YourDictionary

work quotes

  • Work was like cats were supposed to be: if you disliked and feared it and tried to keep out if its way, it knew at once and sought you out and jumped on your lap and climbed all over you to show how much it loved you. Please God, he thought, don't let me die in harness.

    - Sir Kingsley Amis
      Take A Girl LikeYou, ch.5.

  •    And meanwhiletime goes about its immemorial workof making everyone look and feel like shit.

    - Martin Louis Amis
      London Fields, ch.2.

  • Arbeit macht frei. Work liberates.

    -Anonymous
    c.1940  Legend over the gates of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, Poland.

  • Faire l'amour avec une femme qui ne vous pla|"t pas, c'est aussi triste que de travailler. To make love with a woman whom you do not like is as sad as going to work.

    -Jean Anouilh
    L'Hermine, act1.

  •    If there is a category of human being for whom his work ought to speak for itself, it is the writer.

    - Isaac Asimov
      Comment in D L Fitzpatrick (ed) Contemporary Novelists.

  • You have now done your work and may go play, unless you will fall out amongst yourselves.

    - SirJacob Astley
      Remark to his Parliamentarian captors, Mar. Quoted in Samuel Rawson Gardiner History of the Great Civil War,1642^9 (1911), vol.3.

  • If you would work any man, you must either know his nature and fashions, and so lead him; or his ends, and so persuade him; or his weakness and disadvantages, and so awe him, or those that have interest in him, and so govern him.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      Essays, no.47,'Of Negotiating'.

  • Il faut travailler sinon par go u" t, au moins par de  sespoir, puisque, tout bien ve  rifie  , travailler est moins ennuyeux que s'amuser. We should work: if not by preference, at least out of despair. All things considered, work is less boring than amusement.

    - Charles Baudelaire
      Mon coeur mis a'   nu, pt.18.

  • And even now, at twenty-five, He has to to keep alive! Yes! All day long from10 till 4! For half the year or even more; With but an hour or two to spend At luncheon with a city friend.

    - (Joseph) Hilaire Pierre Belloc
    WORK1930  New Cautionary  Tales,'Peter Goole'.

  •    A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated.

    - Robert Charles Benchley
      Chips Off the Old Benchley,'How To Get Things Done'.

  • A test of a first-rate work, and a test of your sincerity in calling it a first-rate work, is that you finish it.

    - (Enoch) Arnold Bennett
    Things That Have Interested Me,'Finishing Books'.

  •    He wasnotfitfor marriage, only for work. A major writer, he conceded, required major torment.

    - Laurence Bergreen
      Of  James  Agee.  James  Agee.

  • And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh dayand sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Genesis 2:2^3.

  • Every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Nehemiah 4:17.

  • When Iconsider thyheavens,theworkofthy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.Thou madest himtohave dominionover the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms 8:3^6.

  • Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms104:23.

  • Whatsoever thy hand findethto do; do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Ecclesiastes 9:10.

  • Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Philippians 2:12.

  • Study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
      Thessalonians 4:11.

  • If any would not work, neither should he eat.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
      Thessalonians 3:10.

  •    'Tis a suresign that work goes on merrily, whenfolkssing at it.

    - Isaac Bickerstaffe
      The Maid of the Mill, act1, sc.1.

  • The Pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

    -William Blake
      The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,'Proverbs of Hell'.

  • When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

    -William Blake
      Songs of Experience,'The Tyger'.

  • Too much importance isgiven thewriterand not enough to his work.What difference does it make who he is and what he feels, since he's merelya machine for transmission of ideas. In reality he doesn't existhe's a cipher, a blank. A spy sent into life by the forces of death. His main objective is to get the information across the border, back into death.

    - Paul Frederick Bowles
      Letter to  James Leo Herlihy, 30  Apr.

  • Most business meetings are staged to supply people who'd rather talk than work with people who'd rather listen than work.

    - L(ouis) M(alcolm) Boyd
      'Grab Bag', in the San Francisco Chronicle,7  Apr.

