Work ethic

“ We should promote solid traits such as work ethic and a dignified lifestyle, matching action to rhetoric performing, rather than grandstanding. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Certainly, right thinking naturally impels people to work.
We learned no theories about "the dignity of labor," but we were taught to work almost as if it were a religion; to keep at work, expecting nothing else. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For in all those higher forms of work which involve not only expert workmanship but a spiritual content of some kind, the worker must bring to his task not only skill but ideas, force, personality, temperament; and, sound workmanship being secured, his rank will depend not on specific expertness, but on the depth, energy, and splendour of the personality which the work reveals. ”

“ The possession of skill is to-day the inexorable condition of securing this outward prosperity; and, as a rule, the greater a man's skill the more enduring his success. But skill has other and deeper uses and ends. Thoroughness and adequacy in the doing of one's work are the evidences of the presence of a moral conception in the worker's mind ”

“ In like manner, we must doubtless look out for the worker; and he must doubtless look out for himself. His conditions of life and work must be made such that he will perform his task as well as possible. But those conditions will be adjusted quite differently if we regard the comfort of the worker as the prime object from what they will be if we regard the excellence of the output as the prime object and the worker’s comfort as a means to that end. ”

“ Are, then, the workers at their daily tasks
Unhappy and unblest?
Nay; He who chooses for them gives the wage
Of happiness and rest.
The feet pass swiftly to the place of toil,
The lips break into song,
And ready hands receive the allotted task,
Nor find the hours too long.
Because the loyal heart is true to God,
And the deft hand obeys
The Master, who decides what each shall do,
Joy fills the working days.
And so, if but the soul be leal, the task
Itself becomes more dear,
And every worker finds that work well done
Is work that brings good cheer. “What’s the Lesson for To-day?” ”

“ Limitation to specialized work, with a renunciation of the Faustian universality of man which it involves, is a condition of any valuable work in the modern world; ”

“ We would make all who are capable, work. We would give the rewards to those who produce, to all who produce by intellect or labor. We would do away with those who live on the producers—the leeches who suck the life-blood. Work, intellectual or physical, should be the law of society. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the old order the worker owned his tool, selected his material, controlled the process of his task, and often was master of the sale of the finished product. Hence, as has so often been shown, the character of a man was so obviously a part of the stock-in-trade of the worker, his judgment, probity and skill were so clearly causes of his success in handicraft, that the ethical training of life came definitely through the exercise of work-power. ”

“ As I read and observe I think workingmen hear much indiscriminate denunciation of the alleged selfishness, injustice and heartlessness of employers of labor, and but very little, if indeed anything, in the way of admonition or advice to themselves to do faithful, intelligent and efficient work, and in that way to command desirable positions and adequate pay. ”

“ We criticize the activities in which they engage, the hitherto sacred professions and businesses, and learn to distinguish carefully between actually productive work for society, work which makes for the material and spiritual well-being of the people for whom it is done, and parasitic or wasteful work, which simply extends the friction of competition, or lives on the labor or profits of others. ”

“ With our worker, just as sure as the sun rises and sets, if he continues to work and is no fool, he will rise to earn a competency, to improve himself, to own his own labor, to own his own home, to hire the labor of other men who are beginners as he once was himself. ”

“ The service of art or music or education is vaguely felt to be higher than carpentry or engineering or cooking. But all socially valuable vocations have their part to play in advancing the good of humanity, and all offer worthy lives to those who engage in them. In every one of these trades or professions, the worker may take pleasure in doing his duty, and in the great majority of cases the worker does find his deepest satisfaction in the consciousness of work dutifully done. The professions do not have a monopoly of work that is pleasant. ”

“ Was all that labor more wearing to health and strength than the cruel bondage in which we live, while laboring to secure, from servants, the care and efficient work absolutely necessary to the present style of living? ”

“ The Way of the Will—Incentives.—​His thoughts are wandering on forbidden pleasures, to the hindrance of his work; he pulls himself up, and deliberately fixes his attention on those incentives which have most power to make him work, the leisure and pleasure which follow honest labour, the duty which binds him to the fulfilling of his task. His thoughts run in the groove he wills them to run in, and work is no longer an effort. ”

“ Let the poor be cared for in their health, their amusements, their education, and their labour. Still the great work for an employer of labour remains for ever to be renewed; that which consists in the daily intercourse of life, in that perpetual exercise of care and kindness concerning those small things which, small as they may be, are nevertheless the chief part of men’s lives. Perhaps the greatest possible amelioration of the human lot is to be found in the improvement of our notions of the duties of master to man. ”

