quotations and passages on work

The highest reward for
one's toil is not what one
gets for it but what
one becomes by it.

The great composer does not set to work because he or she is inspired, but becomes
inspired because he or she is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart settled
down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles
down each day to his or her figures. They didn't waste time waiting for an inspiration.

Ernest Newman

Happiness, I have discovered, is nearly always a rebound from hard work.
It is one of the follies of men to imagine that they can enjoy mere thought,
or emotion, or sentiment! As well try to eat beauty! For happiness must
be tricked! She loves to see people at work. She loves sweat, weariness,
self-sacrifice. She will not be found in palaces but lurking in cornfields and
factories and hovering over littered desks: she crowns the unconscious
head of the busy child. If you look up suddenly from hard work, you will
see her,--but if you look too long she fades sorrowfully away.

David Grayson

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away
at a rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it.
Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not
that blow that did it--but all that had gone before.

Jacob Riis

Luck means the hardships and privations which you have not
hesitated to endure; the long nights you have devoted to work.
Luck means the appointments you have never failed to keep;
the trains you have never failed to catch.

Max O'Rell

There is no real wealth but the labor of people. Were the mountains
of gold and silver, the world would not be one grain of corn the richer;
no one comfort would be added to the human race.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Like the star that
shines afar,
Without haste and
without rest,
Let each one wheel
with steady sway
Round the task that
rules the day,
And do their best.

Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe

I studied the lives of great men and women, and I found that the people
who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand,
with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.

Harry S. Truman

Lin
Yutang

So much of unhappiness, it seems to me, is due to nerves; and bad nerves are the result of having nothing to do, or doing a thing badly, unsuccessfully or incompetently. Of all the unhappy people in the world, the unhappiest are those who have not found something they want to do. True happiness comes to those who do their work well, followed by a refreshing period of rest. True happiness comes from the right amount of work for the day.

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things
are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it;
and they must have a sense of success in it--not a doubtful sense,
such as needs some testimony of other people for its confirmation,
but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been
done well, and fruitfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it.

John Ruskin

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty
to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble.
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

You cannot build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end
each of us must work for his or her own improvement, and at the same time
show a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid
those to whom we think we can be most useful.

Marie Curie

Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul
is the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other.

Henry David Thoreau

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

Thomas A. Edison

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste,
it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple
and take alms of those who work with joy. For if you bake bread with indifference,
you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half people's hunger.

Khalil Gibran

The beauty of work depends upon the way we meet it, whether we
arm ourselves each morning to attack it as an enemy that must be
vanquished before night comes--or whether we open our eyes with
the sunrise to welcome it as an approaching friend who will keep
us delightful company and who will make us feel at evening
that the day was well worth its fatigue.

Lucy Larcom

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Starting out to make money is the greatest mistake in life.
Do what you feel you have a flair for doing, and if you are
good enough at it, the money will come.

Greer Garson

Labor disgraces no person; unfortunately,
you occasionally find people who disgrace labor.

Ulysses S. Grant

Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Half effort does not produce half results,
it produces no results. Work, continuous work and hard work,
is the only way to accomplish results that last.

Hamilton Holt

Striving for success without hard work
is like trying to harvest
where you haven't planted.

David Bly

Continuity of purpose is one of the most essential
ingredients of happiness in the long run, and for
most people this comes chiefly through their work.

Bertrand Russell

The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference
between taking one's work seriously, and taking one's self seriously.
The first is imperative, and the second is disastrous.

Margot Fonteyn

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--what no other person can ever know.

Joseph Conrad

The return from your work must be the satisfaction that work brings you
and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven,
or as near heaven as you can get. Without this--with work
which you despise, which bores you, and which the world
does not need--this life is hell.

W.E.B. du Bois

What a person accomplishes in a day depends upon the way in which he or she approaches their tasks. When we accept tough jobs as a challenge to our ability and wade into them with joy and enthusiasm, miracles can happen. When we do our work with a dynamic, conquering spirit, we get things done.

Arland Gilbert

Work and play can be the same. When you are following your energy
and doing what you want to do all the time, the distinction
between work and play dissolves. Work is no longer what you have to do,
and play what you want to do. When you are doing what you love,
you may work harder and produce more than ever before, because you are having fun.

Shakti Gawain

If you could once make up your mind never to undertake more work
than you can carry on calmly, quietly, without hurry or flurry. . . .
and if the instant you feel yourself growing nervous and out of breath,
you would stop and take breath, you would find this simple common-sense
rule doing for you what no prayers or tears could ever accomplish.

Elizabeth Prentiss

Articles and book excerpts on work:

Doing Dishes      tom walsh
My Favorite Four-Letter Words      Norman Vincent Peale
Sabotaged Efforts      Ray Whiting
Shoveling Snow      tom walsh
Still Don't Know What You Want to Be?      Valerie Young

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