quotations about work
When he worked, he really worked. But when he played, he really PLAYED.
DR. SEUSS
The King's Stilts
We can imagine a world in which there is no work. A world bathed in incessant summer, whose seed-times and harvests are ever mingling, whose springing influences perpetually ascend, whose fruitage perpetually ripens through all the procession of its golden year. A world in which man would never feel the sting of want, And where the felicities of being would unfold without his effort. But we cannot conceive any such world, connected with human peculiarities and necessities, one half, one tithe so glorious as our old world of struggle and of labor. For wherever God has admitted man's agency the noblest results, the achievements of real worth and splendor are the fruits of patient and sinewy toil.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
The chances of a man's succeeding who does not love his work are very small. For all success costs labor.
FRANK CHAPMAN SHARP
Success: A Course in Moral Instruction
Blessed be the man whose work drives him. Something must drive men; and if it is wholesome industry, they have no time for a thousand torments and temptations.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Work restores humankind and all its attributes to the savage animal condition that was its original intended state.
ELFRIEDE JELINEK
Lust
What the working man sells is not directly his Labor, but his Laboring Power, the temporary disposal of which he makes over to the capitalist. This is so much the case that I do not know whether by the English Law, but certainly by some Continental Laws, the maximum time is fixed for which a man is allowed to sell his laboring power. If allowed to do so for any indefinite period whatever, slavery would be immediately restored. Such a sale, if it comprised his lifetime, for example, would make him at once the lifelong slave of his employer.
KARL MARX
Value, Price, and Profit
Slow work produces fine goods.
CHINESE PROVERB
Fast forward to today, and it's clear that the definition of work is continuing to morph, now even faster than before. Savvy employers realize there is little time to waste and that they must adapt to a variety of cultural and technological changes if they want to attract and retain talent.
PAIGE O'NEILL
"The definition of work is shifting", Network World, March 13, 2017
The poor man with industry is happier than the rich man in idleness.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Work alone isn't enough for me and mine;
we know how to break our backs, but the great dream
Of my fathers was to be good at doing nothing.
CESARE PAVESE
"Ancestors"
When the toiler bends and labors till his sweat turns into pearls,
'Tis a nobler decoration than the coronets of earls.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"Caelestis"
Thus have men become the creatures of their work, and thus has work become to them, in many respects, a curse. When work enslaves a group of faculties, and employs and develops that group to the neglect or the death of all others, then does it surpass and abuse its office. This it is that makes one-sided men, partial men, fractional men. This it is that puts the menial stamp upon men, that brands them with the name of their tyrant-master. This it is which spoils manhood, and debases its subjects to the level of their calling. This it is which too often transforms men into lawyers and financiers and ministers and merchants and farmers and hod-carriers -- beings who can do one thing, and nothing else.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
"Work and Play", Complete Works
Labor produces marvels for the rich but it produces deprivation for the worker. It produces palaces, but hovels for the worker. It produces beauty, but deformity for the worker. It replaces labor by machines, but it throws one section of the workers back to barbaric labor, and it turns the remainder into machines.
KARL MARX
"Alienated Labor", Economic and Philosophic
Inter-cubicle friendship is every bit as good for your health and your output as an ergonomically correct ball chair. Even in our furiously multi-tasking world, work should still come with a good dose of play. And, okay, maybe some free pretzels too.
KATIE UNDERWOOD
"Why developing friendships at work is so important", Canadian Business, January 27, 2016
Remember, work, well done, does good to the man who does it. It makes him a better man.
GEORGE S. CLASON
The Richest Man in Babylon
See that bunch of loafers on the street corner. They seldom work, and how they live no one can tell. Are they happy? Nay, nay; the good boxes on which they sit testify to their restlessness, for they have tried to while away their long hours by whittling them, when there was nothing else on hand to help pass the time. Certainly the idle, yawning, gaping, stretching loafer is not an ideal of a happy life.
NICIAS BALLARD COOKSEY
Helps to Happiness
The truth is, any of us in a position to choose and chase work out of love do so from a place of relative privilege. Overwhelmingly, work in the world is done for income, and income alone, and love doesn't even get a look-in.
SIMON CASTLES
"Do what you love mantra devalues hard work", The Age, February 9, 2016
Work is the Rent we pay for our time on Earth.
TUBBY CLAYTON
attributed, Saga Magazine, January 2009
It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
letter to Harrison Blake, November 16, 1857
Most work, let's face it, is not the least bit loveable, and a good deal of it is barely tolerable. And this isn't going to change, no matter how many Steve Jobs quotes we share on Facebook. Tough, low-wage work isn't going away. In fact, jobs in the service and care industries are booming. But a "do what you love" ethos hides such work, and the conditions of its workers, by keeping individuals focused on the self and the belief that there is bliss to be found in a job if only they strive harder than those around them.
SIMON CASTLES
"Do what you love mantra devalues hard work", The Age, February 9, 2016