Niall Matter Quotes

If you move furniture all day, if you're a construction worker, if you have a job that's real physical, this idea that there is a sport that involves the kind of conventional, traditional view of toughness, you see that still as a positive thing.

When I was 14, and for the next four years, I was lifting and hauling 10-gallon milk cans full of milk. That will put muscles on you even if you're not trying.

The duty of labor is written on a man's body: in the stout muscle of the arm,, and the delicate machinery of the hand.

The man who is ... physically able to handle pig-iron and is sufficiently ... stupid to choose this for his occupation is rarely able to comprehend the science of handling pig-iron

Back in 1960 at Christmas time, I did work loading and unloading boxcars for Railway Express. That was a kind of weight training that helped me. I weighed about 160 when I started. I began to gain weight and kept right on gaining until I reached 195 pounds.

It felt good doing a physical job, and going home each evening feeling like I had really done a day's work.

The wretch who digs the mine for bread, or ploughs, that others may be fed, feels less fatigued than that decreed to him who cannot think or read.

And what we've lost sight of is that performing manual labor with your hands is one of the most incredibly satisfying and positive things you can do.

Don't rule out working with your hands. It does not preclude using your head.

You don't need brains for this job, just physical stamina.

A lot of what we do at Fox is blue-collar stuff.

I'm from the country. All I've even done was use my hands. I guess that's how I've strengthened them over the years.

Building stuff. Lifting blocks. That's how I got stronger. I never lifted weights. I just did masonry work with my pops.

My most memorable job was on a lobster boat. I was a pretty strong kid, and they just needed someone who could haul pots on 200 ft. of line.

We have hands that must work, brains that must think, and personalities that must be developed.

In all important respects, the man who has nothing but his physical power to sell has nothing to sell which it is worth anyone's money to buy

A labourer cannot sit at the table and write, but a man who has worked at the table all his life can certainly take to physical labour.

I never liked to work, I mean manual work.

Who remove stones, bruise their fingers.

Everyone should get dirt on his hands each day. Doctors, intellectuals. Politicians, most of all. How can we presume to uplift the life of the working man, if we don't respect his work?

The scholar may be sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort, without a corresponding energy of the body.

I really enjoy working physically.

Nothing a man writes can please him as profoundly as something he does with his back, shoulders and hands. For writing is an artificial activity. It is a lonely and private substitute for conversation.

I'm not what you call your basic intellectual.

When I was 17 - 16, my father and I cut wood all day long and I was swinging that crosscut saw and hauling wood.