  • What's come to perfection perishes. Things learned on earth, we shall practise in heaven. Work done least rapidly, Art most cherishes.

    - Robert Browning
      Men and Women,'One Word More. To E.B.B.', stanza17.

  • From scenes like these, old S's grandeur springs, That makes her lov'd at home, rever'd abroad: Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, 'An honest man's the noble work of G'. See Pope 660:25.

    - Robert Burns
    COTIAOD1785  'The Cotter's Saturday Night', stanza19. The last line is in fact a misquotation of Pope;'noble' was corrected to'noblest' in the1794 edition of Burns's poems.

  • As soon as anyart is pursued with a view to money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work.

    - Samuel Butler
    Collected in H F  Jones (ed)  The Notebooks of Samuel Butler (1912).

  • A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under the sun.

    -Thomas Carlyle
      Chartism, ch.4.

  • Work earnestly at anything, you will by degrees learn to work at all things.

    -Thomas Carlyle
      Past and Present, bk.3, ch.2.

  • 'That's a great deal tomake one word mean,'Alicesaid in a thoughtful tone. 'When I make a word do a lot of work like that,'said Humpty Dumpty,'I always pay it extra.'

    -Dodgson
    Through the Looking-Glass, ch.6,'Humpty Dumpty'.

  • And I dream of the days when work was scrappy, And rare in our pockets the mark of the mint, When we were angryand poor and happy, And proud of seeing our names in print.

    - G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton
      'Song of Defeat'.

  • The community lacksgoods and a million and a quarter people lack work. It is certainly one of the highest functions of national financeand credittobridgethegap between the two.

    - Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill
      Letter to Otto Niemeyer, 22 Feb. Collectedin D E Moggridge Maynard Keynes (1992).

  • Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in that work does what he wants to do.

    - R(obin) G(eorge) Collingwood
      Speculum Mentis.

  • Though taste, though genius bless To some divine excess, Faints the cold work till thou inspire the whole; What each, what all supply May court, may charm our eye, Thou, only thou can'st raise the meeting soul!

    -William Collins
      Odes on Several Descriptive and  Allegoric Subjects,'Ode to Simplicity', no.8.

  • Any work that aspires, however humbly, tothe condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

    -Korzeniowski
      The Nigger of the Narcissus, preface.

  • Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain; God is his own interpreter, And he will make it plain.

    -William Cowper
      Olney Hymns,'Light Shining out of Darkness'.

  • It is inside work with no heavy lifting.

    - Bob (RobertJoseph) Dole
      On the vice presidency.  ABC  T V broadcast, 24  Jul.

  • First I protest, beau schiris, by your leif Beis weill adivisit my werk or ye reprief; Consider it warely, read ofter than anis, Weill, at ane blenk, slee poetry nocht ta'en is.

    - Gavin Douglas
    c.1513  Eneados, bk.1, prologue.

  • If you ever run into an industry that says it needs better people, sell its shares. There are no better people.You have to use ordinary, every-day people and make them capable of doing the work.

    - Peter Ferdinand Drucker
      In the Los  Angeles Times,17 Sep.

  • These works brought all these people here. Something should be done to get them at work again.

    -Edward VIII
      Comment while viewing the derelict Dowlais Iron and Steel Works,18 Nov. It is often rendered'Something must be done'.

  • One can always tell when one isgetting old and serious by the way that holidays seem to interfere with one's work.

    - Bob (Robert Chambers) Edwards
      In Eye Opener, 20 Dec.

  • If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z.Work is x ; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.

    - Albert Einstein
      In the Observer,15  Jan.

  • There's many a one who would be idle if hunger didn't pinch him; but the stomach sets us to work.

    - George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans Eliot
      Felix Holt, ch.30.

  • When a poet's mind isperfectlyequipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience†in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
    Selected Essays (1932),'The Metaphysical Poets'.

  •    In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

    - RalphWaldo Emerson
    Essays: First Series,'Self-Reliance'.

