Motivational Quotes

Work

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

- Twain, Mark

Best Quotes about Work

If food were free, why work?

Horton, Doug

Every day's a perfect gift of time for us to use. Hours waiting to be filled in any way we choose. Each morning brings a quiet hope that rises with the sun. Each evening brings the sweet content that comes with work well done.

Better to burn out than rust out.

Young, Neil

Doing what you love means dealing with things you don't.

David Shore

Each home has been reduced to the bare essentials -- to barer essentials than most primitive people would consider possible. Only one woman's hands to feed the baby, answer the telephone, turn off the gas under the pot that is boiling over, soothe the older child who has broken a toy, and open both doors at once. She is a nutritionist, a child psychologist, an engineer, a production manager, an expert buyer, all in one. Her husband sees her as free to plan her own time, and envies her; she sees him as having regular hours and envies him.

Mead, Margaret

Working together, ordinary people can perform extraordinary feats. They can push things that come into their hands a little higher up, a little further on towards the heights of excellence.

Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished, or if it does, as in the case of the tilled field, this product of human activity requires still more labor, incessant, tireless labor, to maintain its identity as a work of man.

Mccarthy, Mary

The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.

Lombardi, Vince

Work is not a curse, but drudgery is!

Beecher, Henry Ward

10.

More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies.

Kipling, Rudyard

11.

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

12.

No one man is superior to the game.

Giamatti, A. Bartlett

13.

When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort, its ready to climb.

Riley, Pat

14.

It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.

Hill, Napoleon

15.

You'll never succeed in idealizing hard work. Before you can dig mother earth you've got to take off your ideal jacket. The harder a man works, at brute labor, the thinner becomes his idealism, the darker his mind.

Lawrence, D. H.

16.

What is work and what is not work are questions that perplex the wisest of men.

Bhagavad Gita

17.

It does not seem to be true that work necessarily needs to be unpleasant. It may always have to be hard, or at least harder than doing nothing at all. But there is ample evidence that work can be enjoyable, and that indeed, it is often the most enjoyable part of life.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

18.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

19.

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

Johnson, Samuel

20.

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

21.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

22.

Nothing is work unless you'd rather be doing something else.

Halas, George

23.

Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.

Ford, Henry

24.

By working hard, you get to play hard guilt-free.

Rohn, Jim

25.

You have to surrender to the fact that you are of too many in a highly competitive field where it is difficult to stand out. Over time, through your work, you will demonstrate who you are and what you bring to the field. Just stay with it and keep working.

Lisa Kudrow

26.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and Jill a wealthy widow.

27.

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

28.

Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume: the hellish cycle is complete.

Vaneigem, Raoul

29.

Work is only work if you'd rather be doing something else.

Prince, Ray

30.

A well-run restaurant is like a winning baseball team. It makes the most of every crew member's talent and takes advantage of every split-second opportunity to speed up service.

Ogilvy, David

31.

Members of groups that do not meet regularly together usually do not feel a strong sense of belonging and do not take ownership for the success of the group.

32.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

Henry David Thoreau

33.

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

Richard Bach

34.

Want is the mother of industry.

Proverb

35.

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

36.

There is no excellence without labor, in the furnace, God may try you, thus to bring thee forth more bright.

37.

Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity. In what we call art, it's one of the most desirable characteristics of a piece of work.

Cohen, Leonard

38.

At daybreak, when loath to rise, have this thought in thy mind: I am rising for a man's work.

Syrus, Publilius

39.

The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%.

Carnegie, Andrew

40.

Our works decay and disappear but God gentlest works stay looking down on the ruins we toil to rear.

Smith, Dr. Walter

41.

Industrial man --a sentient reciprocating engine having a fluctuating output, coupled to an iron wheel revolving with uniform velocity. And then we wonder why this should be the golden age of revolution and mental derangement.

Huxley, Aldous

42.

Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork and drive the brute off?

Larkin, Philip

43.

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

44.

My father taught me to work, but he did not teach me to love it.

Lincoln, Abraham

45.

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

Twain, Mark