re: work

"Oftentimes they were asleep, but occasionally might be heard talking together, in voices between speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy that distinguishes the occupants of alms-houses, and all other human beings who depend for subsistence on charity, on monopolized labor, or anything else but their own independent exertions."

-Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, 1850

A little extreme, but still true for the most part in 2008. Too bad the book reads so terribly.