Quotes on Work
Opinionated quotations from the famous and not-so-famous.

The law of work does seem utterly unfair—but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash, too.

Mark Twain (Full quote at Bartleby.com)

Adapted version:

The law of work seems unfair, but nothing can change it; the more enjoyment you get out of your work, the more money you will make.

Mark Twain (adapted)

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.

John Cleese (Trivia: pronounced cleeze)

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

Albert Schweitzer

People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

Samuel Butler

Chose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

Confucius

Those who work the hardest get the least.

Hiroshi Takeuchi

Every calling is great when greatly pursued.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of Creation is completed inside us, the doors of our souls fly open and love steps forth to heal everything in sight.

Michael Bridge

The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.

Logan Pearsall Smith

Set me a task in which I can put something of my very self, and it is a task no longer; it is joy; it is art.

Bliss Carman

I never worked a day in my life. It's not work when you love what you're doing.

David Shakarian

To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.

Bette Davis

The best work never was and never will be done for money.

John Ruskin

I never did a day's work in my life. It was all fun.

Thomas A. Edison

My father always told me, ''Find a job you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life.''

Jim Fox

Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute. They deserve the shortest hours and the highest pay.

John Kenneth Galbraith

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

Brooks Atkinson

When work is a pleasure, life is joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery.

Maxim Gorky

Your life work is a statement of Who You Are. If it is not, then why are you doing it? Do you imagine that you have to? You don't have to do anything.

If "man who supports his family, at all costs, even his own happiness" is Who You Are, then love your work, because it is facilitating your creation of a living statement of Self.

If "woman who works at job she hates to meet responsibilities as she sees them" is Who You are, then love, love, love your job, for it totally supports your Self image, your Self concept.

Everyone can love everything the moment they understand what they are doing, and why. No one does anything he or she doesn't want to do.

God from Conversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch (adapted)

The worst fault of the working classes is telling their children they're not going to succeed, saying: ''There is life, but it's not for you.''

John Mortimer

Nothing is work unless you'd rather be doing something else.

George Halas

Making a success of the job at hand is the best step toward the kind you want.

Bernard M. Baruch

Get happiness out of your work or you may never know what happiness is.

Elbert Hubbard

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.

W. H. Auden

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.

Fyodor Dostoevski

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

Eleanor Roosevelt

One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation.

Victor Hugo

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