The tradesman who strives to know all about his own business and cares but little about any other, will not have much business of his own to absorb his attention after a while.
Blessed word is that,—"occupation." The new education is bound up in it. The health of the child is contained in it. The safety of the saint is represented by it, and the progress of humanity is dependent upon it.
When labor becomes the pride of the laborer, then he becomes fit object for the envy of kings.
The most disordered explosions of pent-up passions and unreleased power follow in the wake of enforced idleness.
There is no release from toil, and the only escape from the burdens of labor must come, not by its cessation, but by its glorification.
There is an overwork that is killing, but the danger from work, any work, all work, is trifling compared to the greater dangers of indolence.
There is always a large physical element in distances. It is always farther from the breakfast table to the field than it is from the field to the dinner table.
When the wheels of life bear me down for the last time, I ask for no higher compliment, I seek no truer statement of the work I have tried to do, than that which the white-headed old negress gave the beardless boy on the hot Corinth cornfield in 1862. Then, if I deserve it, let some one who loves me say, "Here is a Linkum soldier who has done got run over," one who, like his leader, tried to "pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever a flower would grow."