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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”

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

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

“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 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

“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 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

“Work without love is slavery.” Mother Teresa, “Where There Is Love, There Is God” - 2010

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

“In most parts of our country men work, not for themselves, not as partners in the old way in which they used to work, but generally as employees,—in a higher or lower grade,—of great corporations.” Woodrow Wilson, “The New Freedom” - 1913

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” Henry David Thoreau, “Walden” - 1854

“A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” - 1841

“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

“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

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

“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

“Your father, Jo. He never loses patience, never doubts or complains, but always hopes, and works and waits so cheerfully that one is ashamed to do otherwise before him.” Louisa May Alcott, “Little Women” - 1868

“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

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

“It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind.” Oscar Wilde, “The Importance of Being Earnest” - 1895

“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

“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

“Idleness is worst, Idleness alone is without hope: work earnestly at anything, you will by degrees learn to work at almost all things. There is endless hope in work, were it even work at making money.” Thomas Carlyle, “Past and Present” - 1843

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

Related topics

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

Related authors

Ayn Rand (5)
Bertrand Russell (4)
Jerome K. Jerome (4)
Henry Ford (4)
Louisa May Alcott (3)
Terry Pratchett (3)
Oscar Wilde (2)
George Orwell (2)
G. K. Chesterton (2)
Heraclitus (2)
Adam Smith (2)
Theodore Roosevelt (2)
Confucius (2)
Thomas Carlyle (2)
Samuel Butler (2)
Charles Bukowski (2)
Arnold Schwarzenegger (2)
A. W. Tozer (2)
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Related sources

The Fountainhead (4)
The Conquest of Happiness (4)
My Life and Work (4)
Little Women (3)
Three Men in a Boat (3)
On Nature (2)
The Wealth of Nations (2)
Theodore Roosevelt; an Autobiography (2)
Analects (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)