Without it, nothing can be accomplished.

All that is great in man comes through work; and civilisation is its product.

Were labour abolished, the race of Adam were at once stricken by moral death.
It is idleness that is the curse of man--not labour.

Idleness eats the heart out of men as of nations, and consumes them as rust does iron.
When Alexander conquered the Persians, and had an opportunity of observing their manners, he remarked that they did not seem conscious that there could be anything more servile than a life of pleasure, or more princely than a life of toil.
When the Emperor Severus lay on his deathbed at York, whither he had been borne on a litter from the foot of the Grampians, his final watchword to his soldiers was, "LABOREMUS" [we must work]; and nothing but constant toil maintained the power and extended the authority of the Roman generals.
In describing the earlier social condition of Italy, when the ordinary occupations of rural life were considered compatible with the highest civic dignity, Pliny speaks of the triumphant generals and their men, returning contentedly to the plough.

In those days the lands were tilled by the hands even of generals, the soil exulting beneath a ploughshare crowned with laurels, and guided by a husbandman graced with triumphs: "IPSORUM TUNC MANIBUS IMPERATORUM COLEBANTUR AGRI: UT FAS EST CREDERE, GAUDENTE TERRA VOMERE LAUREATO ET TRIUMPHALI ARATORE." [131] It was only after slaves became extensively employed in all departments of industry that labour came to be regarded as dishonourable and servile.