. No fruit will be born of my thoughts. The Future - eternal seducer of all men, eternal cause of all effects - offers me nothing but the blank prospect of annihilation. — Giovanni Papini

Don't we see that men's rightful task is to go out to work and wear themselves out trying to accumulate wealth, as though they were our factors or stewards, so that we can remain at home like the lady of the house directing their work and enjoying the profit of their labors? That, if you like, is the reason why men are naturally stronger and more robust than us - they need to be, so they can put up with the hard labor they must endure in our service. — Moderata Fonte

Not the labors of my hands
Can fulfill thy Law's demands:
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for Sin could not atone:
Thou must save, and Thou alone! — Augustus Toplady

The progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce, and the diffusion of education, than upon the labors of cabinets and foreign offices. — Richard Cobden

I had believed there was no such thing as redemption. I knew now I was wrong. Redemption had not come from grand gestures of dashing bravery. It had not come from successfully completing twelve impossible labors. Instead, redemption transpired from the small, quiet places. — Brodi Ashton

We are paid for our daily labors by the pennies and dollars; we are paid in respect and gratitude when those labors consist of good deeds. — Charles Cross

To open avenues to political place and power for all classes of women would cause [the] humble labors of the family and schoo1 to be still more undervalued and shunned. — Catharine Beecher

The best recommendation I can have is my own talents, and the fruits of my own labors, and what others will not do for me, I will try and do for myself. — John James Audubon

To every administrator, in peaceful, unstormy times, it seems that the entire population entrusted to him moves only by his efforts, and in this consciousness of his necessity every administrator finds the chief rewards for his labors and efforts. It is understandable that, as long as the historical sea is calm, it must seem to the ruler-administrator in his frail little bark, resting his pole against the ship of the people and moving along with it, that his efforts are moving the ship. But once a storm arises, the sea churns up, and the ship begins to move my itself, and then the delusion is no longer possible. The ship follows its own enormous, independent course, the pole does not reach the moving ship, and the ruler suddenly, from his position of power, from being a source of strength, becomes an insignificant, useless, and feeble human being. — Leo Tolstoy

My midwife partners and I at the The Farm learned by observation and experience that the presence of even one person who is not exquisitely attuned to the mother's feelings can stop some women's labors. All women are sensitive. Some women are extraordinarily so. We learned this truth by observing many labors stop or slow down when someone entered the birth room who was not intimate with the laboring mother's feelings. If that person then left the room, labor usually returned to its former pace or intensity. — Ina May Gaskin

A person whom works exclusively for money places a price tag on his or her soul. A person whom labors to attain fame seeks a false form of adulation. The writer ignores the lure of a glamorous life by seeking to penetrate the darkness of their own being and meditate the larger issues that frame existence. A seeker knowingly follows a path that is barren, bleak, desolate, and unproductive in terms of attaining recognition and exulted social and financial status. — Kilroy J. Oldster

What we are told of the inhabitants of Brazil, that they never die but of old age, is attributed to the tranquility and serenity of their climate; I rather attribute it to the tranquility and serenity of their souls, which are free from all passion, thought, or any absorbing and unpleasant labors. Those people spend their lives in an admirable simplicity and ignorance, without letters, without law, without king, without any manner of religion. — Michel De Montaigne

Most interesting," said Summerlee, bending over my shin. "An enormous blood-tick, as yet, I believe, unclassified." "The first-fruits of our labors," said Challenger in his booming, pedantic fashion. "We cannot do less than call it Ixodes Maloni. The very small inconvenience of being bitten, my young friend, cannot, I am sure, weigh with you as against the glorious privilege of having your name inscribed in the deathless roll of zoology. Unhappily you have crushed this fine specimen at the moment of satiation. — Arthur Conan Doyle

The beast is dry and mottled, shedding skin
as minutes drop from life, a wristy piece
of dogged ugliness, its labors meant
to carve from language beauty, that beauty which
lifts free of flesh to find itself in print — John Updike