“ But with our resources of analysis and reflection, it is not difficult to discern that the various forces at work have been such as to preserve, in general, habits which made for the welfare of individual or tribe and discard the harmful ones. It is, then, not merely habits, but habits that matter, moral habits, with whose growth and alteration we are here concerned. What, in general, has been the direction of moral progress? We have noted the main causes at work in the production of morality; we now ask in what general direction these forces push. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus to the hire of manual labor may be added the immediate compensation which comes from a love of the tools, or from the satisfaction taken in the aspect of work done; to physical exercise may be added the love of nature, to scholarship the love of scientific form, and to social intercourse the love of personal beauty or of conversation. In these ways, and in countless ways beside, the aesthetic interest may multiply the richness of life. ”

“ When the man has been selected for his latent capacities, his employer sets to work on him scientifically and according to the laws of physics, hygiene, conservation of energy, the laws of philosophy, human nature, heredity, psychology, and even metaphysics, teaches the man how to hold his hands, how to lift, how to sit down, how to rest, and how to breathe, so that three times as much work can be got out of him as he could get out of himself. ”

“ Can you afford to shirk, or make-believe or practise pretense in any act of life? No, no; for all the time you are molding yourself into a deformity, and drifting away from the Divine. What the world does and says about you is really no matter, but what you think and what you do are questions vital as Fate. No one can harm you but yourself. Work is for the worker. And so I will answer the questions of the critics as to how society has been benefited by, say, a William Morris book:
1. The workmen who made it found a pride and satisfaction in their work. ”

“ Teach the employed to be honest, punctual, and faithful as well as respectful and obedient to all proper orders: but also teach the employer that every man or woman who desires to work, has a right to have work to do ”

“ He brought to the solution of the question of labor in this country not merely a mind, but a body thoroughly in sympathy with labor, full of the culture of labor, bearing witness to the dignity and excellence of work in every muscle that work had toughened and every sense that work had made clear and true. ”

“ That is what our speculator counts on; and he may say to himself, further: 'Treasures of experience and practical wisdom are often buried in workshops, for want of goodwill, opportunity, or encouragement. Excellent workmen, instead of making all the improvements in their power, follow with indifference the old jog-trot. What a pity! for an intelligent man, occupied all his life with some special employment, must discover, in the long run, a thousand ways of doing his work better and quicker. ”

“ Now, if the consciousness of work done gives to the workers a sense of satisfaction which helps them to support life, the certainty of being a useless burden must, one would think, produce a contrary effect, and fill the minds of such fruitless beings with the same contempt for themselves which they inspire in others. ”

“ Shall we take material work—work of hand, as a class distinction among men? We hear often the term laboring classes—men, namely, who live by work of hand; but are not those who work with their brains, workers also? There are a thousand kinds of work, and it is not absolutely necessary one should work with his hands to be a worker. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The sentiment which actuated you to help us was a noble one, but that kind of sentiment is a thing of the past; now we are required to stand or fall according to our merits. When goods are to be manufactured, machines constructed, houses and bridges built, clothing fashioned, or any sort of work performed, none but skilled workmen are considered; there are a great number of employers that care but little about the color of the workmen; with them the question is, Can he do the work? ”

“ He will be a worker whose best efforts, best ardour, and highest aims will be drawn out by his sense of the beneficence of his work, even though it be such a coarse routine of manual labour as machinery should soon remove altogether from human hands. ”

“ It evokes and disciplines obedience, self-control, attention, application, and perseverance, giving a man deftness and skill in his physical calling, and aptitude and dexterity in the affairs of ordinary life. Work is {123} the law of our being, the living principle that carries men and nations onward. Manual labor is a school in which men are placed to get energy of purpose and character—a vastly more important endowment than the learning of other schools. ”

“ The wiser man, the labourer, begins at his corner of the wood, and makes out a task for himself for each day. Let not our imaginations be employed on one side only. Think, that large as may appear the work to be done—so too the result of any endeavour, however small in itself, may be of infinite extent in the future. ”

“ From the numerous instances already cited of men of humble station who have risen to distinction in science and literature, it will be obvious that labour is by no means incompatible with the highest intellectual culture. Work in moderation is healthy, as well as agreeable to the human constitution. Work educates the body, as study educates the mind; and that is the best state of society in which there is some work for every man’s leisure, and some leisure for every man’s work. ”

“ The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame. ”

“ To rekindle in men the love of work for work's sake and the spirit of discipline, which the lost sense of human solidarity once inspired, would do much to solve the problem, for work is the greatest moral force in the world. ”

“ In this busy world there is honest work for every man to perform. Civilization has multiplied human wants and also developed the ingenuity necessary to gratify them. But it requires labor. Not such, however, as was performed by the slave, but skilled labor—labor where the hand is guided by an intellect, quickened by the agency of class-room and laboratory for the task assigned; labor, such as will reflect credit upon and elevate a gentleman. ”