quotations about work
Work was associated with a war, and military jargon became part of everyday work life. We are led by "officers", we "kill the competition", "target" clients, work "in the trenches" and "on the front lines", develop "strategy" and "drive campaigns".
NATALIA BLAGOEVA
"Thank God It's Monday and the End of Work-Life Balance", Huffington Post, March 21, 2017
A foreman, if he's got a conscience, and delights in his work, will do his business as well as if he was a partner. I wouldn't give a penny for a man as 'ud drive a nail in slack because he didn't get extra pay for it.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
To escape boredom, man works either beyond what his usual needs require, or else he invents play, that is, work that is designed to quiet no need other than that for working in general.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Human, All Too Human
Work is the weapon of honor; he who lacks the weapon will never triumph.
D. G. MITCHELL
attributed, Day's Collacon
There's only one thing worse than to live without working, and that is to work without living.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Does not the latent feeling that much of their striving is to no purpose tend to infuse large quantities of sham into men's work?
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
A Diary
All work is an act of philosophy.
AYN RAND
Atlas Shrugged
How strange it is that so many people have the belief that work is a burden and that idleness means happiness. Many are longing for the day that they will possess sufficient to quit work and take the world easy. They imagine that when that time comes their happiness will be complete. Alas, how many have reached this period of life to find themselves greatly disappointed! Idleness fails to give the happiness they expected and time drags more heavily than ever. The hardest job we ever tried was that of doing nothing.
NICIAS BALLARD COOKSEY
Helps to Happiness
A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby.... The man is now a man.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Past and Present
The phrase "work-life balance" tells us that people think that work is the opposite of life. We should be talking about life-life balance.
PATRICK DIXON
Building a Better Business
The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do better work.
ELBERT HUBBARD
Selected Writings
The truth is, everybody I've ever met who's successful is a workaholic.
ICE-T
Men's Health, December 2005
Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.
GEORGE ELIOT
Silas Marner
Hard work is rewarding. Taking credit for other people's hard work is rewarding and faster.
SCOTT ADAMS
Dilbert's Guide to the Rest of Your Life: Dispatches from Cubicleland
Who first invented work and bound the free
And holiday-rejoicing spirit down
To the unremitting importunity
Of business, in the green fields, and the town;
To plough, loom, anvil, spade--and oh! most sad!
To this dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood?
Who but the Being unblest, alien from good,
SABBATHLESS SATAN!
CHARLES LAMB
"Sonnet", The Examiner, June 20, 1819
Work seemed something fundamental for man, something which enabled him to endure the aimless flight of time.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
How many people do you know who are obsessed with their work, who are type A or have stress related diseases and who can't slow down? They can't slow down because they use their routine to distract themselves, to reduce life to only its practical considerations. And they do this to avoid recalling how uncertain they are about why they live.
JAMES REDFIELD
The Celestine Prophecy
Hard work never hurt anyone who hired someone else to do it.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
ROBERT FROST
attributed, The New Speaker's Treasury of Wit and Wisdom
One in three stressed workers is turning to comfort foods, such as chocolate, biscuits, doughnuts and crisps, as therapy. The figure rises to four in ten of those aged 35 to 44 as they battle to meet deadlines, wade through blizzards of emails and balance long hours with a family life. The pressure to achieve and bring in a good salary means career takes precedence over family for four in ten fathers and one in four mothers, according to a new study. Eating is generally seen as a more powerful way to cope with problems than exercise or talking things through with friends, family or colleagues.
SEAN POULTER
"How stress at work drives one in three employees to reach for the biscuit tin, chocolate or doughnuts", Daily Mail, February 5, 2016