Intellectual beauty is sufficient unto itself, and only for it rather than for the future good of humanity does the scholar condemn himself to arduous and painful labors. — Santiago Ramon Y Cajal

Your prayer must be for a healthy mind in a sound body. Ask for a brave soul that has no fear of death, deems length of life the least of nature's gifts and is able to bear any kind of sufferings, knows neither wrath nor desire and believes the woes and hard labors of Hercules better than the loves and feasts and downy cushions of Sardanapalus. Reveal what you are able to give yourself; the only path to a life of tranquility lies through virtue. — Juvenal

What self-righteous persons take to themselves, is the same work that Christ was engaged in when He was in His agony and bloody sweat, and when He died on the cross, which was the greatest thing that ever the eyes of angels beheld. Christ could accomplish other parts of this work without cost; but this part cost Him His life, as well as innumerable pains and labors. Yet this is the part which self-righteous persons go about to accomplish for themselves. — Jonathan Edwards

We should be wary what persecution we raise against the living labors of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books, since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself; slays an immortality rather than a life. — John Milton

Insofar as men gain time, ease, independence, or liberty from women's domestic labors, they lack incentive to change. — Linda P. Rouse

Keynes died in 1946, exhausted by his wartime labors. But he had long since demonstrated that neither capitalism nor liberalism would survive very long without one another. — Tony Judt

That day, instead, I saw clearly the mothers of the old neighbourhood. They were nervous, they were acquiescent. They were silent, with tight lips and stooping shoulders, or they yelled terrible insults at the children who harassed them. Extremely thin, with hollow eyes and cheeks, or with broad behinds, swallen ankles, heavy chests, they lugged shopping bags and small children who clung to their skirts ( ... ) they appeared to have lost those feminine qualities that were so important to us girls ( ... ) They had been consumed by the bodies of husbands, fathers, brothers, whom they ultimately came to resemble, because of their labors or the arrival of old age, of illness. When did that transformation begin? With housework? With pregnancies? With beatings? — Elena Ferrante

The man who labors to please his neighbor for his good to edification has the mind that was in Christ. It is a sinner trying to help a sinner. Even a feeble, but kind and tender man, will effect more than a genius, who is rough and artificial. — Richard Cecil

Flattery labors under the odious charge of servility. — Tacitus

Man understood in the end what man is. He renounces the analysis of God, penetrating the impalpable, in which he has not seen, to give laws to the phantasms of his brain. Man understands that his inheritance is the greater world whose dominion is within his grasp. Tired of useless and presumptuous labor he bows his head and looks about him, and now he sees how our poets are born. Little by little nature's muses open their treasures and start to smile upon us, and lead us far from such labors. — Jose Rizal

Moved by their selfish desires, people seek after fame and glory. But when they have acquired it, they are already stricken in years. If you hanker after worldly fame and practise not the Way, your labors are wrongfully applied and your energy is wasted. It is like unto burning an incense stick. However much its pleasing odor be admired, the fire that consumes is steadily burning up the stick. — Gautama Buddha

Other than a light beading of sweat on his forehead there was little evidence that his labors had cost him anything at all. — Cormac McCarthy

Whosoever considers the immense labors undertaken by Catholic exegetes during well nigh two thousand years, so that the word of God, imparted to men through the Sacred Letters, might daily be more deeply and fully understood and more intensely loved, will easily be convinced that it is the serious duty of the faithful, and especially of priests, to make free and holy use of this treasure, accumulated throughout so many centuries by the greatest intellects. — Pope Pius XII

He who believes in God is not careful for the morrow, but labors joyfully and with a great heart. "For He giveth His beloved, as in sleep." They must work and watch, yet never be careful or anxious, but commit all to Him, and live in serene tranquility; with a quiet heart, as one who sleeps safely and quietly. — Martin Luther

Generations cometh and generations passeth, but the earth abideth forever. While successive generations live and die, and all things change, man can never rest until death claims us. I choose to use my time alone to contemplate human existence, probe the human condition, and trace what it means to be one man in our modern world. There can be no profit from my labor, no lasting yield realized from this laborious and painful sojourn. We will leave everything behind. The earth shall dissolve all of our acquisitions and obliterate all traces of our petty affections. Passage of time shall alter, not annihilate the products of any artistic labors. The substance of our artistic enterprises shall continue forward in a renewed and redefined state. — Kilroy J. Oldster

