Work Quotes

“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”

— Oscar Wilde

“The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.”

— Robert Frost

“Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark raving mad.”

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

“You never know how a horse will pull until you hook him to a heavy load.”

— Bear Bryant

“No one has a greater asset for his business than a man's pride in his work.”

— Hosea Ballou

“All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

“No man ever wetted clay and then left it, as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune.”

— Plutarch

“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”

— Karl Marx

“He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest.”

— Dylan Thomas

“Hard work spotlights the character of people. Some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.”

— Sam Ewing

“It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf.”

— Bob Hope

“Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.”

— Thomas Carlyle

“One and one is two, and two and two is four, and five will get you ten if you know how to work it.”

— Mae West

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

— Vince Lombardi

“By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.”

— Robert Frost

“I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.”

— Thomas A. Edison

“Without work, all life goes rotten; but when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.”

— Albert Camus

“Do your duty in all things. Like the old Puritan, you cannot do more; you should never wish to do less.”

— Robert E. Lee

“Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.”

— Anton Chekhov

“We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.”

— Wernher von Braun

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

— Jonas Salk

“The end of labor is to gain leisure.”

— Aristotle

“Work is not man's punishment, it is his reward and his strength and his pleasure.”

— George Sand

“Work while you work; play while you play. This is a basic rule of repressive self-discipline.”

— Theodor Adorno

“It's true: hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?”

— Ronald Reagan

“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”

— Samuel Johnson

“As information technology restructures the work situation, it abstracts thought from action.”

— Shoshana Zuboff

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

— Confucius

“If a man loves the labour of his trade apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

“Work hard, stay positive, and get up early. It's the best part of the day.”

— George Allen Sr.

“Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.”

— James A. Michener

“Let us realize that the privilege to work is a gift, the power to work is a blessing, the love of work is success.”

— David O. McKay

“Labor was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things.”

— Adam Smith

“Let each man exercise the art he knows.”

— Aristophanes

“Business is the salt of life.”

— Voltaire

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”

— Helen Keller

“Home is where I work, and I work everywhere.”

— Alfred Nobel

“I can deal with people who watch me on stage, but I am not good in communicating with people any other way than through my work.”

— Henry Rollins

“Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.”

— Rumi

“Sweat saves blood.”

— Erwin Rommel

“The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.”

— Norman Schwarzkopf

“We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong; the amount of work is the same.”

— Carlos Castaneda

“Pennies do not come from heaven; they have to be earned here on earth.”

— Margaret Thatcher

“Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.”

— Margaret Thatcher

“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”

— Oscar Wilde

“Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.”

— Booker T. Washington

“The pay is good and I can walk to work.”

— John F. Kennedy

“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”

— Alexander Graham Bell

“All wealth is the product of labor.”

— John Locke

“Do nothing which is of no use.”

— Miyamoto Musashi

“Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.”

— Joseph Joubert

“I don't live to work; I work to live.”

— Noel Gallagher

“Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.”

— Franz Kafka

“I do the very best I know how; the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.”

— Abraham Lincoln

“There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes.”

— William J. Brennan Jr.

“The world is moved along not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.”

— Helen Keller

“When work is a pleasure, life is a joy; when work is a duty, life is slavery.”

— Maxim Gorky

“Work while you work; play while you play. This is a basic rule of repressive self-discipline.”

— Theodor Adorno

“One must work and dare if one really wants to live.”

— Vincent van Gogh

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

— Gustave Flaubert

“There is no excellence without labor; one cannot dream oneself into either usefulness or happiness.”

— Liberty Hyde Bailey

“People intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really are.”

— Aldous Huxley

“Pray as though everything depended on God; work as though everything depended on you.”

— Saint Augustine

“Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds.”

— Gordon B. Hinckley

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

— Confucius

“If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.”

— Napoleon Bonaparte

“Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.”

— Charles Eames

“Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.”

— James M. Barrie

“In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car.”

— Lawrence Summers

“Football is like life; it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication, and respect for authority.”

