C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Industry
Hell itself must yield to industry.
Keep your working power at its maximum.
Industry need not wish.
Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all things easy.
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
Plough deep while sluggards sleep.
Nothing is denied to well-directed labor.
Genius begins great works, labor alone finishes them.
Diligence is the mother of good luck.
The laborer is worthy of his hire.
Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings,
The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.
In this theater of man’s life, it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers-on.
One loses all the time which he can employ better.
Industry has annexed thereto the fairest fruits and the richest rewards.
The end of labor is to gain leisure. It is a great saying.
That man is but of the lower part of the world that is not brought up to business and affairs.
Earnest, active industry is a living hymn of praise, a never-failing source of happiness.
We mistake the gratuitous blessings of heaven for the fruits of our own industry.
The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness.
At the workingman’s house, hunger looks in, but dares not enter.
Genius is the father of a heavenly line, but the mortal mother, that is industry.
In the ordinary business of life, industry can do anything which genius can do, and very many things which it cannot.
God has so made the mind of man that a peculiar deliciousness resides in the fruits of personal industry.
A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them a fortune.
A plodding diligence brings us sooner to our journey’s end than a fluttering way of advancing by starts.
Application is the price to be paid for mental acquisition. To have the harvest, we must sow the seed.
If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiencies.
Industry is a Christian obligation, imposed on our race to develop the noblest energies, and insures the highest reward.
Honorable industry always travels the same road with enjoyment and duty, and progress is altogether impossible without it.
Mankind are more indebted to industry than ingenuity; the gods set up their favors at a price, and industry is the purchaser.
The bread earned by the sweat of the brow is thrice blessed bread, and it is far sweeter than the tasteless loaf of idleness.
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!
The way to wealth is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality; that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both.
Well for the drones of the social hive that there are bees of an industrious turn, willing, for an infinitesimal share of the honey, to undertake the labor of its fabrication.
I have observed that as long as one lives and bestirs himself, he can always find food and raiment, though it may not be of the choicest description.
Whenever you see want or misery or degradation in this world about you, then be sure either industry has been wanting, or industry has been in error.
The celebrated Galen said employment was nature’s physician. It is indeed so important to happiness that indolence is justly considered the parent of misery.
Everything is sold to skill and labor; and where nature furnishes the materials, they are still rude and unfinished, till industry, ever active and intelligent, refines them from their brute state, and fits them for human use and convenience.
The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the true spirit, will invariably be the most successful. Success treads on the heels of every right effort.
Wherever a ship ploughs the sea, or a plough furrows the field; wherever a mine yields its treasure; wherever a ship or a railroad train carries freight to market; wherever the smoke of the furnace rises, or the clang of the loom resounds; even in the lonely garret, where the seamstress plies her busy needle—there is industry.
Industry is not only the instrument of improvement, but the foundation of pleasure. He who is a stranger to it may possess, but cannot enjoy; for it is labor only which gives relish to pleasure. It is the appointed vehicle of every good to man. It is the indispensable condition of possessing a sound mind in a sound body.
Why, man of idleness, labor has rocked you in the cradle, and nourished your pampered life; without it, the woven silk and the wool upon your back would be in the shepherd’s fold. For the meanest thing that ministers to human want, save the air of heaven, man is indebted to toil; and even the air, in God’s wise ordination, is breathed with labor.
There is no art or science that is too difficult for industry to attain to; it is the gift of tongues, and makes a man understood and valued in all countries and by all nations; it is the philosopher’s stone, that turns all metals, and even stones, into gold, and suffers not want to break into its dwelling; it is the northwest passage, that brings the merchant’s ship as soon to him as he can desire. In a word, it conquers all enemies and makes fortune itself pay contribution.