With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 'twere done. Not till the hours of light return, All we have built do we discern.

-Arnold, Matthew
  Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems,'Morality'.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and Iwill give you rest.Takemy yokeuponyou, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew11:28^30.

The day must come when the nation's whole scale of living must be reduced. If that day comes,Parliament must lay the burden equally on all classes.

-Churchill, Lord Randolph Henry Spencer
  Speech as Chancellor of the Exchequer, House of Commons,7  Aug.

This business of womanhood is a heavy burden† And these days it is worse, with the poverty of blackness on one side and the weight of womanhood on the other.

-Dangarembga,Tsitsi
  Nervous Conditions, ch.1.

I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility, and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish, without the help and support of the woman I love.

-Edward VIII
  Radio broadcast to the nation,11 Dec, following his abdication to marry Wallis Simpson.

A soldier's pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner's chains.

-Eisenhower, Dwight D(avid)
  Inaugural address, 20  Jan.

   Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  Four Quartets,'Burnt Norton', pt.5.

If you take the wrong course†the President bears the 462 burden of the responsibility quite rightly. The advisers may move onöto new advice.

-Kennedy,John F(itzgerald)
  Comment to White House Special Counsel Theodore C Sorensen, Dec, after the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

Take up the White Man's burdenö Send forth the best ye breedö Go, bind your sons to exile To serve your captives'need.

-Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard
  'The White Man's Burden'.

A grateful mind By owing owes not, but still pays, at once Indebted and discharged; what burden then?

-Milton,John
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.4, l.55^7.

Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.

-Mitchell, Margaret
  Rhett Butler. Gone  with  the Wind, ch.9.

We can applaud the state lottery as a public subsidy of intelligence, for it yields public income that is calculated to lighten the tax burden of us prudent abstainers at the expense of the benighted masses of wishful thinkers.

-Quine,Willard Van Orman
  Quiddities,'Gambling'.

   Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

-Shaw, George Bernard
  Man and Superman,'The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion, byJohnTanner', foreword.

It wasn't a matterof becoming interested inmusic; music isa gift and a burden I'vehad since Icanremember who I was. I was born into music. The decision was how to make the best use of it.

-Simone, Nina pseudonym of  Eunice Waymon
Quoted in ArtTaylor Notes andTones (1977),'Nina Simone'.

The West has not lived through totalitarianism, with a single ideology for 70 years.We are escaping from the burden of the past, and onlyafter we have done that will we be ready to integrate with Europeöand Europe needs Russia.

-Yeltsin, Boris
  Addressing socialist MPs in Strasbourg,15 Apr.