In itself that music festival was nothing special, these music festivals in our country are all alike, performing a most useful function especially for all those people who are chained to their labors, year in and year out, so naturally everybody comes flocking to the two or three music festivals per year, with their actual and their so-called amusements and distractions, these affairs are called music festivals because unlike the usual so-called country fairs they feature a band, an enormous attraction to the populace, that's all it is, but the organizers know that they can draw a much larger crowd by calling it a music festival rather than a country fair, so it has become the custom to call these events music festivals even if they are nothing more than country fairs, everybody attends these music festivals which usually begin early on Saturday night and end late on Sunday morning. — Thomas Bernhard

Being a woman, I have found the road rougher than had I been born a man. Different defenses, different codes of ethics, different approaches to problems and personalities are a woman's lot. I have preferred to shun what is known as feminine wiles, the subterfuge of subtlety, reliance on tears and coquetry to shape my way. I am forthright, often blunt. I have learned to be a realist despite my romantic, emotional nature. I have no illusions that age, the rigors of my profession, disappointments, and unfulfilled dreams have not left their mark.

I am proud that I have carved my path on earth almost entirely by my own efforts, proud that I have compromised in my career only when I had no other recourse, when financial or contractual commitments dictated. Proud that I have never been involved in a physical liaison unless I was deeply attracted or in love. Proud that, whatever my worldly goods may be, they have been achieved by my own labors. — Joan Fontaine

I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip. — John Kennedy Toole

No true and permanent fame can be founded except in labors which promote the happiness of mankind. — Charles Sumner

You may feel overwhelmed by your own poverty and the labors of the day. But if you decide not to wait until you have more strength and more money, and if you pray for the Holy Spirit as you go, you will, when you arrive, know what to do and how to help someone even poorer than you are. — Henry B. Eyring

For all the saints who from their labors rest,
Who, to the world their steadfast faith confessed,
your name, O Jesus, be forever blessed
Alleluia! — Walsham How

Never put away your labors while the sun is high, Alma, with the hopes of finding more hours to work tomorrow - for you shall never have any more extra time tomorrow than you had today, and once you have fallen behindhand in your responsibilities, you will never catch up. — Elizabeth Gilbert

In any service where a couple hold down jobs as a team, the male generally takes his ease while the wife labors at his job as wellas her own. — Anita Loos

Still stands the forest primeval; but far away from its shadow,
Side by side, in their nameless graves, the lovers are sleeping.
Under the humble walls of the little catholic churchyard,
In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown and unnoticed;
Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them,
Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and forever,
Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy,
Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their labors,
Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge. - Marcus Tullius Cicero — Tom Standage

No, there is nothing at all funny in poverty - to the poor. It is hell upon earth to a sensitive man; and many a brave gentleman who would have faced the labors of Hercules has had his heart broken by its petty miseries. — Jerome K. Jerome

Let us go forward in peace, our eyes upon heaven, the only one goal of our labors. — Therese Of Lisieux

These are the four abuses: desire to succeed in order to make oneself famous; taking credit for the labors of others; refusal to correct one's errors despite advice; refusal to change one's ideas despite warnings. — Confucius

The whole idea of a democracy is that we ourselves, the people, are supposed to make a path of our politics, and it is we who with our feet and our vote and our labors and our vigilance are supposed to shape our country. — Eugene Jarecki

I have a task that is greater than all the labors assigned to Hercules. It demands that I live in the richness of this moment because that is all I have or will ever know. — Richard Bode

No matter the self-conceited importance of our labors we are all compost for worlds we cannot yet imagine. — David Whyte

Tomorrow sees undone, what happens not to-day; Still forward press, nor never tire! The possible, with steadfast trust, Resolve should be by the forelock grasp. Then she will ne'er let go her clasp, And labors on, because she must. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The fruits of all our labors have left us as we started. To grow without is not to grow within. — Dave Winer

