Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create – this is man.
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 14. Here Steinbeck sums up beautifully the needs and functions of every man and migrant – work for his muscles, and creative labor for his mind. The extended passage from which this line is taken is almost Biblical in its tone: "The last clear definite function of man – muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need – this is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and in the wall and house and dam to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something of the wall, the house the dam; to take hard muscles from the lifting, to take the clear lines and form from conceiving."