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Work quotes

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“No work with interest is ever hard.” Henry Ford, “My Life and Work” - 1922

“Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.” Confucius, “Analects”

“Even sleepers and dreamers are workers and collaborators in what goes on in the universe.” Heraclitus, “On Nature” - c. 535 – c. 475 BCE

“Have regular hours for work and play, make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life become a beautiful...” Louisa May Alcott, “Little Women” - 1868

“The only thing that matters, my goal, my reward, my beginning, my end is the work itself. My work done my way.” Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead” - 1943

“If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.” Bertrand Russell, “The Conquest of Happiness” - 1930

“Every man’s work . . . is always a portrait of himself” Samuel Butler, “The Way of All Flesh” - 1903

“Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.” Albert Einstein, “The world as I see it” - 1949

“One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster.” Bertrand Russell, “The Conquest of Happiness” - 1930

“A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him.” Adam Smith, “The Wealth of Nations” - 1776

“But the joy of life is a very good thing, and while work is the essential in it, play also has its place.” Theodore Roosevelt, “Theodore Roosevelt; an Autobiography” - 1913

“It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; 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...” Jerome K. Jerome, “Three Men in a Boat” - 1889

“Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. If you look at it to admire it you are lost.” Samuel Butler, “The Note-Books of Samuel Butler” - 1912

“Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” Karl Marx, “Das Kapital” - 1867

“Let us practice the fine art of making every work a priestly ministration. Let us believe that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there.” A. W. Tozer, “The Pursuit of God” - 1948

“It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it. ” A. W. Tozer, “The Pursuit of God” - 1948

“After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.” Kenneth Grahame, “The Wind in the Willows” - 1908

“Packing the basket was not quite such pleasant work as unpacking the basket. It never is.” Kenneth Grahame, “The Wind in the Willows” - 1908

“our labour preserves us from three great evils—weariness, vice, and want.” Voltaire, “Candide” - 1759

“Enable every woman who can work to take her place on the labour front, under the principle of equal pay for equal work.” Mao Zedong, “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung” - 1964

“Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery. People are working every minute. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.” Andy Warhol, “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol” - 1975

“A person who has not done one-half his day's work by ten o'clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.” Emily Brontë, “Wuthering Heights” - 1847

“The natural thing to do is to work—to recognize that prosperity and happiness can be obtained only through honest effort.” Henry Ford, “My Life and Work” - 1922

“Indeed, I have always been of opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.” Oscar Wilde, “The Remarkable Rocket” - 1888

“It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish” J. R. R. Tolkien, “The Fellowship of the Ring” - 1954

“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else...” Charles Bukowski, “Factotum” - 1975

“When asked, 'How do you write?' I invariably answer, 'One word at a time,' and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time,...” Stephen King, “The Stand” - 1978

“I've chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I'm only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my...” Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead” - 1943

“Even a soul submerged in sleep is hard at work, and helps make something of the world.” Heraclitus, “On Nature” - c. 535 – c. 475 BCE

“What’s a philosopher? . . . Someone who’s bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting” Terry Pratchett, “Small Gods” - 1992

“we must cultivate our garden.” Voltaire, “Candide” - 1759

“there's no such thing as a lousy job—only lousy men who don't care to do it.” Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged” - 1957

“I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do.” Jerome K. Jerome, “Three Men in a Boat” - 1889

“I don’t read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read.” Stephen King, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” - 2000

“Gods don’t like people not doing much work. People who aren’t busy all the time might start to think.” Terry Pratchett, “Small Gods” - 1992

“Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.” Emma Goldman, “Anarchism and Other Essays” - 1910

“Every noble work is at first impossible.” Thomas Carlyle, “Past and Present” - 1843

“Never ask people. Not about your work.” Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead” - 1943

“There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do.” Jerome K. Jerome, “Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow” - 1886

“I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely.” Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Sign of the Four” - 1890

“Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.” Leonardo da Vinci, “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci” - 1478 – 1519

“the woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn't obeyed.” G. K. Chesterton, “What's Wrong with the World” - 1910

“The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We've done that for so long that we've forgotten there's any other way.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “This Side of Paradise” - 1920

“The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.” George Bernard Shaw, “Man and Superman” - 1903

“Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed...” Mark Twain, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” - 1876

“Human life and human labour were near. I must struggle on: strive to live and bend to toil like the rest.” Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre” - 16 October 1847

“Food and fire, protection and companionship, were some of the things he received from the god. In return, he guarded the god's property, defended his body, worked for him, and obeyed him.” Jack London, “White Fang” - 1906

“Men hate passion, any great passion. Henry Cameron made a mistake: he loved his work. That was why he fought. That was why he lost.” Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead” - 1943

“The pleasure of work is open to anyone who can develop some specialised skill, provided that he can get satisfaction from the exercise of his skill without demanding universal applause.” Bertrand Russell, “The Conquest of Happiness” - 1930

“The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects, too, are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention, in finding out...” Adam Smith, “The Wealth of Nations” - 1776

Related topics

life God idleness women success reading hope labour reward love passion strength play invention equality money humility effort duty education

Related authors

Ayn Rand (5)
Bertrand Russell (4)
Jerome K. Jerome (4)
Henry Ford (4)
Oscar Wilde (2)
Heraclitus (2)
Adam Smith (2)
Theodore Roosevelt (2)
Confucius (2)
Louisa May Alcott (2)
Thomas Carlyle (2)
Samuel Butler (2)
Charles Bukowski (2)
Arnold Schwarzenegger (2)
A. W. Tozer (2)
Samuel Johnson (2)
Terry Pratchett (2)
Stephen King (2)
Kenneth Grahame (2)
Voltaire (2)

Related sources

The Fountainhead (4)
The Conquest of Happiness (4)
My Life and Work (4)
Three Men in a Boat (3)
On Nature (2)
The Wealth of Nations (2)
Theodore Roosevelt; an Autobiography (2)
Analects (2)
Little Women (2)
Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story (2)
The Pursuit of God (2)
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (2)
The Wind in the Willows (2)
Candide (2)
The Diary of a Young Girl (2)
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (2)
The Glass Menagerie (2)
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (2)
Factotum (2)
Small Gods (2)