“To elude boredom man either works harder than is required to satisfy his other needs or he invents play, but he may become tired of play and longs for a third condition which stands in the same relation to play as floating does to dancing and dancing to walking. This third condition is a state of serene agitation; the vision of happiness for the artist and the philosopher.”

—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §611 (edited excerpt).

“So long as man has not yet become an instrument of general human utility, let him be plagued by ambition. If that goal has been attained, then let him be visited by vanity; it will humanize him and make him more sociable, endurable and indulgent in small things.”

—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §593 (edited excerpt).

“A profession is the backbone of life.”

—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §575.

“A profession makes one thoughtless. Therein lies its greatest blessing, for it is a rampart behind which one can lawfully retreat when one is assailed by commonplace cares and scruples.”

—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §537.

“We value services anyone renders us according to the worth he places upon them, not according to the value they possess for us.”

—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §533.

“He who has much to do preserves his general opinions and points of view almost unaltered. Likewise, anyone who works in the service of an idea will cease to examine even the idea itself, for he has no time for that.”

—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §511 (edited).

“Men can rarely endure a profession of which they do not believe or convince themselves it is at bottom more important than any other. Women adopt a similar attitude towards their lovers.”

—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §492.

“In a better ordering of society, the heavy work and exigencies of life will be apportioned to him who suffers least as a consequence of them.”

—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §462 (excerpt).

“That we place more value on the satisfaction of vanity than on any other form of well-being is demonstrated to a ludicrous degree in the fact that everyone desires the abolition of slavery and abominates the idea of reducing people to this condition. The slave lives better and works less than the modern worker.”

—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §457 (edited excerpt).

“A higher culture can come into existence only where there are two different castes in society: that of the workers, who are compelled to work, and that of the idle, or those capable of true leisure who work if they want to. If an exchange between these two castes should take place, then a state is attained beyond which there can be seen only the open sea of indeterminate desires.”

—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §439 (edited excerpt).

“Many people, especially women, never feel boredom because they have never learned to work properly.”

—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §391.

“The man who lies ill in bed sometimes discovers that what he is ill from is usually his office, his business or his society, and that through them he has lost all circumspection with regard to himself.”

—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §289 (excerpt).