Human work

“ Work is the inevitable condition of human life, the true source of human welfare. ”

“ A most able work, the design of which is to determine from an examination of the various forms in which society has been formed, what was the origin of civilization, and under what circumstances those attributes of humanity, which in one country become the foundation of social happiness, and in another perverted to the production of general misery. For this purpose the author has separately examined the principal elements by which society, under all its aspects, is held together, and traced each to its source in human nature. ”

“ It is the conditions underlying history and rooted in the facts of human life itself which we must know, since from the beginning life and work have been practically synonymous, and in the nature of things remain so. ”

“ Find work for the life of the coming moral humanity which shall be so comprehensive and definite that each moment of every man’s life in that perfect state, however rich and manifold men’s lives may then be, can be and will be spent in the accomplishment of that one highest impersonal work. If such work is found and accepted, the goal of human progress will be in so far reached. ”

“ His spirit state was revealed to me as among those arisen workers and reformers, whose work for humanity he loved and shared on earth, and learning of the wise ones,—a vast and wonderful sphere of individualities, who are still laboring for the good of humanity. ”

“ Third, To comply with that eternal and indubitable law of humanity,—the labor of my whole being, feeling no shame at any sort of work; to contend with nature for the maintenance of my own life and the lives of others. ”

“ In work of the finer order, dealing with the more impressionable material, there are discoverable not only the character and quality of the worker, but the conditions under which he lives; the stage of civilisation, the vigour or languor of vital energy, the richness or poverty of social life, the character of the soil and of the landscape, the pallor or the bloom of vegetation, the shining or the veiling of the skies. ”

“ If I could only persuade you of this, that the chief duty of the civilised world to-day is to set about making labour happy for all, to do its utmost to minimise the amount of unhappy labour—nay, if I could only persuade some two or three of you here present—I should have made a good night’s work of it. ”

“ I know not how to offer you specific advice respecting this important matter, and fortunately I think it is not needed; for all general knowledge expands the mind, clears it of prejudice, and qualifies it for application to any particular subject; and where the field is so wide, and the labour required so vast and diversified, each labourer must select that style of work which he finds most congenial to his taste and best suited to his powers. ”

“ Let anybody observe the conversation in good society for an hour or two, and hear the tone in which servant-girls, seamstresses, mechanics, and all who work for their living, are sometimes mentioned, and he will see, that, while every one of the speakers professes to regard useful labor as respectable, she is yet deeply imbued with the leaven of aristocratic ideas. ”

“ Somehow, character must be built up, and character depends upon industry, upon thrift, upon morals, upon correct ethical perceptions. To have control of one's powers, to have skill in labor, so that work in any occupation shall be intelligent, to have self-respect, which commonly comes from trained capacity, to know how to live, to have a clean, orderly house, to be grounded in honesty and the domestic virtues,—these are the essentials of progress. ”

“ The degree in which a man individualises his work and gives it the quality of his own mind and spirit is, therefore, the measure of his success in giving his nature free and full expression. For work, in this large sense, is the expression of the man; and as the range and significance of all kinds of expression depend upon the scope and meaning of the ideas, forces, skills, and qualities expressed, so the dignity and permanence of work depend upon the power and insight of the worker. ”

“ Society's great task is, therefore, the understanding of the life-force, its manifold efforts at expression and the way of attaining this, and to provide as free and expansive ways as possible for the creative energy which is to work marvelous things for the future. ”

“ There is a question which everyone should ask herself about her work: "Is the work that I am doing adding anything to the wealth and well-being of the world? Is it necessary work—that is, is any one single person dependent to any extent for his or her existence on what I do?" ”

“ He will watch, with care and interest, the operation of the moral and intellectual causes which he sets in operation; and find, as he accomplishes his various objects with increasing facility and power, that he will derive a greater and greater pleasure from his work. ”

“ In setting out the development of society as his aim, the individual makes considerable sacrifices. All that is distinctly individual must go, in character, in work, in science, and art, and that which is concerned with the common need of society must receive attention. ”

“ We see, in any case, that there is in the inmost depth, and there dates from the most rudimentary sketch of the organized being, the fixed and formed idea of those differences in choice and those sympathies in work whose system shall build up the individual. ”

“ Whatever we make of ourselves, then,—whether farmers, mechanics, lawyers, doctors, or priests,—let us above all things first have a care that we are men; and if we are to be men, our special business work must form only a part of our life-work. ”

“ If we take into account the qualities necessary for the successful conduct of any important undertaking,—that it requires special aptitude, promptitude of action on emergencies, capacity for organizing the labours often of large numbers of men, great tact and knowledge of human nature, constant self-culture, and growing experience in the practical affairs of life,—it must, we think, be obvious that the school of business is by no means so narrow as some writers would have us believe. ”

“ The peculiar experience which a successful business career gives—the power both of handling details and managing large interests; the capacity of organization; the energy and the careful judgment and knowledge of men which such a life develops,—are the qualities most needed in managing moral and benevolent "causes." ”

“ The fact is that the total work and duty of collective humanity,—the production of a maximum of true recollection, rest and detachment, effected in and through a maximum of right dispersion, action, and attachment; above all a maximum of ethico-spiritual transformation of the world and, in and through such work, of each single worker,—is too high for any single soul, or even class or vocation, to hope to exhaust. ”

“ All of them will tell us about you as a person: how you think, how you behave. Desperately essential stuff, if you're to survive the sort of work we do here. What we find is the whole basis of our assignments. ”

