quotations about work
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
There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of workers in the world, the people who do all the work, and the people who think they do all the work. The latter class is generally the busiest, the former never have time to be busy.
STELLA BENSON
I Pose
Have you beheld a man skillful in his work? Before kings is where he will station himself; he will not station himself before commonplace men.
SOLOMON
Proverbs 22:29
I need that job, and I hate like hell that I do, but I need it. And I'm not working there because I need an allowance. I'm paying for a mortgage and putting food on the table and buying clothes for three kids. I don't think you'd even understand that. I don't think you understand anything. You're not grown up enough yet to understand that your life doesn't always turn out the way you plan it to be, and sometimes you end up doing stuff you thought you'd never do in a million years, but you still have to do it 'cause there's nothing else you can do.
ROSEANNE BARR
"Chicken Hearts", Roseanne
Work is the Rent we pay for our time on Earth.
TUBBY CLAYTON
attributed, Saga Magazine, January 2009
When he worked, he really worked. But when he played, he really PLAYED.
DR. SEUSS
The King's Stilts
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
The Right to Be Lazy
Family and work. Family and work. I can let them be at war, with guilt as their nuclear weapon and mutually assured destruction as their aim, or I can let them nourish each other.
ELLEN GILCHRIST
The Writing Life
A friendly dynamic among co-workers is so integral to our well-being, in fact, that economists say having a work pal increases your happiness as much as a $100,000 raise would.
KATIE UNDERWOOD
"Why developing friendships at work is so important", Canadian Business, January 27, 2016
Inter-cubicle friendship is every bit as good for your health and your output as an ergonomically correct ball chair. Even in our furiously multi-tasking world, work should still come with a good dose of play. And, okay, maybe some free pretzels too.
KATIE UNDERWOOD
"Why developing friendships at work is so important", Canadian Business, January 27, 2016
Every man is better for a period of work under the open sky.
HENRY FORD
My Life and Work
When the toiler bends and labors till his sweat turns into pearls,
'Tis a nobler decoration than the coronets of earls.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"Caelestis"
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
ARISTOTLE
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul
Caring about the quality of your work causes stress. Stress can kill you. Maintain good health by remembering that the stockholders are complete strangers who have never done anything for you.
SCOTT ADAMS
Dilbert's Guide to the Rest of Your Life: Dispatches from Cubicleland
People say they love hard workers but they really love natural talent--a bias with troubling implications when it comes to hiring.
ERIC JAFFE
"Hard Work Is Overrated", fastcodesign, January 19, 2016
It just seems so useless to have to work so hard and nothin' ever really seems to come from it.
TOM PETTY
Here Comes My Girl
Work restores humankind and all its attributes to the savage animal condition that was its original intended state.
ELFRIEDE JELINEK
Lust
There is no substitute for hard work.
THOMAS EDISON
Life
The humblest workman has his place,
Which no one else can fill.
MAUD LINDSAY
"The Little Gray Pony", Mother Stories
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