  • The artist is a spectator, indifferent or impassioned, at the birth of his work, and observes the phases of its development.

    - Max Ernst
    Quoted in Saranne  Alexandrian Surrealist  Art (1970).

  • People out of work are not given to talking much about the one thing on their minds.You only sense by indirection, degrees of anger, shades of humiliation and echoes of fear.

    -Walker Evans
    Quoted in Fortune,11 Feb1980.

  • Sex suppressed will go berserk, But it keeps us all alive. It's a wonderful change from wives and work And it ends at half past five.

    - Gavin Buchanan Ewart
      'Office Friendships'.

  • Each individual work serves as an expression of our most personal state of mind at that particular moment and of the inescapable, imperative need for release by means of an appropriate act of creation: in the rhythm, form, colour and mood of a picture.

    - Lyonel Feininger
      Letter to Paul Westheim, quoted in Wolf-Dieter Dube The Expressionists (1972).

  • We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worryabout the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to do the work.

    - Richard P(hillips) Feynman
      Nobel lecture.

  •    I have always had the greatest contempt for novels written with a purpose. Fiction should render, not draw morals. But†I sinned against my gods to the extent of saying that I was goingto the level of the light vouchsafed meto write a work that should have for its purpose the obviating of all future wars.

    - Ford Madox originally Ford Hermann Hueffer Ford
      On Parade's End.

  •    The body of Benjamin Franklin, printer, (Like the cover of an old book, Its contents worn out, And stripped of its lettering and gilding) Lies here, food for worms! Yet the work itself shall not be lost, For it will, as he believed, appear once more In a new And more beautiful edition, Corrected and amended By its Author!

    - Benjamin Franklin
      Proposed epitaph for himself.

  • Our work is to present things that are as theyare.

    -Frederick II
    De Ate Venandi cum  Avibus.

  •    Much of the world's work, it has been said, is done by men who do not feel quite well. Marx is a case in point.

    -John Kenneth Galbraith
      The Age of Uncertainty, ch.3.

  • Holding hands at midnight 'Neath a starry sky, Nice work if you can get it, And you can get it if you try.

    - Ira originally Israel Gershowitz Gershwin
      'Nice Work IfYou Can Get It', song from the musical Damsel in Distress (music by George Gershwin).

  • Whatever the economic value of the domestic industry of women is, they do not get it. The women who do the most work get the least money, and the women who have the most money do the least work.

    -Gilman and Charlotte Perkins Stetson
      Women and Economics:  A Study of the Economic Relation between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution, ch.1.

  • It was not the matter of the work, but the mind that went into, that countedand the manwho was not content to do small things well would leave great things undone.

    - Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
      The Voice of the People, bk.2, ch.4.

  • Art is the only work open to people who can't get along with others and still want to be special.

    - AlasdairJames Gray
    Lanark, bk.3, ch.1.

  •    The great thing isto last and get your workdone, and see and hear and understand and write when there is something that you know and not before and not too damn much after.

    - Ernest Millar Hemingway
      Death in the Afternoon, ch.16.

  • If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf.

    - Bob originally LeslieTownes Hope Hope
    Quoted in the Reader's Digest, Oct1958.

  •    The fine pleasure is not to do a thing but to feel that you could† If I could but get on, if I could but produce a work I should not mind its being buried, silenced, and going no further; but it kills me to be time's eunuch and never to beget.

    -Gerard Manley Hopkins
      Letter to Robert Bridges,1 Sep. Collected in C C  Abbott (ed)  The Correspondence of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Robert Bridges (1935).

  • Birds buildbut not I build; no, but strain, Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine,O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

    -Gerard Manley Hopkins
      'Thou art indeed just, Lord'.

  •    One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

    - Elbert Green Hubbard
    Thousand and One Epigrams.

  • An honest God is the noblest work of man. See Pope 660:25.

    - Robert Ingersoll
      The Gods, pt.1.

  • We work in the darkwe do what we canwe give what we have.Our doubt is in our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is madness.

