It is neither just nor human so to grind men down with excessive labour as to stupefy their minds and wear out their bodies.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the inhumanity and injustice of subjecting people to excessive labor that impacts their mental and physical well-being.
Pope Leo XIII highlights the moral implications of overworking individuals to the point of exhaustion, arguing that it is neither ethical nor humane to burden people with labor that dulls their minds and depletes their bodies. This sentiment calls for a more compassionate approach to work, advocating for the dignity and well-being of workers.
In practice
During a human rights conference, I could use this quote to emphasize the importance of fair labor practices.
Remember and understand well that where Peter is, there is the Church; that those who refuse to associate in communion with the Chair of Peter belong to Antichrist, not to Christ. He who would separate himself from the Roman Pontiff has no further bond with Christ.
These most crafty enemies [the devils] have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety, with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck, the sheep may be scattered.
The first law of history is to dread uttering a falsehood; the next is not to fear stating the truth; lastly, the historian's writings should be open to no suspicion of partiality or animosity.
The twentieth century must be a century of the Blessed Sacrament if it means to be a century of resurrection and of life
The empire of Christ the King includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith: so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ.
The devotion which God sends to the succor of His Church and of the nations at the present time is the devotion to the Most Holy Eucharist. It is the highest of all devotions.
It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn’t the test of man have been carried out in fewer years? Couldn’t we have committed our first major sin at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old deathbed?
The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.
It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
Is it possible to reproduce, later in life, the impact that books, records, and films have between the ages of fourteen and seventeen? The periods of my adult life that have been most miserable have been those in which I lost fidelity to what I discovered then.
Organs, faculties, powers, capacities, or whatever else we call them; grow by use and diminish from disuse, it is inferred that they will continue to do so. And if this inference is unquestionable, then is the one above deduced from it-that humanity must in the end become completely adapted to its conditions-unquestionable also. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity.
All my writing is about the recognition that there is no single reality. But the beauty of it is that you nevertheless go on, walking towards utopia, which may not exist, on a bridge which might end before you reach the other side.
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