Task

“ Can you not see that the task is your task—yours to dream, yours to resolve, yours to execute? ”

“ IN interpreting, evaluating and weighing the obligations which the philosophers call καθήκοντα, or “duties,” the question is often asked, when some task has been assigned to you and exactly what was to be done has been defined, whether you ought to do anything contrary to instructions, if by so doing it might seem that the outcome would be more successful and more advantageous to the one who imposed the task upon you. It is a difficult question which has been answered both ways by wise men. ”

“ I have done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked task work, and have the rest of the day to myself. ”

“ Though we may leave our task unaccomplished, the task may be glorious in design if not in completion, and speak of us sincerely and with more fitting substance than words could ever compass or suggest. Clara Barton. ”

“ Ours is the duty to fix our gaze with undeviating attention on the duties and responsibilities confronting us at this present hour, to concentrate our resources, both material and spiritual, on the tasks that lie immediately ahead, to insure that no time is wasted, that no opportunity is missed, that no obligation is evaded, that no task is half-heartedly performed, that no decision is procrastinated. ”

“ For, though a man's mind is adjusted to carrying out, without questioning, any task that is demanded of him, yet in the execution of this duty he is allowed the full scope of his invention and initiative. ”

“ That the task is a complex one, embracing many subordinate problems which must be treated seriatim, is attested both by the breadth of its scope and the variety of the interests from which it may be approached. ”

“ The last word, however, is not task but opportunity; for work, like all forms of education, prophesies the larger uses of energy, experience, and power which are to come when training and discipline have accomplished their ends and borne their fruit. ”

“ There are moments in which the mind attains the highest and clearest perception,—seasons in which, whatever the nature of the mental operation, the faculties address themselves readily to the task, and labor becomes less a toil than an actual pleasure. ”

“ Bring your fine sensibilities to your work, be big morally, be deep mentally, and work with confident expectation. Put rules and system into your daily task. Exercise your self-control, your self-possession, self-mastery, march up to your task with efficiency backed up by a dominant will. ”

“ Whatever your task may be, concentrate your whole mind upon it, throw into it all the energy of which you are capable. The faultless completion of small tasks leads inevitably to larger tasks. See to it that you rise by steady climbing, and you will never fall. ”

“ her presence had not so much weight as to task thought, and yet enough to exercise it. ”

“ Show them you can do perfectly the task given you to do, and you will be given a chance at a larger task. Some day when you least expect it something will happen. You will be called up into a position of power. ”

“ Knowest thou not who is most needed by all? He who commandeth great things.
To execute great things is difficult: but the more difficult task is to command great things. ”

“ Of course, it is insufficient merely to study the individual manifestations of human capacities, for these may be accidental results or phenomena, determined by unknown factors. Our task consists in attaining abstractions in accord with careful and conscientious perceptions, and in finding each determining occasion in its particular activities. ”

“ But, at the other period, however strong may be our resolution, however firm our purpose, however, unshaken our nerve, we go to the task set before us with a knowledge of every particle of the peril, with a clear notion of all the consequences, with a calculation of each point of the result. ”

“ The trivial round, the common task,
Would furnish all we ought to ask; ”

“ And to the women who are to be employed within she gives חק chok, the task - the kind of work they are to do, the materials out of which they are to form it, and the quantity she expects from each. Thus all the servants are settled: their food, work, and tasks appointed. Every thing is done orderly. ”

“ Especially at the present moment has arrived a time when it is essential that, however small we may feel is our inherent fitness for the task, we should not shrink nor remain silent and inactive, but exert by word and action that peculiar function which our position invests us with. ”

“ Granting that one's life-task—the determination and the fate of one's life-task—greatly exceeds the average measure of [Pg 49] such things, nothing more dangerous could be conceived than to come face to face with one's self by the side of this life-task. ”

“ By such strong and nicely-fitted movements of the machine of Providence it is, that the tasks of life are distributed where best they may be performed, and its burdens apportioned where best they may be sustained. ”

“ He said it made him feel that life was not an idle dream to be gaped and yawned through, but a noble task, full of duty and stern work. ”

“ Every man's task is his life-preserver. ”

“ Let us, therefore, first bend all our energies to the smaller of these tasks, thinking only of the larger tasks which lie beyond as incentives to a determined line of immediate action, and as a means of realising the great value of little things if done in the right manner and in the right spirit. ”

“ Practice on the unpleasant tasks—do the things that you have before you, and from which you have been shrinking because they were unpleasant. Throw interest into them, and the difficulty will vanish, and you will come out of it much stronger, and filled with a new sense of Power. ”

