This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is no divine right of property. Nothing is so completely a man’s own that he may do what he likes with it... Nevertheless, as it is obviously well that each man should labor without fear of being deprived of the use and enjoyment of the product of their labor - as in the nature of things he would not labor at all without some such incentive, it may be said that a man has natural right to own the product of his labor... By this natural right of the individual is still subject to all the limitations imposed by the rights of his fellows.
Enjoyment | Fear | Individual | Labor | Man | Nature | Nothing | Property | Right | Rights |
Leisure, though the propertied classes give its name to their own idleness, is not idleness. It is not even a luxury: it is a necessity, and a necessity of the first importance. Some of the most valuable work done in the world has been done at leisure, and never paid for in cash or kind. Leisure any be described as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes: labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.
Choice | Idleness | Labor | Leisure | Luxury | Men | Nature | Necessity | Work | World |
The universal demand for happiness and the widespread unhappiness in our society (and there are but two sides of the same coin) are among the most persuasive signs that we have begun to live in a labor society which lacks enough laboring to keep it contented. For only the animal labors, and neither the craftsman nor the man of action, has ever demanded to be "happy" or thought that mortal man could be happy.
Action | Enough | Happy | Labor | Man | Mortal | Society | Thought | Unhappiness | Society | Happiness | Thought |
We should so live and labor in our time that what came to us as seed may; go to the next generation as blossom, and what came to us as blossom may go to them as fruit. This is what is meant by progress.
Still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait.
Tell me not in mournful numbers, life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, and things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; dust thou art, to dust returneth, was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow is our destined end or way; but to act, that each to-morrow find us farther than today... Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act - act in the living Present! Hear within, and God o’erhead. Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us footprints in the sands of time... Let us then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait.
Art | Enjoyment | Fate | Future | God | Grave | Heart | Labor | Life | Life | Men | Past | Present | Sorrow | Soul | Time | Trust | God | Learn |
There is but one pursuit in life which it is in the power of all to follow, and of all to attain. It is subject to no disappointments, since he that perseveres makes every difficulty an advancement, and every conquest a victory; and this is the pursuit of virtue. Sincerely to aspire after virtue is to gain her; and zealously to labor after her ways is to receive them.
Conquest | Difficulty | Labor | Life | Life | Power | Receive | Virtue | Virtue |
There is a large difference between indolent impatience of labor and intellectual impatience of delay, large difference between leaving things unfinished because we have more to do or because we are satisfied with what we have done.
Delay | Impatience | Labor |
The cause of profit is that labor produces more than is required for its support.
Without seeking, truth cannot be known to all. It can neither be declared from pulpits, nor set down in articles, nor in any wise prepared and sold in packages ready for use. Truth must be ground for every man by himself out of its husk, with such help as he can get, indeed, but not without stern labor of his own.
In slave labor, even that part of the working day in which the slave is only replacing the value of his own means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact, he works for himself alone, appears as labor for his master. All the slaves labor appears as unpaid labor.
The foundation of every division of labor that is well developed and brought about by the exchange of commodities is the separation between town and country. It may be said, that the whole economical history of society is summed up in the movement of this antithesis.
Antithesis | History | Labor | Society | Society |
Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL
Some labor with their minds and some labor with their strength. Those who labor with their minds govern others; those who labor with their strength are governed by others. Those who are governed by others support them; those who govern them are supported by them. This is a universal principal.