Quotes about work

Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labour wears, while the used key is always bright

Drive thy business, let not that drive thee

Diligence is the mother of good luck

Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Work is love made visible.

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

The beginning is the most important part of any work

What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties

Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble.

Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving.

Nature makes merit but fortune sets it to work.

Interest sets at work all sorts of virtues and vices.

We have more idleness in the mind than in the body.

Work makes companionship.

Excellent work is unfathomable, approach it as you will.

Let us be grateful to Adam our benefactor. He cut us out of the “blessing of idleness,” and won for us the “curse of labor.”

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

Industry is the root of all ugliness.

The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.

To create a little flower is the labour of ages.

APPETITE, n. An instinct thoughtfully implanted by Providence as a solution to the labor question.

AUSTRALIA, n. A country lying in the South Sea, whose industrial and commercial development has been unspeakably retarded by an unfortunate dispute among geographers as to whether it is a continent or an island.

BARRACK, n. A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of which it is their business to deprive others.

CAMEL, n. A quadruped (the Splaypes humpidorsus) of great value to the show business. There are two kinds of camels—the camel proper and the camel improper. It is the latter that is always exhibited.

CAVILER, n. A critic of our own work.

DAY, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. This period is divided into two parts, the day proper and the night, or day improper—the former devoted to sins of business, the latter consecrated to the other sort. These two kinds of social activity overlap.

DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.

FREEBOOTER, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.

IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.

LABOR, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.

NOMINEE, n. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking the honorable obscurity of public office.

PHOTOGRAPH, n. A picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. It is a little better than the work of an Apache, but not quite so good as that of a Cheyenne.

RAPACITY, n. Providence without industry. The thrift of power.

TRUST, n. In American politics, a large corporation composed in greater part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in the care of guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors and public enemies.

USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.

This clemency of which they make a merit, arises oftentimes from vanity, sometimes from idleness, oftentimes from fear, and almost always from all three combined.

Ideas often flash across our minds more complete than we could make them after much labour.

Idleness and fear keeps us in the path of duty, but our virtue often gets the praise.

It would seem that even self-love may be the dupe of goodness and forget itself when we work for others. And yet it is but taking the shortest way to arrive at its aim, taking usury under the pretext of giving, in fact winning everybody in a subtle and delicate manner.

No one should be praised for his goodness if he has not strength enough to be wicked. All other goodness is but too often an idleness or powerlessness of will.

What makes us so often discontented with those who transact business for us is that they almost always abandon the interest of their friends for the interest of the business, because they wish to have the honour of succeeding in that which they have undertaken.

Moderation cannot claim the merit of opposing and overcoming Ambition: they are never found together. Moderation is the languor and sloth of the soul, Ambition its activity and heat.

Of all our faults that which we most readily admit is idleness: we believe that it makes all virtues ineffectual, and that without utterly destroying, it at least suspends their operation.

The mind attaches itself by idleness and habit to whatever is easy or pleasant. This habit always places bounds to our knowledge, and no one has ever yet taken the pains to enlarge and expand his mind to the full extent of its capacities.

The world of reason is to be regarded as a great and immortal being, who ceaselessly works out what is necessary, and so makes himself lord also over what is accidental.

Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are. If I know what your business is, I know what can be made of you.

In the works of mankind, as in those of nature, it is really the motive which is chiefly worth attention.

No one is the master of any truly productive energy; and all men must let it work on by itself.

With Protestants, as soon as good works cease and their merit is denied, sentimentality takes their place.

Every one suffers who does not work for himself. A man works for others to have them share in his joy.

A great work limits us for the moment, because we feel it above our powers; and only in so far as we afterwards incorporate it with our culture, and make it part of our mind and heart, does it become a dear and worthy object.

Great primeval powers, evolved in time or in eternity, work on unceasingly: whether to weal or to woe, is a matter of chance.

No one is more troublesome than an awkward civilian. As his business is not with anything brutal or coarse, he might be expected to show delicacy of feeling.

This it is that has been called, in a good and in a bad sense, ideology; and this is why the ideologist is so repugnant to the hard-working, practical man of every day.

It is not worth while to do anything for the world that we have with us, as the existing order may in a moment pass away. It is for the past and the future that we must work: for the past, to acknowledge its merits; for the future, to try to increase its value.

All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.

There are certain empirical enthusiasts who are quite right in showing their enthusiasm over new productions that are good; but they are as ecstatic as if there were no other good work in the world at all.

An artist who produces valuable work is not always able to give an account of his own or others’ performances.

To make many sketches issue at last in a complete work is something that not even the best artists always achieve.

In the sphere of true Art there is no preparatory school, but there is a way of preparation; and the best preparation is the interest of the most insignificant pupil in the work of the master. Colour-grinders have often made excellent painters.

Inattention to the present business, be it what it will; the doing one thing, and thinking at the same time of another, or the attempting to do two things at once, are the never-failing signs of a little, frivolous mind.

In your friendships, and in your enmities, let your confidence and your hostilities have certain bounds: make not the former dangerous, nor the latter irreconcilable. There are strange vicissitudes in business!

It is always right to detect a fraud, and to perceive a folly; but it is often very wrong to expose either. A man of business should always have his eyes open; but must often seem to have them shut.

It is hard to say which is the greatest fool; he who tells the whole truth, or he who tells no truth at all. Character is as necessary in business as in trade. No man can deceive often in either.

A skilful negotiator will most carefully distinguish between the little and the great objects of his business, and will be as frank and open in the former as he will be secret and pertinacious in the latter.