Meaning of “the paramount importance of the work-habit”

The Master-Word in Medicine, address delivered October 1, 1903 at the opening of the new buildings of the University of Toronto Medical Faculty; reviewed against the represented 1903 John Murphy pamphlet, Internet Archive identifier b28060805. ‘The master-word is Work’ is Osler’s organizing refrain and is followed by his appeal to write the word on the heart and forehead. This remains historical professional rhetoric rather than an endorsement of unsafe working hours or workaholism.

Poor Richard’s Almanack; the maxim appears in Franklin’s collected Poor Richard material.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Part II, thirteen-virtue table: Resolution. Project Gutenberg #148 (Charles W. Eliot / Harvard Classics, 1909) preserves the represented wording; the reviewed direct locator is Wikisource Section Thirty Six.

Traditional English moral associated with the fable; wording is later than the ancient Greek tradition.

Discourses of Epictetus, Book II, Chapter XVIII, “How we should struggle against appearances,” George Long translation; 1877 George Bell & Sons witness on Wikisource, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #10661. This short catalog record is an excerpt of Long’s longer clause “Generally then if you would make any thing a habit, do it”; this collection lightly normalizes “any thing” to “anything.”

Men of Invention and Industry, Chapter IX, “Charles Bianconi: A Lesson of Self-Help in Ireland”; Project Gutenberg #725. This excerpt is Smiles’s narrative conclusion immediately after an anecdote about saving time.