The Frenchman works until he ...

The Frenchman works until he can play. The American works until he can’t play; and then thanks the devil, his master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the Englishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he never worked at all.
The Frenchman works until he can play. The American works until he can’t play; and then thanks the devil, his master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the Englishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he never worked at all.
 Gilbert K. Chesterton

Quotes from the same author

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.
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 Gilbert K. Chesterton
A change of opinions is almost unknown in an elderly military man.
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 Gilbert K. Chesterton
Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left.
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 Gilbert K. Chesterton
The power which makes a man able to entertain a good impulse is the same as that which enables him to make a good gun; it is imagination.
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 Gilbert K. Chesterton
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
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 Gilbert K. Chesterton