quotations about work
The philosophers of antiquity taught contempt for work, that degradation of the free man, the poets sang of idleness, that gift from the Gods.
PAUL LAFARGUE
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The Right to Be Lazy
When the toiler bends and labors till his sweat turns into pearls,
'Tis a nobler decoration than the coronets of earls.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"Caelestis"
You reach a point where you don't work for money.
WALT DISNEY
attributed, The Quotable Billionaire
I am not sure that life, to any one,
A fuller measure of contentment brings,
With all its gifts, than in the draught which springs,
From honest work, well plann'd, and bravely done.
WILLIAM WILSEY MARTIN
"Labor"
If every man should work at that for which nature fitted him, the cows would be well tended.
FLORIAN
attributed, Day's Collacon
No longer diverted by other emotions, I work the way a cow grazes.
KÄTHE KOLLWITZ
Diaries and Letters
See that bunch of loafers on the street corner. They seldom work, and how they live no one can tell. Are they happy? Nay, nay; the good boxes on which they sit testify to their restlessness, for they have tried to while away their long hours by whittling them, when there was nothing else on hand to help pass the time. Certainly the idle, yawning, gaping, stretching loafer is not an ideal of a happy life.
NICIAS BALLARD COOKSEY
Helps to Happiness
True Work is the necessity of poor humanity's earthly condition. The dignity is in leisure. Besides, 99 hundredths of all the work done in the world is either foolish and unnecessary, or harmful and wicked.
HERMAN MELVILLE
letter to Catherine G. Lansing, September 5, 1877
A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.
L. P. JACKS
Education Through Recreation
It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
letter to Harrison Blake, November 16, 1857
Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Sorrows of Young Werther
The chances of a man's succeeding who does not love his work are very small. For all success costs labor.
FRANK CHAPMAN SHARP
Success: A Course in Moral Instruction
I like to call in sick to work at places where I've never held a job. Then when the manager tells me I don't work there, I tell them I'd like to. But not today, as I'm sick.
JAROD KINTZ
This Book is Not For Sale
Slow work produces fine goods.
CHINESE PROVERB
Work restores humankind and all its attributes to the savage animal condition that was its original intended state.
ELFRIEDE JELINEK
Lust
When master and workmen unite the work is soon done.
WAKATAUKI
attributed, Day's Collacon
Are there many situations more sublimely tragic than the struggle of the soul with the demand to renounce a work which has been all the significance of its life--a significance which is to vanish as the waters which come and go where no man has need of them?
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Remember, work, well done, does good to the man who does it. It makes him a better man.
GEORGE S. CLASON
The Richest Man in Babylon
If a man does not go about his work with enthusiasm, it means that he has not yet found a work that he likes. Every mortal is a busy bee when he comes to the task that Destiny has set aside for him.
GEORGE ADE
"The Fable of the Old Fox and the Young Fox", True Bills
If you care about what you do and work hard at it, there isn't anything you can't do if you want to.
JIM HENSON
It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider