Rampion in Aldous Huxley’s Point Counter Point:

Your work’s just a nasty, dirty job, made unfortunately necessary by the folly of your ancestors.  They piled up a mountain of garbage and you’ve got to go on digging it away, for fear it might stink you to death, dig for dear life, while cursing the memory of the maniacs who made all the dirty work for you to do.  But don’t try to cheer yourself up by pretending the nasty mechanical job is a noble one.  It isn’t; and the only result of saying and believing that it is will be to lower your humanity to the level of the dirty work.  If you believe in business as service and the sanctity of labor, you’ll merely turn yourself into a mechanical idiot for twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four.  Admit that it’s dirty, hold your nose, and do it for eight hours, and then concentrate on being a real human being in your leisure.  A real complete human being.  Not a newspaper reader, not a jazzer, not a radio fan.  The industrialists who purvey standardized ready-made amusements to the masses are doing their best to make you as much of a mechanical imbecile in your leisure as in your hours of work.  But don’t let them.

See:
Intro to CPL(sf): the conspiracy of work and time, which has so often robbed me of the opportunity to do what I wish to do by filling my life with things that I must do
Intro 6 whatever I was working on 
LF 434 whistling with the carefree pleasure of this simple task 
LF 455 hours of baffling precision work 
LF 1027 disguising work I wanted to do as work I had to do 
LF 1040 Getting one's mind off one's work 
LF 1050 practicing a mystery in the manner of medieval guildsmen 
H&L 68 to do difficult work
MMS(aD): Accumulating those details was the occupation of my adolescence. It gave my life meaning and kept me from being bored. 

See also: 
H&L 281 "Why, Uncle Luther," said Lorna, "You know very well that John's work was never the equal of mine." 
LF 13 the haphazard, sweaty, lusty, and fundamentally richer life of the unfrosted sometimes-working class 
WDYS 191 "I'll bet you're wondering if you could train a chicken yourself," he said. "Well, of course you could! It's not easy, don't let anybody tell you that. But it's not impossible. Don't let anybody tell you that, either. You remember what the great Dr. Johnson said about the dangers of overestimating or underestimating a task and how a little work, steadily applied, will eventually achieve its goal." 
(M. D. -- Topical Guide to CPL(sf), pp. 159-161) 

A Topical Guide to the Complete Peter Leroy (so far) is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogues, settings, and businesses portrayed in it are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 

All rights reserved. No part of this guide may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. 

Portions of A Topical Guide to the Complete Peter Leroy (so far) were first published by Voyager, Inc., as part of The Complete Peter Leroy (so far).

The illustration at the top of the page is an adaptation of an illustration by Stewart Rouse that first appeared on the cover of the August 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions. The boy at the controls of the aerocycle doesn’t particularly resemble Peter Leroy—except, perhaps, for the smile.