Quotes about work

Bodily labor alleviates the pains of the mind and from this arises the happiness of the poor.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Nobody ever drowned in his own sweat.

— Ann Landers

Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork and drive the brute off?

— Philip Larkin

Work is life, you know, and without it, there's nothing but fear and insecurity.

— John Lennon

The question is not whether the system works, but whether we like the way it works. Just because something works doesn't mean it is desirable. Concentration camps work, if your purpose is to enslave people. Stealing works, if all you care about is money. Lying works, if you don't give a damn about your personal integrity. Literally anything, no matter how monstrously immoral will work, depending on your desires and how you define the term work,

— Sy Leon

My father taught me to work, but he did not teach me to love it.

— Abraham Lincoln

Wanting to work is so rare a merit that it should be encouraged.

— Abraham Lincoln

If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my ax.

— Abraham Lincoln

The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.

— Vince Lombardi

Every person born into this world their work is born with them.

— James Russell Lowell

Keep quiet. Do your work in the world, but inwardly keep quiet. Then all will come to you.

— Nisaragada Ha Maharaj

To work -- to work! It is such infinite delight to know that we still have the best things to do.

— Katherine Mansfield

The quality of your work, in the long run, is the deciding factor on how much your services are valued by the world.

— Orison Swett Marden

He worked like hell in the country so he could live in the city, where he worked like hell so he could live in the country.

— Don Marquis

In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.

— Karl Marx

Remember that your work comes only moment by moment, and as surely as God calls you to work, he gives the strength to do it.

— Priscilla Maurice

The effectiveness of work increases according to geometric progression if there are no interruptions.

— Andre Maurois

Life is just a dirty four-letter word: W-O-R-K.

— J. P. Mcevoy

I have never liked working. To me a job is an invasion of privacy.

— Danny Mcgoorty

Every job has drudgery, whether it is in the home, in the school, or in the office. The first secret of happiness is the recognition of this fundamental fact.

— M. C. Mcintosh

If it's true that men today value their lives outside of work as much as women do--and research proves it is--then they have to join women's fight to reconstruct the way we work and create a new, broader definition of success.

— Elizabeth Perle Mckenna

Where the whole man is involved there is no work. Work begins with the division of labor.

— Marshall Mcluhan

Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

— Herman Melville

It is well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand.

— Michelangelo

Work for the fun of it, and the money will arrive some day.

— Ronnie Milsap

In case of doubt, do a little more than you have to.

— Warren Mitchell

I suspect that American workers have come to lack a work ethic. They do not live by the sweat of their brow.

— Kiichi Miyazawa

Work will win when wishy washy wishing won t.

— Thomas S. Monson

A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works. Not only his own thoughts, but the thoughts of the men of past ages guide his hands; and, as part of the human race, he creates. If we work thus we shall be men, and our days will be happy and eventful.

— William Morris

As American productivity, once the exuberant engine of national wealth, has dipped to an embarrassingly uncompetitive low, Americans have shaken their heads: the country's old work ethic is dead.

— Lance Morrow

There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in --that we do it to God, to Christ, and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.

— Mother Teresa

If you don't want to work, you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work.

— Ogden Nash

Work! labor the asparagus me of life; the one great sacrament of humanity from which all other things flow -- security, leisure, joy, art, literature, even divinity itself.

— Sean O'Casey

Work is the open sesame of every portal, the great equalizer in the world, the true philosopher's stone which transmutes all the base metal of humanity into gold.

— Sir William Osler

Work is the province of cattle.

— Dorothy Parker

You don't grow up in our neck of the woods believing that someone can outwork you.

— Joseph Parkinson

Work either expands or contracts in order to fill the time available.

— Parkinson's Law

My only concern was to get home after a hard day's work.

— Rosa Parks

No one can arrive from being talented alone. God gives talent; work transforms talent into genius.

— Anna Pavlova

After love, the most sacred gift you can give is your labor.

— Don Alan Pennebaker

Work is necessary for man. Man invented the alarm clock.

— Pablo Picasso

Work eight hours and sleep eight hours and make sure that they are not the same hours.

— T. Boone Pickens

Work is only work if you'd rather be doing something else.

