Samuel Butler Quotes

Work is no disgrace: it is idleness which is a disgrace.

Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease.

Toil is no source of shame; idleness is shame.

Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

I think the man who eats the bread of idleness is under a certain obligation to speak well of labor.

He who is idle shall not eat the bread nor wear the garments of the laborer

Believe me, I do not like idleness but work.

There are two sorts of content; one is connected with exertion, the other with habits of indolence. The first is a virtue; the other, a vice.

Shall we keep our hands in our bosom, or stretch ourselves on our beds of laziness, while all the world about us is hard at work, in pursuing the designs of its creation?

It is idleness that is the curse of man - not labour. Idleness eats the heart out of men as of nations, and consumes them as rust does iron.

I'm not a fan of idleness, except in small doses.

Without labor nothing prospers.

Keep doing some kind of work, that the devil may always find you employed.

We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure.

It would indeed be a sad misfortune if man were released from the necessity of work and struggle, for it is a well-known fact that organs which do not function atrophy; and according to the old saying, 'Idleness is the devil's workshop.'

I don't work that hard.

Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy; and he that riseth late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night; while laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon overtakes him.

No man is born into the world whose work Is not born with him. There is always work, And tools to work withal, for those who will; And blessed are the horny hands of toil.

Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all things easy.

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.

Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable, distracting musings; while labor profit others and ourselves.

Surely man was not created to be an idle fellow; he was not set in this universal orchard to stand still as a tree.

Like every man of sense and good feeling, I abominate work.

A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.