    - Henry James
      Dencombe speaking of the artist.'The MiddleYears', in Scribner's Magazine, May.

  • It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.

    -Jerome K(lapka) Jerome
      Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow,'On Being Idle'.

  • I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.

    -Jerome K(lapka) Jerome
      Three Men in a Boat, ch.15.

  • They saya building isgood architecture if it works.Of course, this is poppycock. All buildings work† You expect anyarchitect, a graduate of Harvard or not, to be able to put the kitchen in the right place.

    - Philip Cortelyou Johnson
      'The Seven Crutches of  Architecture', informal talk to students, School of  Architectural Design, Harvard University, 7 Dec. Published in Perspecta 3 (1955).

  • There are two things which I am confident I can do very well: one is an introduction to a literary work, stating what it is to contain, and how it should be executed in the most perfect manner; the other is a conclusion, shewing from various causes why the execution has not been equal to what the author promised to himself and to the public.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.1.

  • I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave; and success 442 and miscarriage are empty sounds.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      A Dictionary of the English Language, preface.

  • Every work of art is the child of its time, often it is the mother of our emotions.

    -Wassily Kandinsky
      Concerning the Spiritual in  Art.

  • My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry.

    - Nikos Kazantzakis
      Report to Greco.

  • Yes, they say, go and write whatever story you want, but don't use whatever language is necessary† By implication those in authority ask the writer to censor and suppressheror his ownwork.Theydemand it.If you don't comply then your work isn't produced.

    -James Kelman
      Some Recent  Attacks,'The Importance of Glasgow in My Work'.

  • There's no place where success comes before work, except in the dictionary.

    - Donald M Kimball
      In US A  Today, 21  Apr.

  • Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees, So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away! 474

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      'The Glory of the Garden'.

  • I have never done any workcold† I have always worked with my blood, so to speak.

    - Ka«  the Kollwitz
      Letter to her son Hans,16  Apr.

  • Who first invented workand tied the free And holy-day rejoicing spirit down To the ever-haunting importunity Of business?

    - Charles Lamb
      Letter to Bernard Barton,11 Sep. Collected in H H Harpter (ed) Letters of Charles Lamb, vol.4 (1905).

  • After the funeral, my father struggled through half a page, and it might as well have been Hottentott. 'And what dun they gi'e thee for that, lad?' 'Fifty pounds, father.' 'Fifty pounds!' He was dumbfounded, and looked at mewith shrewd eyes,asif I were a swindler.'Fifty pounds! An'tha's niver done a day's hard work in thy life.'

    - D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence
      Preface to Edward D McDonald (ed)  A Bibliography of D. H. Lawrence.

  • Architecture provides the framework for a civilization (housing, work, leisure, circulation); so architecture is also town planning. It is no longer possible to separate architecture and town planningtheyare one and the same thing.

    -Le Corbusier pseudonym of  Charles EŁ  douard Jeanneret
      'If I had to teach you architecture'. Collected in Dennis Sharp (ed)  The Rationalists: Theory and Design in the Modern Movement (1978).

  •    To devise is the work of the master, to execute the act of the servant.

    -Leonardo daVinci
    Treatise on Painting (published1651, translatedby A P McMahon, 1956).

  • Shun those studies in which the work that results dies with the worker.

    -Leonardo daVinci
    The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (translated by Edward MacCurdy,1938), vol.1, pt.1.

  • I remember summing up what I took to be ourdestiny, in conversation with my best friend at Chartres, by the formula,'Term, holidays, term, holidays, till we leave school, and then work, work, work till we die.'

    - C(live) S(taples) Lewis
      Surprised by  Joy, ch.4.

  •    In Conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work†all planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctoryaffair. The idea becomes the machine that makes the art.

    - Sol LeWitt
      'Paragraphs on Conceptual  Art', in  Artforum, summer.

  • With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

    - Abraham Lincoln
      Second inaugural address, 4 Mar, a month before the end of the Civil War.

  • Every manhas a property in his person.Thisno body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.

