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Work Quotes and Quotations
 By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be a boss and work 12 hours a day.  Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself. A windmill is eternally at work to accomplish one end, although it shifts with every variation of the weather cock, and assumes 10 different positions in a day. A good horse should be seldom spurred. All work is seed sown. It grows and spreads, and sows itself anew. Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice. - Fairlane Give the labourer his wage before his perspiration be dry. - Muhammad I want a house that has gotten over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house. If you want a work well done, select a busy man: the other kind has no time. It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. Most people work the greater part of their time for a mere living; and the little freedom which remains to them so troubles them that they use every means of getting rid of it. - Goethe Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt. No task, rightly done is truly private. It is part of the world's work. One machine can do the work of 50 ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. One of the saddest things is, the only thing a man can do for 8 hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat 8 hours a day nor drink for 8 hours a day, nor make love for 8 hours. The only place where success comes before work is a dictionary. Routine is the god of every social system; it is the seventh heaven of business, the essential component in the success of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. The monarchy is a labour-intensive industry. The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves. They say hard work never hurt anybody, but I figure why take the chance. Unionism, seldom if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work; almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguarding bad work. Work is of two kinds: first, altering a position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill-paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. As a remedy against all ills - poverty, sickness, and melanchol - only one thing is absolutely necessary: a liking for work. They intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really are. Most people like hard work, particularly when they're paying for it. We work to become, not to acquire. If one defines the term 'dropout' to mean a person who has given up serious effort to meet his responsibilities, then every business office, government agency, golf club and university faculty would yield its quota. Hasten slowly, and without losing heart, put your work twenty times upon the anvil. How many years of fatigue and punishment it takes to learn the simple truth that work, that disagreeable thing, is the only way of not suffering in life, or at all events, of suffering less. Miracles sometimes occur, but one has to work terribly hard for them. Beware all enterprises that require new clothes. Employment is nature's physician, and is essential to human happiness. - Galen Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind. The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation. Chance favours only those who know how to court her. Work is man's most natural form of relaxation. Work is not man's punishment. It is his reward and his strength, his glory and his pleasure. If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him. When white-collar people get jobs, they sell not only their time and energy, but their personalities as well. They sell by week, or month, their smiles and their kindly gestures, and they must practise prompt repression of resentment and aggression. He that can work is a born king of something. Love of bustle is not industry. - Seneca The joy about our work is spoiled when we perform it not because of what we produce but because of the pleasure with which it can provide us, or the pain against which it can protect us. Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work - pride is the result. - Ayn Rand By the work one knows the workman. Because it is less structured than work, leisure time leaves workaholics at a loss for what to do. Workaholics practically climb the wall when they can't work. Workaholics commit slow suicide by refusing to allow the child inside them to play. Man works primarily for his own self-respect and not for others or for profit. . . the person who is working for the sake of his own satisfaction, the money he gets in return serves merely as fuel, that is, as a symbol of reward and recognition, in the last analysis, of acceptance by one's fellowmen. To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour. In a professional once engaged, the performance of the job comes first. If a little labour, little are our gains. Man's fortunes are according to his pains. Work is the curse of the drinking classes. A man must love a thing very much if he not only practises it without any hope of fame and money, but even practises it without any hope of doing it well. A hobby is hard work you wouldn't do for a living. A task becomes a duty from the moment you suspect it to be an essential part of that integrity which alone entitles a man to assume responsibility. God gave man work, not to burden him, but to bless him, and useful work, willingly, cheerfully, effectively done, has always been the finest expression of the human spirit. Work is more fun than fun. When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results. Man's usual routine is to work and to dream and work and dream. We can redeem anyone who strives unceasingly. - Goethe The Gods rank work above virtues. - Hesiod Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment. It is not upon thee to finish the work; neither art thou free to abstain from it. Work banishes those three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty. - Voltaire Amateurs hope. Professionals work. Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. There is dignity in work only when it is work freely accepted. If a man will not work, he shall not eat. - Bible Anyone who is honestly seeking a job and can't find it, deserves the attention of the United States government, and the people. Work is the inevitable condition of human life, the true source of human welfare. He who shuns the millstone, shuns the meal. - Erasmus Rest is the sweet sauce of labour. - Plutarch God gives every bird its food, but he does not throw it into the nest. When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt. I work as my father drank. While I am busy with little things, I am not required to do greater things. For it is commonly said: accomplished labours are pleasant. - Cicero A people so primitive that they did not know how to get money except by working for it. Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. If all the year were playing holidays To sport would be as tedious as to work. I am only an average man, but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man. Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence. When I was a young man I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. I didn't want to be a failure, so I did ten times more work. The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit. How do I work? I grope. It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him. Work and love - these are the basics. Without them there is neurosis. The effectiveness of work increases according to geometric progression if there are no interruptions. The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what it is that interests you and that you can do well, and when you find it, put your whole soul into it-every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have. Every woman is a human being-one cannot repeat that too often-and a human being must have occupation if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world. The happy people are those who are producing something. Congenial labor is essence of happiness. Work is a substitute "religious" experience for many workaholics. When I can no longer create anything, I'll be done for. Employment is nature's physician, and is essential to human happiness. - Galen No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable. When I stop [working], the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm working. Continuity of purpose is one of the most essential ingredients of happiness in the long run, and for most men this comes chiefly through their work. It is only when I am doing my work that I feel truly alive. It is like having sex. After fifty years of living, it occurs to me that the most significant thing that people do is go to work, whether it is to go to work on their novel or at the assembly plant or fixing somebody's teeth. He who labors diligently need never despair, for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor. - Menander The fun of being alive is realizing that you have a talent and you can use it every day, so it grows stronger. ... And if you're in an atmosphere where this talent is appreciated instead of just tolerated, why, it's just as good as sex. Work! Thank God for the swing of it, for the clamoring, hammering ring of it. There are certain natures to whom work is nothing, the act of work everything. I am fierce for work. Without work I am nothing. Like plowing, housework makes the ground ready for the germination of family life. The kids will not invite a teacher home if beer cans litter the living room. The family isn't likely to have breakfast together if somebody didn't remember to buy eggs, milk, or muffins. Housework maintains an orderly setting in which family life can flourish. When I die, my epitaph should read: She Paid the Bills. There's no labor a man can do that's undignified, if he does it right. Never turn down a job because you think it's too small; you never know where it may lead. If a man is called to be a streetsweep-er, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well. Don't be afraid of hard work. The work praises the man. Originality and the feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle. There is a kind of victory in good work, no matter how humble. Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor. Honest labor bears a lovely face. I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world. The world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker. A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it. The highest reward for man's toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it. Starting out to make money is the greatest mistake in life. Do what you feel you have a flair for doing, and if you are good enough at it, the money will come. Ambition is destruction, only competence matters. I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world. Never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed. Here I am, where I ought to be. To find in ourselves what makes life worth living is risky business, for it means that once we know we must seek it. It also means that without it life will be valueless. Everybody undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has the aptitude for it or not. You have to do what you love to do, not get stuck in that comfort zone of a regular job. Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it. Men take only their needs into consideration, never their abilities. If you're in a good profession, it's hard to get bored, because you're never finished-there will always be work you haven't done. Work means so many things! So many! Among other things, work also means freedom. ... Without it even the miracle of love is only a cruel deception. One should stick to the sort of thing for which one was made; I tried to be an herbalist, whereas I should keep to the butcher's trade. One's lifework, I have learned, grows with the working and the living. Do it as if your life depended on it, and first thing you know, you'll have made a life out of it. A good life, too. One principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling, and divide and shift their attention among a multitude of objects and pursuits. Men whose trade is rat-catching love to catch rats; the bug destroyer seizes on his bug with delight; the suppressor is gratified by finding his vice. Work is creativity accompanied by the comforting realization that one is bringing forth something really good and necessary, with a conviction that a sudden, arbitrary cessation would cause a sensitive void, produce a loss. Some people are born to lift heavy weights, some are born to juggle golden balls. Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don't do that by sitting around wondering about yourself. To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness. The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness. They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations. I know a lot of people think it's monotonous, down the black lines over and over, but it's not if you're enjoying what you're doing. I love to swim and I love to train. Do your duty until it becomes your joy. Duty is an icy shadow. It will freeze you. It cannot fill the heart's sanctuary. What a richly colored strong warm coat is woven when love is the warp and work is the woof. Whenever it is possible, a boy should choose some occupation which he should do even if he did not need the money. Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly. Find something you're passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it. There must be bands of enthusiasts for everything on earth-fanatics who shared a vocabulary, a batch of technical skills and equipment, and, perhaps, a vision of some single slice of the beauty and mystery of things, of their complexity, fascination, and unexpectedness. I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I've ever known. The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves. Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him. Work is a world apart from jobs. Work is the way you occupy your mind and hand and eye and whole body when they're informed by your imagination. I believe in my work and in the joy of it. You have to be with the work and the work has to be with you. It absorbs you totally and you absorb it totally. Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all. Give me a man who sings at his work. To love what you do and feel that it matters-how could anything be more fun? When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as the color-petals out of a fruitful flower. When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece. Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. Winning the [Nobel] prize wasn't half as exciting as doing the work itself. Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions. When people go to work, they shouldn't have to leave their hearts at home. Workaholics are energized rather than enervated by their work-their energy paradoxically expands as it is expended. The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work. To deny we need and want power is to deny that we hope to be effective. Success depends in a very large measure upon individual initiative and exertion, and cannot be achieved except by a dint of hard work. Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Half effort does not produce half results, it produces no results. Work, continuous work and hard work, is the only way to accomplish results that last. If a man wakes up famous, he hasn't been sleeping. Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven't planted. If your dream is a big dream, and if you want your life to work on the high level that you say you do, there's no way around doing the work it takes to get you there. Success is dependent on effort. Hard work has made it easy. That is my secret. That is why I win. Success comes before work only in the dictionary. Sweat plus sacrifice equals success. The only thing that separates successful people from the ones who aren't is the willingness to work very, very hard. You can have unbelievable intelligence, you can have connections, you can have opportunities fall out of the sky. But in the end, hard work is the true, enduring characteristic of successful people. Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. In all human affairs there are efforts, there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. Work, alternated with needful rest, is the salvation of man or woman. There is a time for work. And a time for love. That leaves no other time. Neither woman nor man lives by work, or love, alone.... The human self defines itself and grows through love and work: All psychology before and after Freud boils down to that. Maintain a good balance. A personal life adds dimensions to your professional life and vice versa. It helps nurture creativity through a deeper understanding of yourself. For the happiest life, days should be rigorously planned, nights left open to chance. Work is the province of cattle. The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless. Skilled labor teaches something not to be found in books or in colleges. Diligence is the mother of good luck, and God gives all things to industry. To industry, nothing is impossible. I believe in hard work. It keeps the wrinkles out of the mind and spirit. God sells us all things at the price of labor. The sport I love has taken me around the world and shown me many things. I realized that with hard work, the world was your oyster. You could do anything you wanted to do. I learned that at a young age. Fortune is ever seen accompanying industry. Manual labor to my father was not only good and decent for its own sake, but as he was given to saying, it straightened out one's thoughts. I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it and one is the feeling that I haven't just been sitting on my ass all afternoon. The sentimentalist ages far more quickly than the person who loves his work and enjoys new challenges. Busy people are never busybodies. What a man sows, that shall he and his relations reap. The only way to enjoy anything in this life is to earn it first. I have worked all my life, wanted to work all my life, needed to work all my life. The simple idea that everyone needs a reasonable amount of challenging work in his or her life, and also a personal life, complete with noncompetitive leisure, has never really taken hold. There is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. Whether we call it a job or a career, work is more than just something we do. It is a part of who we are. If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results. Nobody ever drowned in his own sweat. The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night. Work in some form or other is the appointed lot of all. Any man who has had the job I've had and didn't have a sense of humor wouldn't still be here. Whatever the job you are asked to do at whatever level, do a good job because your reputation is your resume. People should tell their children what life is all about-it's about work. Marriage ain't easy but nothing that's worth much ever is. I don't think that work ever really destroyed anybody. I think that lack of work destroys them a hell of a lot more. For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying. I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty; I woke, and found that life was Duty. Passion is never enough; neither is skill. It's not the having, it's the getting. Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls, and looks like work. A man's work is from sun to sun, but a mother's work is never done. Be strong! We are not here to play, to dream, to drift; We have hard work to do and loads to lift; Shun not the struggle-face it; 'tis God's gift. If you could once make up your mind never to undertake more work ... than you can carry on calmly, quietly, without hurry or flurry ... and if the instant you feel yourself growing nervous and ... out of breath, you would stop and take a breath, you would find this simple common-sense rule doing for you what no prayers or tears could ever accomplish. It is better to have no emotion when it is work. Do what needs to be done, and do it coolly. What a man accomplishes in a day depends upon the way in which he approaches his tasks. When we accept tough jobs as a challenge to our ability and wade into them with joy and enthusiasm, miracles can happen. When we do our work with a dynamic, conquering spirit, we get things done. The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously, and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second is disastrous. Work is the best method devised for killing time. Industry is a better horse to ride than genius. There are two kinds of talents, man-made talent and God-given talent. With man-made talent you have to work very hard. With God-given talent, you just touch it up once in a while. If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do. With the power of conviction, there is no sacrifice. I believe you are your work. Don't trade the stuff of your life, time, for nothing more than dollars. That's a rotten bargain When you're following your energy and doing what you want all the time, the distinction between work and play dissolves. Work is the thing that stays. Work is the thing that sees us through. Energy is the power that drives every human being. It is not lost by exertion but maintained by it, for it is a faculty of the psyche. It is not hard work that is dreary; it is superficial work As for me, prizes mean nothing. My prize is my work. There can be no substitute for work, neither affection nor physical well-being can replace it. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved. Work ... has always been my favorite form of recreation. A job is not a career. I think I started out with a job. It turned into a career and changed my life. The only genius that's worth anything is the genius for hard work. Elbow grease is the best polish. Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair. Laziness is a secret ingredient that goes into failure. But it's only kept a secret from the person who fails. Pears cannot ripen alone. So we ripened together. Ideally, couples need three lives; one for him, one for her, and one for them together. Exchange is creation. Whatever my individual desires were to be free, I was not alone. There were others who felt the same way. Now men and women are separate and unequal. We should be hand in hand; in fact, we should have our arms around one another. Men and women are like right and left hands: it doesn't make sense not to use both. There are three ways of dealing with difference: domination, compromise, and integration. By domination only one side gets what it wants; by compromise neither side gets what it wants; by integration we find a way by which both sides may get what they wish. Women and men have to fight together to change society-and both will benefit. Every time a man unburdens his heart to a stranger he reaffirms the love that unites humanity. Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. Cooperation is an intelligent functioning of the concept of laissez faire-a thorough conviction that nobody can get there unless everybody gets there. Most leaders are indispensable, but to produce a major social change, many ordinary people must also be involved. Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence. To survive in the world, we have to act in concert with others, but to survive as ourselves, rather than simply as cogs in a wheel, we have to act alone. My whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong. But I shall not have the strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join in it with me. A person who believes ... that there is a whole of which one is a part, and that in being a part one is whole: such a person has no desire whatever, at any time, to play God. Only those who have denied their being yearn to play at it. Unless I am a part of everything I am nothing. For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes, by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women. We learn best to listen to our own voices if we are listening at the same time to other women-whose stories, for all our differences, turn out, if we listen well, to be our stories also. Remember the dignity of your womanhood. Do not appeal, do not beg, do not grovel. Take courage, join hands, stand beside us, fight with us. Today whenever women gather together it is not necessarily nurturing. It is coalition building. And if you feel the strain, you may be doing some good work. Women's art, though created in solitude, wells up out of community. There is, clearly, both enormous hunger for the work thus being diffused, and an explosion of creative energy, bursting through the coercive choicelessness of the system on whose boundaries we are working. You've got to be willing to stay committed to someone over the long run, and sometimes it doesn't work out. But often if you become real honest with yourself and honest with each other, and put aside whatever personal hurt and disappointment you have to really understand yourself and your spouse, it can be the most wonderful experience you've ever had. We must stand together; if we don't, there will be no victory for any one of us. I've always believed that one woman's success can only help another woman's success. Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. I always feel the movement is a sort of mosaic. Each of us puts in one little stone, and then you get a great mosaic at the end. We all act as hinges-fortuitous links between other people. We seldom stop to think how many people's lives are entwined with our own. It is a form of selfishness to imagine that every individual can operate on his own or can pull out of the general stream and not be missed. When Adam dolve, and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? Better to wear out than to rust out. The workers are the saviors of society, the redeemers of the race. Handle your tools without mittens. Tools were made and born were hands, Every farmer understands. I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work. It's all in the day's work. A ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. - Bible All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart. And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame; And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame; But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, Shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God of things as They Are! No man is born into the world whose work Is not born with him; there is always work, And tools to work withal, for those who will; And blessed are the horny hands of toil! The laborer is worthy of his hire. - Bible How many a rustic Milton has passed by, Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, In unremitting drudgery and care! How many a vulgar Cato has compelled His energies, no longer tameless then, To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail! Many hands make light work. Heaven is blessed with perfect rest but the blessing of earth is toil. 
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