quotations about work
A foreman, if he's got a conscience, and delights in his work, will do his business as well as if he was a partner. I wouldn't give a penny for a man as 'ud drive a nail in slack because he didn't get extra pay for it.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
To escape boredom, man works either beyond what his usual needs require, or else he invents play, that is, work that is designed to quiet no need other than that for working in general.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Human, All Too Human
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
LEO TOLSTOY
"Stop and Think!", Essays, Letters, Miscellanies
Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.
J. M. BARRIE
attributed, The New Dictionary of Thoughts
How strange it is that so many people have the belief that work is a burden and that idleness means happiness. Many are longing for the day that they will possess sufficient to quit work and take the world easy. They imagine that when that time comes their happiness will be complete. Alas, how many have reached this period of life to find themselves greatly disappointed! Idleness fails to give the happiness they expected and time drags more heavily than ever. The hardest job we ever tried was that of doing nothing.
NICIAS BALLARD COOKSEY
Helps to Happiness
Work was associated with a war, and military jargon became part of everyday work life. We are led by "officers", we "kill the competition", "target" clients, work "in the trenches" and "on the front lines", develop "strategy" and "drive campaigns".
NATALIA BLAGOEVA
"Thank God It's Monday and the End of Work-Life Balance", Huffington Post, March 21, 2017
The truth is, everybody I've ever met who's successful is a workaholic.
ICE-T
Men's Health, December 2005
No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community. The possibility it offers of displacing a large amount of libidinal components, whether narcissistic, aggressive or even erotic, on to professional work and on to the human relations connected with it lends it a value by no means second to what it enjoys as something indispensable to the preservation and justification of existence in society.
SIGMUND FREUD
Civilization and Its Discontents
I have never been able to draw a line between work and pleasure.
ANNA BALAKIAN
New York Times, August 15, 1997
There's only one thing worse than to live without working, and that is to work without living.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Hard work never hurt anyone who hired someone else to do it.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Work is the weapon of honor; he who lacks the weapon will never triumph.
D. G. MITCHELL
attributed, Day's Collacon
The reveries of the dreamer advance his hopes, but not their realization. One good hour of earnest work is worth them all.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Retirement wasn't a reward at the end of a well-run career ... it was a void surrounded by endless dull hours, haunted by memories of work.
NORA ROBERTS
Blue Smoke
One in three stressed workers is turning to comfort foods, such as chocolate, biscuits, doughnuts and crisps, as therapy. The figure rises to four in ten of those aged 35 to 44 as they battle to meet deadlines, wade through blizzards of emails and balance long hours with a family life. The pressure to achieve and bring in a good salary means career takes precedence over family for four in ten fathers and one in four mothers, according to a new study. Eating is generally seen as a more powerful way to cope with problems than exercise or talking things through with friends, family or colleagues.
SEAN POULTER
"How stress at work drives one in three employees to reach for the biscuit tin, chocolate or doughnuts", Daily Mail, February 5, 2016
Hard work is rewarding. Taking credit for other people's hard work is rewarding and faster.
SCOTT ADAMS
Dilbert's Guide to the Rest of Your Life: Dispatches from Cubicleland
The only way to go beyond work is through work. It is not that work itself is valuable; we surmount work by work. The real value of work lies in the strength of self-denial.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
ELBERT HUBBARD
A Thousand and One Epigrams
A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby.... The man is now a man.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Past and Present
Work seemed something fundamental for man, something which enabled him to endure the aimless flight of time.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes