Motivational Quotes

Work

I like manual labor. Whenever I've got waterlogged with study, I've taken a spell of it and found it spiritually invigorating.

- W. Somerset Maugham

Best Quotes about Work

Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

King Jr. Martin Luther

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

If you don't want to work, you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work.

Nash, Ogden

We need the iron qualities that go with true manhood. We need the positive virtues of resolution, of courage, of indomitable will, of power to do without shrinking the rough work that must always be done.

Roosevelt, Theodore

No one man is superior to the game.

Giamatti, A. Bartlett

The time spent in trying to impress others could be spent in doing the things by which others would be impressed.

Romer, Frank

It has been my experience that one cannot, in any shape or form, depend on human relations for lasting reward. It is only work that truly satisfies.

Bette Davis

Now, as always, the most automated appliance in a household is the mother.

Jones, Beverly

He worked like hell in the country so he could live in the city, where he worked like hell so he could live in the country.

Marquis, Don

10.

No labor, however humble, is dishonoring.

Talmud, The

11.

The works of women are symbolical. We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight, producing what? A pair of slippers, sir, to put on when you're weary -- or a stool. To stumble over and vex you... curse that stool! Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean and sleep, and dream of something we are not, but would be for your sake. Alas, alas! This hurts most, this... that, after all, we are paid the worth of our work, perhaps.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

12.

After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life.

Brodsky, Joseph

13.

I must work the work of him that sent me while it is day; for the night comet when no man can work.

Bible

14.

Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting.

Larry Page

15.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

16.

In the sweat of thy brow shall you eat your bread.

Bible

17.

Working from home meant we could vary snack and coffee breaks, change our desks or view, goof off, drink on the job, even spend the day in pajamas, and often meet to gossip or share ideas. On the other hand, we bossed ourselves around, set impossible goals, and demanded longer hours than office jobs usually entail. It was the ultimate "flextime," in that it depended on how flexible we felt each day, given deadlines, distractions, and workaholic crescendos.

Diane Ackerman

18.

A human being must have occupation if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world.

Dorothy L. Sayers

19.

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.

Diller, Phyllis

20.

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

Pavlova, Anna

21.

We take eagles and teach them to fly in formation.

Calloway, Wayne

22.

There are few things that you can't do as long as you are willing to apply yourself.

LeMond, Greg

23.

Work banishes those three great evils: boredom, vice and poverty.

Voltaire

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Hard work is the yeast that raises the dough

27.

Better to burn out than rust out.

Young, Neil

28.

Laziness may appear attractive but work gives satisfaction.

Frank, Anne

29.

You have to do it by yourself, and you can't do it alone.

Rutte, Martin

30.

Every calling is great when greatly pursued.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

31.

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

32.

The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work.

Weil, Simone

33.

No bees, no honey; no work, no money.

Proverb

34.

Don't be condescending to unskilled labor. Try it for a half a day first.

Atkinson, Brooks

35.

A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works. Not only his own thoughts, but the thoughts of the men of past ages guide his hands; and, as part of the human race, he creates. If we work thus we shall be men, and our days will be happy and eventful.

Morris, William

36.

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

37.

What is the good of being a genius if you cannot use it as an excuse for being unemployed?

Barzan, Gerald

38.

Thunder is impressive, but it is lightning that does the work.

Twain, Mark

39.

I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of work, because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.

Warhol, Andy

40.

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

41.

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

Rohn, Jim

42.

The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the son of his own works.

Cervantes, Miguel De

43.

I do not know anyone who has gotten to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but it will get you pretty near.

Thatcher, Margaret

44.

Beauty is also to be found in a day's work.

Burns, Mamie Sypert

45.

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

46.

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.

Robert Benchley

47.

When you're doing the work you're meant to do, it feels right and every day is a bonus, regardless of what you're getting paid.

Oprah Winfrey

48.

When a great team loses through complacency, it will constantly search for new and more intricate explanations to explain away defeat.

Riley, Pat

49.

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

50.

If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it's the best possible substitute for it.

Garfield, James A.