The Value Of Work
For there is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works: in idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish mean, is in communication with Nature; the real desire to get work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature’s appointments and regulations, which are truth.
The latest Gospel in the world is, Know thy work and do it. “Know thyself”: long enough has that poor self of thine tormented thee; thou wilt never get to know it, I believe! Think is not thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual: know what thou canst work at; and work at it like a Hercules! That will be thy better plan.
It has been written, “An endless significance lies in work”; a man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man himself first ceases to be jungle and foul unwholesome desert thereby. Consider how in the meanest sorts of labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work! Doubt, desire, sorrow, remorse, indignation, despair itself, all these like hell-dogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor day-worker, as of every man: but he bends himself with free valor against his task, and all these are stilled, all these shrink murmuring far off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed glow of labor in him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made bright, blessed flame!
—Thomas Carlyle.
Love And Work
The world waits for help. Beloved, let us love so well, our work shall still be better for our love, and still our love be sweeter for our work, and both commended for the sake of each, by all true workers and true lovers bom.
—Robert Browning.
Alternate Reading: James 1:19-27.