    -John Locke
    Second Treatise on Civil Government (published anonymously1690).

  • In an English ship, they say, it is poor grub, poor pay, and easy work; in an American ship, good grub, good pay, and hard work. And this is applicable to the working populations of both countries.

    -Vince(ntThomas) Lombardi
      The People of the Abyss, ch.20.

  • The function of kings consists primarily of using good sense, which always comes naturally and easily.Our work is sometimes less difficult than our amusements.

    -Louis XIV knownas the Great or leRoiSoleil [theSunKing]
    Me  moires for the Instruction of the Dauphin.

  • The Film Industry is the American Monarchy: it is strict entailed succession and Horatio Alger in one. Except for the money manipulators and speculators on the top, it is a society built onwork, achievement, and fealty tothose in power.

    - David Alan Mamet
      Writing in Restaurants,'Observations of a Backstage Wife'.

  • Political economy thus does not recognize the unoccupied worker, the working man so far as he is outside this work relationship. Swindlers, thieves, beggars, the unemployed, the starving, poverty- stricken and criminal working man, are figures which do not exist for political economy, but only for other eyes; fordoctors, judges,grave-diggers,beadles,etc.Theyare ghostly figures outsidethe domain of political economy.

    - Karl Heinrich Marx
      Collected in T B Bottomore (trans and ed) Early Writings (1964), p.137^9.

  • People who leave their own time out of their work cannot be surprised if their time fails to find them interesting.

    -John Edward Masefield
      'With the Living Voice'.

  • Whatever his private behavior, the man and his work existed in different realms. Mencken's defects were commonplace; his virtues were not. So wonderfully uninhibited was his style that even a single sentence in a routine article proclaimed its begetter.

    - Karl Ernest Meyer
      Of H L Mencken. In the NewYork Times Book Review, 8 May.

  • There in close covert by some brook, Where no profaner eye may look, Hide me from day's garish eye, While the bee with honied thigh, That at her flowery work doth sing, And the waters murmuring And such consort as they keep, Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep.

    -John Milton
    c.1631 Il Penseroso, l.139^46.

  • Man hath his daily work of body or mind Appointed, which declares his dignity, And the regard of Heav'n on all his ways.

    -John Milton
       Adam to Eve. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.4, l.618^20.

  • The great creator from his work returned Magnificent, his six days' work, a world.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.7, l.567^8.

  • O loss of sight, of thee I most complain! Blind among enemies,O worse than chains, Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age! Light the prime work of God to me is extinct, And all her various objects of delight Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eas'd, Inferior to the vilest now become Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me, They creep, yet see, I dark in light expos'd To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong, 586 Within doors, or without, still as a fool, In power of others, never in my own; Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.

    -John Milton
    Samson  Agonistes, l.67^79.

  • Hardlyany of the women, who are a full half of the population, work; or if they do, then as a rule their husbands lie snoring in bed.

    - SirThomas More
      Utopia (English translation1556), bk.2.

  • Heigh ho, heigh ho It's off to work we go.

    - Larry Morey
      First lines of the song 'Heigh-Ho' from the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Music by Frank Churchill.

  • Whistle WhileYou Work.

    - Larry Morey
       Title of song from the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Music by Frank Churchill.

  • All my life I've beenworking on the workevery canvas a sentence or paragraph of it. Each picture is onlyan approximation of what I want.

    - Robert Motherwell
    Recalled on his death,16  Jul1991.

  • May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.

    -John Henry Newman
      'Wisdom and Innocence', collected in Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day.

  • Good work, Mary.We all knew you had it in you.

    - Dorothy ne  e Rothschild Parker
    On the arrival of a baby. Quoted in AlexanderWoollcott While Rome Burns (1934),'Our Mrs Parker'.

  • Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

    - C(yril) Northcote Parkinson
      Parkinson's Law: the Pursuit of Progress, ch.1.

  • All I was doing was trying to get home from work.

