Essays on Work and Culture

Superiority of any kind involves discipline, self-denial, and self- sacrifice. It is the law of excellence that he who would secure it must pay for it. In this way the intellect...

To secure the finest growth of a plant there must be a careful study of the conditions of soil, exposure, and moisture, or sun which it needs; when these conditions are supplied...

It is interesting to study the personality of a man whose work is invested with freshness, charm, and individuality, because such a study invariably makes us aware of that subtl...

The ability to relax the tension of work is as important as the power of concentration; for the two processes combine in the doing of the highest kind of work. There are, it is...

The uses of the imagination are so little understood by the great majority of men, both trained and untrained, that it is practically ignored not only in the conduct of life, bu...

A complete man is so uncommon that when he appears he is looked upon with suspicion, as if there must be something wrong about him. If a man is content to deal vigorously with a...

The general mind possesses a kind of divination which discovers itself in those comments, criticisms, and judgments which pass from man to man through a wide area and sometimes...

When a man has discovered the conditions which are necessary to his most complete development, he will, if he is wise and strong, resolutely preserve these conditions from all d...

The man whose life is intelligently ordered is always preparing himself for the highest demands of his work; he is not only doing that work with adequate skill from day to day,...

The sublime paradox of the spiritual life is repeated in all true development of personal gift and power. In order to find his life a man must first lose it; in order to keep hi...

Workers of all kinds are divided into two classes by differences of skill and by differences of aim. The artist not only handles his materials in a different way from that which...

It was the habit of an American statesman who rose to the highest official position, to prepare himself in advance upon every question which was likely to come before Congress b...

There is a radical difference between relaxation and recreation. To relax is to unbend the bow, to diminish the tension, to lie fallow, to open the nature on all sides. Relaxati...

When perils thickened about him and the most courageous grew faint- hearted, Francis Drake's favourite phrase was: "It matters not; God hath many things in store for us." No man...

The development of one's personality cannot be accomplished in isolation or solitude; the process involves close and enduring association with one's fellows. If work were purely...

"I have cut more than one field of oats and wheat," writes M. Charles Wagner, "cradled for long hours under the August sky to the slow cadence of the blade as it swung to and fr...

It is the habit of the poets, and of many who are poets neither in vision nor in faculty, to speak of youth as if it were a period of unshadowed gaiety and pleasure, with no con...

What shap'st thou here at the world? 't is shapen long ago; The Maker shaped it, he thought it best even so; Thy lot is appointed, go follow its hest; Thy way is begun, thou mus...

It is a very superficial conception of workmanship which sets it in conflict with originality. There is often an inherent antagonism between the impulse for freedom and spontane...

The comradeship of work is an element which is rarely taken into account, but which is of great importance from many points of view. Men who work together have not only the same...

The old idea that the necessity of working was imposed upon men as a punishment is responsible, in large measure, for the radical misunderstanding of the function and uses of wo...

The higher the kind and quality of a man's work, the more completely does it express his personality. There are forms of work so rudimentary that the touch of individuality is a...

Ease, it has been said, is the result of forgotten toil; and ease is essential to the man who works continuously and on a large scale. It is fortunate, rather than the reverse,...

Work is the most continuous and comprehensive form of action; that form which calls into play and presses into steady service the greatest number of gifts, skills, and powers. I...

If the conception of man's relation to the world set forth in these chapters is sound, work is the chief instrumentality in the education of the human spirit; for it involves bo...