Quotes on Work
Be studious in your profession, and you will be learned. Be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich. Be sober and temperate, and you will be healthy. Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy. At least, you will, by such conduct, stand the best chance for such consequences.
Benjamin Franklin
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The sum of wisdom is, that the time is never lost that is devoted to work.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.
Henry David Thoreau
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He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.
Saint Francis
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The worst days of those who enjoy what they do are better than the best days of those who don't.
Jim Rohn
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There are no office hours for champions.
Paul Dietzel
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The biggest mistake we could ever make in our lives is to think we work for anybody but ourselves.
Brian Tracy
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Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.
Stephen King
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Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.
Henry Kaiser
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Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas Alva Edison
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Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Mark Twain
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The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
Robert Frost
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The worst day in a man's life is when he sits down and begins thinking about how he can get something for nothing.
Thomas Jefferson
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Many people have the ambition to succeed; they may even have special aptitude for their job. And yet they do not move ahead. Why? Perhaps they think that since they can master the job, there is no need to master themselves.
John Stevenson
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Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.
Pablo Picasso
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If people only knew how hard I work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
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In reality, serendipity accounts for one percent of the blessings we receive in life, work and love. The other 99 percent is due to our efforts.
Peter McWilliams
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The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
Pearl Buck
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About the only thing that comes to us without effort is old age.
Gloria Pitzer
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To find a career to which you are adapted by nature, and then to work hard at it, is about as near to a formula for success and happiness as the world provides. One of the fortunate aspects of this formula is that, granted the right career has been found, the hard work takes care of itself. Then hard work is not hard work at all.
Mark Sullivan
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I look on that man as happy who, when there is a question of success, looks into his work for a reply.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.
Margaret Fuller
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Every man should make up his mind that if he expects to succeed, he must give an honest return for the other man's dollar.
Edward Harriman
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Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
Peter Drucker
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The man with the average mentality, but with control, with a definite goal, and a clear conception of how it can be gained, and above all, with the power of application and labor, wins in the end.
William Howard Taft
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There aren't many millionaires who bowl over 100. Why not? Because they left the bowling league behind to build their fortunes.
Jeff Olson
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I cannot think of anything characteristically American that was not produced by toil. I cannot think of any American man or woman preeminent in the history of our nation who did not reach their place through toil. I cannot think of anything that represents the American people as a whole so adequately as honest work.
Calvin Coolidge
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The door of opportunity swings wide open in our country. Through it, in constant flow, go those who toil. America recognizes no aristocracy save those who work. The badge of service is the sole requirement for admission to the ranks of our nobility.
Calvin Coolidge
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Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
Thomas Alva Edison
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Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.
Thomas Carlyle
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Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
Theodore Roosevelt
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Make rest a necessity, not an objective. Only rest long enough to gather strength.
Jim Rohn
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I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more luck I have.
Thomas Jefferson
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Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.
Sam Ewing
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Victories that are easy are cheap. Those only are worth having which come as the result of hard work.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Many people know how to work hard; many others know how to play well; but the rarest talent in the world is the ability to introduce elements of playfulness into work, and to put some constructive labor into our leisure.
Sydney Harris
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You can't get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good.
Jerry West
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When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.
Henry Kaiser
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The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work.
Oprah Winfrey
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Every great human achievement is preceded by extended periods of dedicated, concentrated effort.
Brian Tracy
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Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.
Sir Winston Churchill
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There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure.
Colin Powell
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Without industry and frugality, nothing will do; with them, everything.
Benjamin Franklin
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The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as close to 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. DuBois
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There is plenty of room at the top, but not enough room to sit down.
Zig Ziglar
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Education covers a lot of ground, but it won't cultivate any of it.
Anonymous
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God gives every bird his worm, but he does not throw it into the nest.
Anonymous
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You must get good at one of two things: sowing in the spring or begging in the fall.
Jim Rohn
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Nothing great and durable has ever been produced with ease. Labor is the parent of all the lasting monuments of the world, whether in verse or in stone, in poetry or in pyramids.
Thomas Moore
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The body of every organization is structured from four kinds of bones. There are the wishbones, who spend all their time wishing someone would do the work. Then there are the jawbones, who do all the talking, but little else. The knucklebones knock everything anybody else tries to do. Fortunately, in every organization there are also the backbones, who get under the load and do most of the work.
Leo Aikman
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A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.
Louis Nizer
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Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.
Steve Jobs
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Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.
Newt Gingrich
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Every now and then, go away, take a little relaxation, because when you come back to your work, your judgment will be surer. To remain constantly at work will cause you to lose power of judgment. Go some distance away, because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance, and a lack of harmony or proportion is more readily seen.
Leonardo da Vinci
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You are not paid to work hard. In fact, you are not paid for effort at all. You are paid for results. It's not what you do; it's what you get done.
Larry Winget
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As your employer, if I see that you have to work hard to get your results, yet your coworkers achieve their results with little effort, don't be surprised if I'm not all that impressed with your hard work.
Larry Winget
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It is a solid business principle that people who enjoy what they do are better at what they do.
