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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”

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

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

“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

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

“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.” Jerome K. Jerome, “Three Men in a Boat” - 1889

“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

“If you start out by promising what you don't even have yet, you'll lose your desire to work toward getting it.” Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist” - 1988

“An education could be given which would sift individuals, discovering what they were good for, and supplying a method of assigning each to the work in life for which his nature fits him.” John Dewey, “Democracy and Education” - 1916

“Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.” Samuel Johnson, “The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia” - 1759

“Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance; yonder palace was raised by single stones, yet you see its height and spaciousness.” Samuel Johnson, “The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia” - 1759

“Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.” Terry Pratchett, “Hogfather” - 1996

“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

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

“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

“The more miles you ski, the better a skier you become; the more reps you do, the better your body.” Arnold Schwarzenegger, “Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story” - 2012

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

“Political work is the life-blood of all economic work.” Mao Zedong, “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung” - 1964

“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

“God gave the day, God gave the strength. And the day and the strength were consecrated to labor, and that labor was its own reward.” Leo Tolstoy, “Anna Karenina” - 1877

“I don't like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really...” Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness” - 1899

“Nights without work I spent with whisky and books.” Haruki Murakami, “Norwegian Wood” - 1987

“Take what pleasure you can in the interstices of your work, but your work is first, learning is first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing.” Orson Scott Card, “Ender's Game” - 1985

“After being alive, the next hardest work is having sex.” Andy Warhol, “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol” - 1975

“Perhaps the easiest way of making a town's acquaintance is to ascertain how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die.” Albert Camus, “The Plague” - 1947

“Reading was the only amusement I allow'd myself. I spent no time in taverns, games, or frolicks of any kind; and my industry in my business continu'd as indefatigable as it was necessary.” Benjamin Franklin, “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” - 1791

“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

“So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a...” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

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

“This week I've been reading a lot and doing little work. That's the way things ought to be. That's surely the road to success.” Anne Frank, “The Diary of a Young Girl” - 1947

“Work, love, courage and hope, Make me good and help me cope!” Anne Frank, “The Diary of a Young Girl” - 1947

“The chief one was to remember that camping was a good way to find out people’s characters. Those who were selfish showed it very soon, in that they wanted the best bed or the best food and did not want to do their share of the work.” Eleanor Roosevelt, “The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt” - 1961

Related topics

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

Related authors

Ayn Rand (5)
Bertrand Russell (4)
Jerome K. Jerome (4)
Henry Ford (4)
Terry Pratchett (3)
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)
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)