    - Rosa Lee ne  e McCauley Parks
    On refusing to give up her seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, which led to the1955 Montgomery bus boycott and in turn to a Supreme Court ruling that bus segregation was unconstitutional, andfuelled the civilrights movement. Quoted in Time,15 Dec1975.

  •   La dernie'  re chose qu'on trouve en faisant un ouvrage, est de savoir celle qu'il faut mettre la premie'  re. The last thing one discovers in composing a work iswhat to put first.

    - Blaise Pascal
    c.1654^1662  Pense  es, no.19 (translated byA Krailsheimer).

  • That's the classical mind at work, runs fine inside but looks dingy on the surface.

    - Robert M(aynard) Pirsig
      Zen and theArt of Motorcycle Maintenance, pt.3, ch.26.

  • Justice is doing one's work and not meddling with what isn't one's own.

    -Plato
    Republic, bk.4,433a (translated by G M A Grube, revised by C D C Reeve).

  • O te  dio e   a grande enfermidade da escola, o te  dio corruptor que tanto se pode gerar da monotonia do trabalho como da ociosidade. Tedium is the worst disease in schools, the corrupting tedium that comes equally from monotony, work or leisure.

    - Raul d'Avila Pompe  ia
      O Atene  u ('The Atheneum'), ch.7.

  • Destroy his fib, or sophistry; in vain, The creature's at his dirty work again.

    - Alexander Pope
      'An Epistle to DrArbuthnot', l.91^2.

  •    The only reward one should offer an artist is to buy his work.

    - Pierre Auguste Renoir
    From Renoir's notebook, quoted in L Nochlin Impressionism and Post-Impressionism1874^1904 (1966).

  • Und dasTotsein ist mu«  hsam und voller Nachholn, dass man allm a« hlich ein wenig Ewigkeit spu«  rt. And being dead is hard work and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel a trace of eternity.

    - Rainer Maria Rilke
      Duinieser Elegien, no.1 (translated by Stephen Mitchell in The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke,1989).

  • Car loin de le [le lecteur] ne  gliger, l'auteur aujourd'hui proclame l'absolu besoin qu'il a de son concours actif, conscient, cre  ateur. Ce qu'il lui demande, ce n'est plus de recevoir tout fait un monde acheve  , plein, clos sur lui- me"  me, c'est au contraire de participer a'   une cre  ation, d'inventer a'   son tour l'½uvreet le mondeet d'apprendre ainsi a'   inventer sa propre vie. Far from neglecting him [the reader], the author today proclaims the absolute necessity of the reader's active, conscious and creative assistance.What he demands of the reader is no longer to receive a ready-made world, complete, full, closed in upon itself.On the contrary, the reader isasked toparticipateinthe creation, toinvent for himself aworkand the worldand tounderstand thus how to invent his own life.

    - Alain Robbe-Grillet
      Pour un nouveau roman.

  • Everyone knowsthat thelabel Modern Art no longer has any relation to the words that compose it. To be Modern Art a work need not be either modern nor art; it need not even be a work. A three-thousand-year-old mask from the South Pacific qualifies as Modern and a piece of wood found on a beach becomes Art.

    - Harold Rosenberg
      'TheAmerican Action Painters', in Art News, no.51, Dec.

  •    A body of work such as Pasteur's is inconceivable in our time: no manwould be given a chance to create a whole science. Nowadays a path is scarcely opened up when the crowd begins to pour in.

    -Jean Rostand
      'Pense  es d'un Biologiste', collected inTheSubstance of Man (translated by Irma Brandeis,1962).

  • When you see what some girls marry, you realize how they must hate to work for a living.

    - Helen Rowland
      Reflections of a Bachelor Girl.

  •    Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

    -John Ruskin
      Seven Lamps of Architecture,'The Lamp of Memory', sect.7.

  • Which of us†is to do the hard and dirty work for the restand for what pay? Who is to do the pleasant and clean work, and for what pay?

    -John Ruskin
      Sesame and Lilies,'Of Kings' Treasures'.

  • Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of Labourers' Unions.

    -John Ruskin
      Open letter to EnglishTrades Unions, 29 Sep.

  • Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.

    - Carl Sandburg
      In the NewYorkTimes,13 Feb.

  • Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work I am the grass; I cover all.

    - Carl Sandburg
      Cornhuskers,'Grass'.

  • Le mot 'psychologie'est un de ceux qu'aucun auteur d'aujourd'hui ne peut entendre prononcer a'   son sujet sans baisser les yeux et rougir. The word 'psychology' is one that no author today can hear said about her work without lowering her eyes and blushing.

    - Nathalie Sarraute
    ' 1956  L'Ere du soup c° on.

  • Does it matter?losing your sight?† There's such splendid work for the blind; And people will always be kind As you sit on the terrace remembering And turning your face to the light.

    - Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
      'Does It Matter'.

  • Wesit†and lookout attheboysintheir happy play†we kneel still with one little cheek wistfully pressed against the pane†and we go and stand before the glass.We see the complexion we were not to spoil, and the white frock† Then the curse begins to act upon us. It finishes its work when we are grown women, who no more look out wistfullyat a more healthy life; we are contented.We fit our sphere as a Chinese woman's foot fits her shoe, exactly, as though God made bothand yet he knows nothing of either.

    -Iron
      Lyndall.The Story of an African Farm, ch.17,'Lyndall'.

  • It's weel wi' you gentles, that can sit in the house wi' handkerchers at your een when ye lose a friend; but the like o'us maun to our wark again, if our hearts were beating as hard as my hammer. 724

    - Sir Walter Scott
      Saunders Mucklebackit to Oldbuck.TheAntiquary, ch.34.

  • It is easyterribly easyto shake a man's faith in himself.Totakeadvantage ofthattobreak a man'sspirit is devil's work.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      Morell to Marchbanks. Candida, act1.

  • In my dreams is a country where the State is the Church and the Church the people: three in one and one in three. It is a commonwealth in which work is play and play is life: three in one and one in three. It is a temple in which the priest is the worshipper and the worshipper the worshipped: three in one and one in three. It is a godhead in which all life is human and all humanity divine: three in one and one in three. It is, in short, the dream of a madman.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      Of Heaven, Keegan speaking. John Bull's Other Island, act 4.

  • And truly, even Plato, whosoever well considereth shall find that in the body of his work, though the inside and strength were philosophy, the skin as it were and beauty depended most on poetry.

    - Sir Philip Sidney
      The Defence of Poetry.

  • The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind ahead, even more than teamwork.

    - Igor Ivan Sikorsky
    Quoted in his NewYorkTimes obituary, 27 Oct1972.

  • Look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man and work like a dog.

    - Caroline K(lein)   d.1993 Simon
    Comment the year after her candidacy for Postmaster General was barred by federal officials who claimed the job was unsuited to a woman. Recalled on her death, in the NewYork Times, 30 Jul1993.

  • My greatest teacher was not a vocal coach, not the work of other singers, but the wayTommy Dorsey breathed and phrased on the trombone.

    - Frank (Francis Albert) Sinatra
    Foreword to GeorgeT SimonThe Big Bands (1967).

  • Remember there is no success without hard work.

    -Sophocles
    Electra, 945 (translated by H Lloyd-Jones,1994).

  • His iron coat all overgrown with rust, Was underneath envelope'  d with gold, Whose glistering gloss darkened with filthy dust, Well yet appeare'  d, to have been of old A work of rich entail, and curious mold, Woven with antics and wild imagery.

    - Edmund Spenser
      Of Mammon.The Faerie Queen, bk.2, canto 7, stanza 4.

  • Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

    -John Ernest Steinbeck
      The Grapes ofWrath, ch.14.

  •    To preserve a trading state from decline, the greatest care must be taken, to support a perfect balance between the hands employed in work and the demand for their labour.

    - SirJames Steuart (later Denham)
      Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy.