— Vince Lombardi

“Working hard is very important. You're not going to get anywhere without working extremely hard.”

— George Lucas

“The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.”

— Richard Bach

“Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.”

— Joseph Conrad

“There is no work, however vile or sordid, that does not glisten before God.”

— John Calvin

“When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.”

— Henry J. Kaiser

“I had rather be called a journalist than an artist.”

— H.G. Wells

“Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave.”

— Constantin Brancusi

“Light is the task where many share the toil.”

— Homer

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

— Douglas Adams

“The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every calling, is diligence.”

— Abraham Lincoln

“Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.”

— Ulysses S. Grant

“Passive inactivity, because you have not been given specific instructions to do this or to do that, is a serious deficiency.”

— George C. Marshall

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.”

— Bertrand Russell

“Don't stay in bed unless you can make money in bed.”

— George Burns

“After all is said and done, more is said than done.”

— Aesop

“Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get, but if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen.”

— Conan O'Brien

“He who labors diligently need never despair, for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.”

— Menander

“Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

“Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.”

— Albert Einstein

“It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs.”

— Margaret Thatcher

“I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.”

— Vincent van Gogh

“If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.”

— Bill Gates

“I have no idols; I admire work, dedication, and competence.”

— Ayrton Senna

“I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

“Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.”

— Booker T. Washington

“An artist cannot do anything slovenly.”

— Jane Austen

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

— Theodore Roosevelt

“There is no substitute for hard work.”

— Thomas A. Edison

“Work is no disgrace; it is idleness which is a disgrace.”

— Hesiod

“Without labor, nothing prospers.”

— Sophocles

“Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.”

— Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”

— Aristotle

“Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.”

— Henry Ford

“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”

— Booker T. Washington

“I am only an average man, but by George, I work harder at it than the average man.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

— Ernest Hemingway

“Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.”

— Mark Twain

“When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.”

— Daniel Webster

“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”

— Oscar Wilde

“Everyone lives by selling something.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

“Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark raving mad.”

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”

— Thomas Carlyle

“I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”

— Jerome K. Jerome

“An army marches on its stomach.”

— Napoleon Bonaparte

“Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent effort.”

— John Ruskin

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

— Vince Lombardi

“All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

“God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind that I will never die.”

— Bill Watterson

“Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.”

— Nelson Mandela

“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.”

— Aristotle

“Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.”

— Peter Drucker

“Inspiration comes of working every day.”

— Charles Baudelaire

“Make the workmanship surpass the materials.”

— Ovid

“Communication works for those who work at it.”

— John Powell

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.”

— Plato

“Housework can't kill you, but why take a chance?”

— Phyllis Diller

“A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood.”

— George S. Patton

“Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.”

— Thomas Carlyle

“Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun.”

— Christina Rossetti

“If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.”

— Vince Lombardi

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

— Winston Churchill

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

— Thomas A. Edison

“Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.”

— Carl Sandburg

“My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance.”

— Tim Allen

“Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction.”

— Anne Frank

“I'm always writing songs and I've got a bunch that I want to record.”

— Paul McCartney

“The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.”

— Elbert Hubbard

“Where I excel is ridiculous, sickening work ethic. You know, while the other guys are sleeping, I'm working.”

— Will Smith

“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

“I don't build in order to have clients; I have clients in order to build.”

— Ayn Rand

“I am afraid that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.”

— Jane Austen

“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

— Thomas A. Edison

“The food here is terrible and the portions are too small.”

— Woody Allen

“The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.”

— Norman Schwarzkopf

“I am my own secretary; I dictate, I compose, I copy all myself.”

— Venerable Bede

“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do; play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”

— Mark Twain

“Creative without strategy is called 'art.' Creative with strategy is called 'advertising.'”

— Jef I. Richards

“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”

— Peter Drucker

“The man who rows the boat seldom has time to rock it.”

— Bill Copeland

“When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“Work will win when wishy-washy wishing won't.”

— Thomas S. Monson

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.”

— Bertrand Russell

Work Quotes

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