— Ray Prince

A dog that barks much is never a good hunter.

— Proverb

No bees, no honey; no work, no money.

— Proverb

Plaster thick, some will stick.

— Proverb

Want is the mother of industry.

— Proverb

The secret of life is not to do what you like, but to like what you do.

— American Proverb

A man grows most tired while standing still.

— Chinese Proverb

Work relieves us from three great evils, boredom, vice, and want.

— French Proverb

The work praises the man.

— Irish Proverb

While a person gets they can never lose.

— Scottish Proverb

Industry is fortunes right hand, and frugality its left.

— John Ray

The intellectual equipment needed for the job of the future is an ability to define problems, quickly assimilate relevant data, conceptualize and reorganize the information, make deductive and inductive leaps with it, ask hard questions about it, discuss findings with colleagues, work collaboratively to find solutions and then convince others.

— Robert B. Reich

If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.

— Sir Joshua Reynolds

The person with the best job in the country is the vice president. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, How is the president?

— Will Rogers

The time spent in trying to impress others could be spent in doing the things by which others would be impressed.

— Frank Romer

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

— Eleanor Roosevelt

If I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do is join a union.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

— Theodore Roosevelt

We need the iron qualities that go with true manhood. We need the positive virtues of resolution, of courage, of indomitable will, of power to do without shrinking the rough work that must always be done.

— Theodore Roosevelt

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.

— Theodore Roosevelt

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

The best work never was and never will be done for money.

— John Ruskin

The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.

— Dr. Jonas Salk

Work is not man's punishment! It is his reward and his strength, his glory and his pleasure.

— George Sand

The man who does not work for the love of work but only for money is not likely to make money nor find much fun in life.

— Charles M. Schwab

I never worked a day in my life. It's not work when you love what you're doing.

— David Shakarian

Nothing makes a man so selfish as work.

— George Bernard Shaw

Get the job done.

— Don Shula

When I think of work, it's mostly about having control over your destiny, as opposed to being at the mercy of what's out there.

— Gary Sinise

No matter how big or soft or warm your bed is, you still have to get out of it.

— Grace Slick

Our works decay and disappear but God gentlest works stay looking down on the ruins we toil to rear.

— Dr. Walter Smith

The work will stand, no matter what.

— Meryl Streep

At daybreak, when loath to rise, have this thought in thy mind: I am rising for a man's work.

— Publilius Syrus

The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic --in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea --known to medical science is work.

— Thomas Szasz

No labor, however humble, is dishonoring.

— The Talmud

Anything that comes easy, comes wrong.

— Josephine Tessier

Pennies do not come from heaven -- they have to be earned here on earth.

— Margaret Thatcher

Men have become the tools of their trade.

— Henry David Thoreau

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

— Henry David Thoreau

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

— Henry David Thoreau

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

— Henry David Thoreau

Let us be grateful to Adam, our benefactor. He cut us out of the blessing of idleness and won for us the curse of labor.

— Mark Twain

Intellectual work is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward.

— Mark Twain

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

— Mark Twain

I do not like work even when someone else does it.

— Mark Twain

Thunder is impressive, but it is lightning that does the work.

— Mark Twain

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

— Mark Twain

There is no excellence without labor, in the furnace, God may try you, thus to bring thee forth more bright.

— Source Unknown

Even a mosquito doesn't get a pat on the back until he's well into his work.

— Source Unknown

Even the woodpecker owes its success to the fact that he used his head.

— Source Unknown

Every morning in Africa, a Gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a Lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest Gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a Lion or a Gazelle... when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.

— Source Unknown

I love the work; I could sit and look at it for hours.

— Source Unknown

It is quite possible to work without results, but never will there be results without work.

— Source Unknown

Lincoln's stepmother probably did not teach him very much, but she kindled his mind and encouraged him. He did the work and put in the hours on his own.

— Source Unknown

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.

— Source Unknown

Every day's a perfect gift of time for us to use. Hours waiting to be filled in any way we choose. Each morning brings a quiet hope that rises with the sun. Each evening brings the sweet content that comes with work well done.

— Source Unknown

Work is a four letter word!

— Source Unknown

Work keeps at bay, three great evils -- boredom, vice and need.

— Voltaire