Larry Winget
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The right thing to do usually comes straight from your gut. When you work fast, you tend to work more from the gut, because your mind simply doesn't have as much time to justify an easier way to do things.
Larry Winget
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A disorganized workspace means disorganized work habits. A sloppy work environment equals sloppy results.
Larry Winget
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Regardless of what the motivational speakers tell you, attitude is not everything, attitude is only one thing; sooner or later you have to get off your butt and go to work.
Larry Winget
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I hold that if the Almighty had ever made a set of men that should do all the eating and none of the work, He would have made them with mouths only and no hands; and if He had ever made another class that He intended should do all the work and no eating, He would have made them with hands and no mouths.
Abraham Lincoln
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You have to work hard, and you have to enjoy what you're doing. If you don't enjoy it, no matter how hard you seem to work, you're not going to be working as hard as you can because you're not enjoying it.
John Wooden
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Find out what you really love to do, and then find a way to make a good living doing it.
Napoleon Hill
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Our philosophy about activity and our attitude about hard work will affect the quality of our lives. What we decide about the rightful ratio of labor to rest will establish a certain work ethic. That work ethic - our attitude about the amount of labor we are willing to commit to future fortune - will determine how substantial or how meager that fortune turns out to be.
Jim Rohn
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Every time we choose action over ease or labor over rest, we develop an increasing level of self-worth, self-respect and self-confidence. In the final analysis, it is how we feel about ourselves that provides the greatest reward from any activity. It is not what we get that makes us valuable, it is what we become in the process of doing that brings value into our lives. It is activity that converts human dreams into human reality, and that conversion from idea into actuality gives us a personal value that can come from no other source.
Jim Rohn
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Working at something you don't care about is the very best way to waste your life.
Brian Tracy
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Work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The average person puts only 25 percent of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50 percent of their capacity and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100 percent.
Andrew Carnegie
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Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your profession is what you were put on earth to do with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.
Vincent van Gogh
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Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.
Gustave Flaubert
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I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.
Thomas Alva Edison
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Learn to love your work and you'll never have to 'work' again.
Truett Cathy
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It is neither wealth, nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation which gives happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
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The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.
Robert Frost
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The test of a vocation is the love for the drudgery it involves.
Logan Smith
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Successful men are influenced by the desire for pleasing results. Failures are influenced by the desire for pleasing methods and are inclined to be satisfied with such results as can be obtained by doing things they like to do.
Albert Gray
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When you work on your most important tasks at a high and continuous level of activity, you can actually enter into an amazing mental state called "flow." Almost everyone has experienced this at some time. Really successful people are those who get themselves into this state far more often than average.
Brian Tracy
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Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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If you aren't working on your goals, you aren't working. You're just wasting time.
Steve Pavlina
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The fundamental principle of human action, the law that is to political economy what the law of gravitation is to physics is that men seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion.
Henry George
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Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun.
Colleen Barrett
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Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.
Thomas Alva Edison
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Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I think when I work 14 hours a day, seven days a week, I get lucky.
Armand Hammer
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Someone graduating from college thinks, and is told, that he needs to get a job, as if the important thing were becoming a member of an institution. A more direct way to put it would be: you need to start doing something people want. You don't need to join a company to do that. All a company is is a group of people working together to do something people want. It's doing something people want that matters, not joining the group.
Paul Graham
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Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.
George MacDonald
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If your work is work to you and you don't see beyond that work and see the pleasure in work and the pleasure in service, look out; you are in danger of standing in your present station for a long, long time.
Milan Bump
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"The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence." Is it? Or maybe you just need to get up off your lazy ass and mow the lawn, water it, pull some weeds, fertilize it, take care of your own grass and stop looking over the fence.
Craig Sanford
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There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What you think about, talk about, and get off your ass and do something about is what comes about!
Larry Winget
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A fellow and his business should be bosom friends in the office and sworn enemies out of it.
George Horace Lorimer
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If it takes seven days to make a living, you ought to be doing something else.
Truett Cathy
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People with good work habits have to-do lists that are reasonably prioritized, and they make themselves do what needs to be done. By contrast, people with poor work habits almost randomly react to the stuff that comes at them, or they can't bring themselves to do the things they need to do but don't like to do (or are unable to do).
Ray Dalio
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Opportunities are merely problems that promise to pay off after sufficient work.
John Walker
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A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.
François-René de Chateaubriand
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When you choose a career, consider whether it will lead to a lifetime of ever-improved performance, a plateau, or a steady decline in your skills.
Scott Adams
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It is observable that God has often called men to places of dignity and honor when they have been busy in the honest employment of their vocation.
Benjamin Franklin
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If something that seems like work to other people doesn't seem like work to you, that's something you're well suited for.
Paul Graham
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The market pays money in exchange for expertise, time, and effort. Anyone unhappy with the exchange rate, has the ability to add more value in terms of expertise, time, or effort. It's a simple equation. The fact that you don't like it or agree with it doesn't matter and won't change the equation. Is it always fair? No. But is it always true? Always.
Larry Winget
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A man's job is to make the world a better place to live in, so far as he is able—always remembering the results will be infinitesimal—and to attend to his own soul.
Leroy Percy
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