“ I ask what you are doing with tasks that you yourself set. I know what you do in eating and working at your trade and sleeping at night. You do that in order not to die. Everybody does that. I ask you what you are doing in order to live. ”

“ Finally, in this enumeration of the things which waste one’s time, I may add that one must not permit himself to be overburdened with superfluous tasks. There are in our day an infinite number of these,—correspondence, committees, reports, and not the least, lectures. ”

“ The exercise of the senses, the calculations necessary in sports and in physical exertion of every sort,—races, workshop labour, etc.,—have their influence on the intellect, and render attractive certain tasks often considered repulsive because of the awkward manner in which they have been approached. ”

“ but it is my chief duty and joy to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. ”

“ We have placed our psychotechnical interest at the service of economic tasks. ”

“ All of them will tell us about you as a person: how you think, how you behave. Desperately essential stuff, if you're to survive the sort of work we do here. What we find is the whole basis of our assignments. ”

“ When I say work, I mean study of books, work of the hand, effort of the body, willingness of the heart. No matter what the thing is, put your conscience into it; do your best. Let it be possible for you to say: "I have put my whole soul into my study, into my work, into whatever I have attempted. Whatever I have done I have honestly endeavored to do to the best of my ability." ”

“ We may regard this energy driving at practice, this paramount sense of the obligation of duty, self-control, and work, this earnestness in going manfully with the best light we have, as one force. And we may regard the intelligence driving at those ideas which are, after all, the basis of right practice, the ardent sense for all the new and changing combinations of them which man's development brings with it, the indomitable impulse to know and adjust them perfectly, as another force. ”

“ The most beautiful actions of the human body, and the highest results of the human intelligence, are conditions, or achievements, of quite unlaborious,—nay, of recreative,—effort. But labour is the suffering in effort. ”

“ First, then, there are certain respects in which I fully agree with recent pragmatism. I agree that every opinion expresses an attitude of the will, a preparedness for action, a determination to guide a plan of action in accordance with an idea. Whoever asserts anything about the way out of the woods, or about the cause and possible cure of a toothache, defines a course of action in accordance with some purpose, and amongst other things predicts the {146} possible outcome of that course of action. ”

“ Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and went to work again--work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite--ultimately recovering some measure of power. ”

“ Doubtless what is most needed is more knowledge, which we can acquire; more patience, which we can force ourselves by a sheer [Pg 7] effort of the will to summon and employ; and more energy, which we can and will develop in the degree that we recognize and desire its rewards. ”

“ And observe, in this last respect, what a peculiar importance, and responsibility, are attached to your work, when you consider its permanence, and the multitudes to whom it is addressed. We frequently are led, by wise people, to consider what responsibility may sometimes attach to words, which yet, the chance is, will be heard by few, and forgotten as soon as heard. ”

“ Have a work for every moment, and mind the moment's work. Whatever your calling, master all its bearings and details, all its principles, instruments, and applications. We have so much work ahead of us that must be done if we would reach the point desired that we must save our strength as much as possible. ”

“ But in each and every case the power at work is the activity of reason, and the end ever in view in the selection and in the formation of the system is the satisfaction of some end or interest desired either for its own sake or as a means to some further and remoter end. ”

“ By husbanding my strength, by great order, by regular habits, by lightening the work as much as possible, and by using every help that I can, I have been enabled to get through a vast quantity of work. ”

“ It must have been a pretty sight, the fierce industry of these beggars toiling on a motionless ship that floated quietly in the silence of a world asleep, fighting against time for the freeing of that boat, grovelling on all-fours, standing up in despair, tugging, pushing, snarling at each other venomously, ready to kill, ready to weep, and only kept from flying at each other’s throats by the fear of death that stood silent behind them like an inflexible and cold-eyed taskmaster. ”

“ Discipline, habit, and character, appear to be activity crystallized in seeking adaptation to our environments. What is the truth that stands out in relief? Clearly, that character, habit, and discipline, are the reflex upon ourselves of activity, moral, mental, or physical. Whence it seems to follow that useless or vicious activity will appear as useless or vicious character and discipline. ”

“ What the heave of the will betokens metaphysically, what the effort might lead us to infer about a will-power distinct from motives, are not matters that concern us yet. Subjectively and phenomenally, the feeling of effort, absent from the former decisions, accompanies these. ”

“ Definite habits, social, moral, religious, intellectual, professional, etc., will be necessary for efficiency. We should know what these various habits are, and should then set about the work of establishing them with system and determination, just as we would the building of a house. ”

“ There must be effort back of the stimulus to initiate it; and back of the effort there must be purpose; and back of all there must be will-power to stabilize and to make continuous the purpose in a series of intelligent efforts. The detached question of will, imagination, and personality, is quite another matter. ”