“ There are, of course, in every calling, those who go about the work of the day before them, doing it according to the rules of their craft, and asking no questions of the past or of the future, or of the aim and end to which their special labor is contributing. ”

“ We do not mean merely physical work. There is a great deal of higher work—the work of action and endurance, of trial and patience, of enterprise and philanthropy, of spreading truth and civilization, of diminishing suffering and relieving the poor, of helping the weak, and enabling them to help themselves. ”

“ The craftsman, the artist, the scientist, the professional man, and to some extent the business man make new experience the basis of organized activity, of work, and produce thereby social values. The division of labor which removes the problematical from the various operations of the work makes the task totally unstimulating. ”

“ Material possibilities are rightly predicated upon correct moral and spiritual bases; but a morally and spiritually sound training must be sustained by such preparation for the actual work of life, as we find it in the machine shop, the grain field, and the commercial pursuits. ”

“ I am content here to leave under the scrutiny of the evening my general statement, that as human development, when moral, is with special effort in a given direction, so, when moral, it is with special effort in favour of a limited class ”

“ Few, however, saw the great importance of such a work, and none of the movers in it imagined that they would live to witness the accomplishing of an object for which the society was brought into being. ”

“ Let me say to you that all honest work is honorable work. If the labor is manual, and seems common, you will have all the more chance to be thinking of other things, or of work that is higher and brings better pay, and to work out in your minds better and higher duties and responsibilities for yourselves, and for thinking of ways by which you can help others as well as yourselves, and bring them up to your own higher level. ”

“ The employment forms the habits of body and mind, and these are the constitution of the man,—the greater part of his moral or persistent nature, whatever effort, under special excitement, he may make to change or overcome them. Employment is the half, and the primal half, of education—it is the warp of it; and the fineness or the endurance of all subsequently woven pattern depends wholly on its straightness and strength. ”

“ Such then, gentlemen, are the duties arising from your present position that I would exhort you to discharge:—to labour for the acquisition of knowledge and of wisdom, in order that your intellectual being may grow into the glorious thing it is fitted to become; then to see to it that you employ in the service of men and for their good, all the skill and all the influence that through your own development you thus will gain. ”

“ Good honest work, after an ideal plan, to the full measure of his powers, with wise selection of appropriate means, gives each individual his place and rank in the vast workshop wherein the eternal thoughts of God, revealed to men as their several ideals, are wrought out into the actuality of the social, economic, political, æsthetic and spiritual order of the world. ”

“ That though all that can must labour, yet there is great diversity of labours; and all men are not to do the same work. Magistrates, and pastors, and lawyers, and physicians, must labour diligently; but they are not all bound to plough, and thrash, and use the more servile labours of their inferiors. 2. That every man must labour in the works of his own calling, "and do his own business," 1 Thess. ”

“ This social culture may be shortly described in some of its tendencies: (1) Work for society was the compelling motive in the shaping of this life of social utility. Some such social principle may suffice for the distribution of goods ”

“ Labor of every sort is dignified. All living laborers who work with their hands and minds, truly earning, living in love and according to the laws of social order and progress, will become the pure and perfected leaders of truth. ”

“ You can do a great deal by going among the people, living with them, working side by side with them. You would get to know, esteem, ay, and reverence them, the workers; and the workers would derive from you some of that high culture, that self-discipline, which has become, by a process that has gone on for centuries, the groundwork and the essence of high-class life. ”

“ To examine society with a view to determine the [160] general spirit and character of those who compose it, is like examining an animal with a view to a knowledge of the nature and operation of the living principle. If we examine it while alive and in the performance of its functions, we see the results without being able to understand the machinery ”

“ Are they only the valuable members of society who labor to dress and feed it? Shall we never ask the aim of all this hurry and foam, of this aimless activity? Let the purpose for which I live be always before me; let every thought and word go to confirm and illuminate that end ”

“ One gets the sense that the labour, with its multiplied incidents and opportunities, is just unlimitedly inspiring to the keen spirit or the sympathetic soul, the recruit with energies and resources on hand that plead with him for the beauty of the vivid and palpable social result. ”

“ Their whole manner of life and their professional division of labor, in which they remind us of civilized human life, provoke the query, Whence the mechanical and technical skill and the intelligence of these little creatures? ”

“ Senses and faculties have been bestowed upon us, to be devoted to the service of the general good; so that we, distinguished above all other forms of life for perceptiveness and reason, should labor at all times and along all lines, whether the occasion be great or small, ordinary or extraordinary, until all mankind are safely gathered into the impregnable stronghold of knowledge. ”

“ What are the principles which the individual shows in his mental life—principles of organization, growth, and conduct; and what additional principles, if any, does society exhibit in its forms of organization, progress, and activity? ”

“ In any work there is possible, first, more or less of the workman's interest—an interest not merely in a conventional standard of excellence in the finished result but also in betterment of the standard and in a corresponding heightened excellence of technique and spirit in the execution.49 These interests, without reference to the useful result and "for their own sake" (i.e., for the workman's sake, in ways not specifiable in advance) , may command a share of one's available time, strength, and resources. ”

“ Thought and knowledge, war and government, production and distribution, labour and service were carefully differentiated functions of society, each assigned to those who were naturally called to it and providing the right means by which they could individually proceed towards their spiritual development and self-perfection. ”