quotations about work
The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do better work.
ELBERT HUBBARD
Selected Writings
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison--
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.
PHILIP LARKIN
"Toads"
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
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 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"
Looking for work in order to be paid: in civilized countries today almost all men are at one in doing that. For all of them work is a means and not an end in itself. Hence they are not very refined in their choice of work, if only it pays well. But there are, if only rarely, men who would rather perish than work without any pleasure in their work. They are choosy, hard to satisfy, and do not care for ample rewards, if the work itself is not to be the reward of rewards. Artists and contemplative men of all kinds belong to this rare breed, but so do even those men of leisure who spend their lives hunting, traveling, or in love affairs and adventures. All of these desire work and misery only if it is associated with pleasure, and the hardest, most difficult work if necessary. Otherwise their idleness is resolute, even if it spells impoverishment, dishonor, and danger to life and limb. They do not fear boredom as much as work without pleasure.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The Gay Science
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
There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of workers in the world, the people who do all the work, and the people who think they do all the work. The latter class is generally the busiest, the former never have time to be busy.
STELLA BENSON
I Pose
You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play.
WARREN BEATTY
The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left is Right
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
Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Past and Present
Many companies see happiness at work as an intangible "nice to have", rather than an important organisational priority. While you can't force employees to be happy -- or control every factor that contributes to happiness -- it's still possible to create the conditions that will help to promote happiness and positivity at work.
ROBERT HALF
"Happiness at work -- is it natural or necessary?", Business Zone, March 31, 2017
People say they love hard workers but they really love natural talent--a bias with troubling implications when it comes to hiring.
ERIC JAFFE
"Hard Work Is Overrated", fastcodesign, January 19, 2016
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
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
If you don't find a way to do something as work that is fulfilling and enjoyable, then your life is going to be really sad.
RUDOLPH GIULIANI
interview, May 3, 2003
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
"Do what you love" has become a modern-day mantra that devalues actual work while obscuring the vast majority of workers. After all, if some work is elevated to being worthy of love, where does that leave all those doing unglamorous and menial work? They are nowhere, blanked from the culture, their lowly status even seen as somehow deserved because they didn't love hard enough.... We need to acknowledge all work as work, whatever it is, and to stand in solidarity with all who labour, whether they love their job or not. Our concern should not be with the select few occupations that are loveable but with making all employment more likeable -- through fair wages, job security, safe conditions and reasonable hours.
SIMON CASTLES
"Do what you love mantra devalues hard work", The Age, February 9, 2016
A friendly dynamic among co-workers is so integral to our well-being, in fact, that economists say having a work pal increases your happiness as much as a $100,000 raise would.
KATIE UNDERWOOD
"Why developing friendships at work is so important", Canadian Business, January 27, 2016