Studying is my work. This work God wants me to do, and if it pleases Him, He will bless it...(1) I would like to see the horseman who could sit still with me all day and look into a book---even if he had nothing else to care for, write, think about, or read. Ask a... preacher... whether writing and speaking is work... The pen is light, that is true... But in writing, the best part of the body (which is the head), and the noblest of the members (which is the tongue) and the highest faculty (which is speech) must lay hold and work as never before. In other occupations it is only the fist or the foot or the back or some other member that has to work; and while they are at it they can sing and jest, which the writer cannot do. They say of writing that "it only takes three fingers to do it"; but the whole body and soul work at it too.(2)
Martin Luther- (1) Martin Luthers Werke, Vol. 10, I (Weimar: Hermann Bohlaaus Nachfolger, 1883), 373, as cited in What Luther Says, 928. (2) Luther's Works, Vol. 46, ed. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967), 249