The great men among the ancients understood very well how to reconcile manual labour with affairs of state, and thought it no lessening to their dignity to make the one the recreation to the other.\u00a0 That indeed which seems most generally to have employed and diverted their spare hours, was agriculture.\u00a0 Gideon among the Jews was taken from threshing, as well as Cincinnatus amongst the Romans from the plough, to command the armies of their countries \u2026 and, as I remember, Cyrus thought gardening so little beneath the dignity and grandeur of a throne, that he showed Xenophon a large field of fruit trees all of his own planting\u00a0\u00a0 \u2026\u00a0 Delving, planting, inoculating, or any the like profitable employments would be no less a diversion than any of the idle sports in fashion, if men could be brought to delight in them.<\/p>\n \u2013\u00a0\u00a0 John Locke,\u00a0 1632-1704.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The great men among the ancients understood very well how to reconcile manual labour with affairs of state, and thought it no lessening to their dignity to make the one the recreation to the other.\u00a0 That indeed which seems most generally to have employed and diverted their spare hours, was agriculture.\u00a0 Gideon among the Jews […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[387,388,389,390,391,392,393,394,395,396,397],"class_list":["post-3369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-garden","tag-holy-the-toil","tag-john-locke","tag-labor","tag-labor-day","tag-prayer-is-work","tag-sacred-work","tag-st-francis-of-assisi","tag-toil","tag-work","tag-work-is-prayer"],"yoast_head":"\n