When I was a young man I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. I didn't want to be a failure, so I did ten times more work.

Many people mistake our work, for our vocation is the love of Jesus.

The less important you are on the table of organization, the more you'll be missed if you don't show up for work.

Of all human activities, only labor, and neither action nor work, is unending, progressing automatically in accordance with life itself and outside the range of willful decisions or humanly meaningful purposes.

Most men in a brazen prison live, Where, in the sun's hot eye, With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give, Dreaming of nought beyond their prison-wall.

Don't condescend to unskilled labor. Try it for half a day first.

Capitalism arose and took off its pajamas. Another day, another dollar. Each man is valued at what he will bring in the marketplace. Meaning has been drained from work and assigned instead to remuneration.

Often in other countries, one is waited on by people who obviously believe they were destined for better things but were forced by cruel fate to accept a degrading occupation, so degrading in fact as to bring them in contact with people like you. This never happens in Italy.

It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.

Work would be terribly boring if one did not play the game all out, passionately.