Motivational Quotes

Work

A man grows most tired while standing still.

- Proverb, Chinese

Best Quotes about Work

A dog that barks much is never a good hunter.

Proverb

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

For a woman to get a rewarding sense of total creation by way of the multiple monotonous chores that are her daily lot would be as irrational as for an assembly line worker to rejoice that he had created an automobile because he tightened a bolt.

Stern, Edith Mendel

Nowhere so busy a man as he than he, and yet he seemed busier than he was.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

Poor workers! First they're cuckolded, and, as if that weren't enough, then they're beaten! Work's a curse, Saturno. I say to hell with the work you have to do to earn a living! That kind of work does us no honor; all it does is fill up the bellies of the pigs who exploit us. But the work you do because you like to do it, because you've heard the call, you've got a vocation --that's ennobling! We should all be able to work like that. Look at me, Saturno --I don't work. And I don't care if they hang me, I won't work! Yet I'm alive! I may live badly, but at least I don't have to work to do it!

Bunuel, Luis

Work and thou canst escape the reward; whether the work be fine or course, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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.

Marx, Karl

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

Parkinson's Law

Teamwork is what the Green Bay Packers were all about. They didn't do it for individual glory. They did it because they loved one another.

Lombardi, Vince

10.

Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.

Jong, Erica

11.

A dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees the further of the two.

Herbert, George

12.

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

Pavlova, Anna

13.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

14.

You may be the only standard work somebody ever reads.

15.

Work is a refuge of people who have nothing better to do.

Wilde, Oscar

16.

When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.

Coolidge, Calvin

17.

Individuals play the game, but teams win championships.

18.

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

Twain, Mark

19.

Getting fired is nature's way to telling you that you had the wrong job in the first place.

Hal Lancaster

20.

The suburban housewife -- she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife -- freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth, and the illnesses of her grandmother had found true feminine fulfillment.

Friedan, Betty

21.

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.

Anatole France

22.

No longer diverted by other emotions, I work the way a cow grazes.

Kollwitz, KaThe

23.

A champion of the working man has never yet been known to die of overwork.

Frost, Robert

24.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

25.

I don't like work... but I like what is in work -- the chance to find yourself. Your own reality -- for yourself, not for others -- which no other man can ever know.

Conrad, Joseph

26.

Something made greater by ourselves and in turn that makes us greater.

Angelou, Maya

27.

Everything must degenerate into work if anything is to happen.

Drucker, Peter F.

28.

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

Pickens, T. Boone

29.

Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

Lombardi, Vince

30.

Blessed is that man who has found his work.

Hubbard, Elbert

31.

White man builds big fire, stands back. Indian builds little fire, huddles close

32.

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.

Auden, W. H.

33.

When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him:'Whose?'

Don Marquis

34.

People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.

Ogden Nash

35.

Snowflakes are one of nature's most fragile things, but just look at what they can do when they stick together.

36.

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

Keller, Helen

37.

A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the community.

W. Somerset Maugham

38.

The fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.

39.

Being a part of success is more important than being personally indispensable.

Riley, Pat

40.

When a milestone is conquered, the subtle erosion called entitlement begins its consuming grind. The team regards its greatness as a trait and a right. Half hearted effort becomes habit and saps a champion.

Riley, Pat

41.

Industry is fortunes right hand, and frugality its left.

Ray, John

42.

To each man is reserved a work which he alone can do.

Blow, Susan

43.

I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me; the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.

Jerome, Jerome K.

44.

A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and with the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby. The man is now a man.

Carlyle, Thomas

45.

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.

Szasz, Thomas

46.

You don't become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process.

Randall Munroe, xkcd

47.

We have too many people who live without working, and we have altogether too many who work without living.

Brown, Dean Charles R.

48.

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

Marden, Orison Swett

49.

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

Twain, Mark

50.

Hard work brings prosperity; playing around brings poverty.