Consider the generosity of our Savior: what He acquired by dying becomes ours by eating. As often as we receive this Sacrament with proper dispositions, we make our own the fruits of all the labors, injuries and sufferings of His life, especially those borne at the time of His passion and death. Just as the power and the sensations of the head reach all the members of the body, in the same way, because Christ is "the head of the Church which is His Body" (Eph. 1:23), the treasures of His grace are made abundantly available to all who through charity are one with Him as living members. — Louis Of Granada

Historically the most striking result of Kant's labors was the rapid separation of the thinkers of his own nation and, though less completely, of the world, into two parties;-the philosophers and the scientists. — Lawrence Joseph Henderson

Survival is not a theory. In what way do I contribute to the subjugation of any part of those who I define as my people? Insight must illuminate the particulars of our lives: who labors to make the bread we waste, or the energy it takes to make nuclear poisons which will not biodegrade for one thousand years; or who goes blind assembling the microtransistors in our inexpensive calculators? — Audre Lorde

To Konstantin the peasant was simply the chief partner in their common labor, and in spite of all the respect and the love, almost like that of kinship, he had for the peasant - sucked in probably, as he said himself, with the milk of his peasant nurse - still as a fellow-worker with him, while sometimes enthusiastic over the vigor, gentleness, and justice of these men, he was very often, when their common labors called for other qualities, exasperated with the peasant for his carelessness, lack of method, drunkenness, and lying. — Leo Tolstoy

Society can progress if men's labors show a profit - if they yield more than is put in. To produce at a loss must leave less for all to share. — Bernard Baruch

Friends persuaded me to run for the office, and I won. I had been warned, before taking office, that state politics lacks the glamour of its Washington counterpart; one labors largely in obscurity, mostly on topics that mean a great deal to some but that the average man or woman on the street can safely ignore (the regulation of mobile homes, say, or the tax consequences of farm equipment depreciation). Nonetheless, I found the work — Barack Obama

This is the greatest wealth we possess: to know how to direct our labors rightly. — Brigham Young

How much the fiction of Sir Walter Scott owes to Froissart, and to Philip de Comines after Froissart, those only can understand who have read both the old chronicles and the modern romances. It was one of the congenial labors of — William Cleaver Wilkinson

No true Latter-Day Saint, while physically or emotionally able will voluntarily shift the burden of his own or his family's well-being to someone else. So long as he can, under the inspiration of the Lord and with his own labors, he will supply himself and his family with the spiritual and temporal necessities of life. — Spencer W. Kimball

Let me write not for fame and laurel, but from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful even if my night's labors be burnt each morning and no eye ever shine upon them. — John Keats

I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have a light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me. — Henri Matisse

We can know what the Lord wants us to do - and experience 'the blessing which hath been bestowed upon us, that we have been made instruments in the hands of God to bring about this great work' (Alma 26:3). . . .

"To truly be an instrument in the hands of God, in order to fully have that blessing bestowed upon us in 'the day of this life' in which we 'perform [our] labors' (Alma 34:32), we must, as Elder Maxwell says, 'finally submit ourselves' (Ensign, Nov. 1995, 24) to the Lord. — Anne C. Pingree

[T]he young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands. — William Faulkner

Whoever wishes to make progress in perfection should use particular diligence in not allowing himself to be led away by his passions, which destroy with one hand the spiritual edifice which is rising by the labors of the other. But to succeed well in this, resistance should be begun while the passions are yet weak; for after they are thoroughly rooted and grown up, there is scarcely any remedy. — St. Vincent

I respect not his labors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars. — Henry David Thoreau

In Heaven we shall not rest from our work, but from our labors. There will be no toil, no pain in the work. — David Berg

He made a pit and digged it. He was cunning in his plans and industrious in his labors. He stooped to the dirty work of digging. He did not fear to soil his own hands. He was willing to work in a ditch if others might fall therein. What mean things men will do to wreak revenge on the godly. They hunt for good men as if they were brute beasts - they that will not give them the fair chase afforded to the hare or the fox, but must secretly entrap them because they can neither run them down nor shoot them down. Our enemies will not meet us to the face for they fear us as much as they pretend to despise us. But let us look on to the end of the scene. The verse says he has fallen into the ditch that he has made. Ah, there he is. Let us laugh at his disappointment. Lo, he is himself the beast. He has hunted his own soul. The chase has brought him a goodly victim. So should it ever be. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Whatever our dreams, ideas, or projects, we plant a seed, nurture it
and then reap the fruits of our labors. — Oprah Winfrey

Had Harry been born under a star less kind, he might well have ended up among the city's nomadic visionaries, his days taken up with begging for enough money to buy some liquid oblivion, his nights spent trying to find a place where he could not hear the adversaries singing as they went about their labors of the dark. They had only ever sung one song within earshot of Harry, and that was "Danny Boy," that hymn to death and maudlin sentiment that Harry had heard so often that he knew the words by heart. — Clive Barker

The fruits of your labors may be reaped two generations from now. Trust, even when you don't see the results. — Henri Nouwen

And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. — Thomas Jefferson

No true work since the world began was ever wasted; no true life since the world began has ever failed. Oh, understand those two perverted word, failure and success and measure them by the eternal, not the earthly, standard. When after thirty obscure, toilsome, unrecorded years in the shop of the village carpenter, one came forth to be pre-eminently the man of sorrows, to wander from city to city in homeless labors, and to expire in lonely agony upon the shameful cross
was that a failure. — Frederic Farrar

The history of society is the history of the inventive labors that man alter man, alter his desires, habits, outlook, relationships both to other men and to physical nature, with which man is in perpetual physical and technological metabolism. — Isaiah Berlin

I have been in my bed for five weeks, oppressed with weakness and other infirmities from which my age, seventy four years, permits me not to hope release. Added to this (proh dolor! [O misery!]) the sight of my right eye - that eye whose labors (dare I say it) have had such glorious results - is for ever lost. That of the left, which was and is imperfect, is rendered null by continual weeping. — Galileo Galilei

All that is needed for the majority of labors to go well is a healthy, pregnant woman who has loving support in labor, self-confidence , and attendants with infinite patience. — Sheila Kitzinger

My stars and my stripes are your dream and your labors. — Franklin Knight Lane

the force of the water drop that hollows the stone. A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules. — Laura Vanderkam

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace. — Richard Brautigan

It is the curse of talent that, although it labors with greater steadiness and perseverance than genius, it does not reach its goal, while genius already on the summit of the ideal, gazes laughingly about. — Robert Schumann

Experience hobbles progress and leads to abandonment of difficult problems; it encourages the initiated to walk on the shady side of the street in the direction of experiences that have been pleasant. Youth without experience attacks the unsolved problems which maturer age with experience avoids, and from the labors of youth comes progress. Youth has dreams and visions, and will not be denied. — William James Mayo

In other words, when women acquire critical skills and starting weighing their options they soon wise up to the fact that they're not getting enough recompense for their labors. In trade union terms, you'd call it a production slowdown ... — Meghan Daum

In all our efforts, if we are not about people, our labors aren't really about Jesus but about us. — Jen Hatmaker

It is Lucifer, The son of mystery; And since God suffers him to be, He too, is God's minister, And labors for some good By us not understood. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In a broader sense, the value of heirlooms is always, as I have said, an historical value, derived from acts of production, use, or appropriation that have involved the object in the past. The value of an heirloom is really that of actions: actions whose significance has been, as it were, absorbed into the object's current identity - whether the emphasis is placed on the inspired labors of the artist who created it, the lengths to which some people have been known to go to acquire it, or the fact that it was once used to cut off a mythical giant's head. Since the value of the actions has already been fixed in the physical being of the object, it is perhaps a short leap to begin attributing the agency behind such actions to the object as well, and speak, as Mauss does, of valuables that transfer themselves from owner to owner or actively influence their owners' fates. The — David Graeber