  •    Think of the heroism of Johnson, think of that superb indifference to mortal limitation that set him upon his dictionary, and carried him through triumphantly until the end! Who, if he were wisely considerate of things at large, would ever embark upon any work much more considerable than a halfpenny post-card? Who would project a serial novel, afterThackeray and Dickens had each fallen in mid-course? Who would find heart enough to begin to live, if he dallied with the consideration of death?

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
    Virginibus Puerisque,'AesTriplex'.

  • The saddest object in civilization, and to my mind the greatest confession of its failure, is the man who can work, who wants work, and who is not allowed to work.

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
    Quoted by Lloyd Osbourne in'The Death of Stevenson', preface toTusitala edition of Weir of Hermiston (published1924).

  • Have I a wife? Bedam I have! But we was badly mated. Ihit hera greatclout onenight And now we'reseparated. And mornin's going to me work I meets her on the quay: 'Good mornin'to you, ma'am!'says I,'To hell with ye!' says she.

    - L(eonard) A(lfred) G(eorge) Strong
    Dublin Days,'The Brewer's Man'.

  • These Mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to beg Sustenance for their helpless Infants; who, as they grow up either turnThieves for want of Work; or leave their dear native country, to fight for the Pretender in Spain; or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

    -Jonathan Swift
      A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country.

  • He didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it.

    - Norman (Beresford) Tebbit, Baron Tebbit
      Speaking of his father after criticism of high unemployment under the Conservative Government, party conference,15 Oct.

  • There lies the port; the vessel, puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheadsyou and I are old: Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices.Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows: for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Though much is taken, much abides: and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and hearth: that which we are, we are: One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

    -Tennyson
      Poems,'Ulysses' (published1842), l.44^70.

  • 'Tis not your work, but Love's. Love, unperceived, A more ideal Artist he than all, Came, drew your pencil from you, made those eyes Darker than the darkest pansies, and that hair More black than ashbuds in the front of March.

    -Tennyson
      Poems,'The Gardener's Daughter', l.24^8.

  • Let us make this country safe to work in. Let us make this a country safe to walk in. Let us make it a country safe to grow up in. Let us make it a country safe to grow old in.

    - Margaret HildaThatcher, Baroness Thatcher
      General election party broadcast, 30 Apr.

  • I have seen the future and it does not work. See Steffens 814:6.

    - (Theodore) Philip Toynbee
      Of the USA. In the Observer, 27 Jan.

  • Look at me! Look at myarm!† I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head meand ar'n't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear de lash as welland ar'n't I a woman? I have borne thirteenchilernandseen'emmos'allsoldoff intoslavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heardand ar'n't I a woman?

    - Sojourner ne  e Isabella Truth
      Women's Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio. Quoted in Narrative of SojournerTruth (1875), pt.2,'Book of Life'.

  • A useful word previously unknown to me: 'ergophobia', meaning 'fear or hatred of work'. At last I can define myself in one word.

    - Kenneth Tynan
    The Diaries of KennethTynan (2001), entry for 26 Oct1975.

  • The corset is†a mutilation, undergone for the purpose of lowering the subject's vitalityand rendering her permanentlyand obviously unfit for work.

    -Thorstein Veblen
      Theory of the Leisure Class.

  • Poets may boast (as safely-vain) Their work shall with the world remain: Both bound together, live, or die, The verses and the prophecy. But who can hope his lines shou'd long Last, in a daily changing tongue? While they are new, envy prevails, And as that dies, our language fails.

    - Edmund Waller
      'Of EnglishVerse'.

  • However many people may complain about the'red tape', it would be sheer illusion to think for a moment that continuous administrative work can be carried out in any field except by means of officials working in offices† The choice is only that between bureaucracy and dilettantism in the field of administration.

    - Max Weber
      Collected in Guenther Roth and ClausWittich (eds) Economy and Society (1978), ch.3.

  • Go to work on an egg.

    - Fay originally Franklin Birkinshaw Weldon
      Advertising slogan for the British Egg Marketing Board.

  • It's full time work being on social security. They really make you earn your living.

    - Fay originally Franklin Birkinshaw Weldon
      The Heart of the Country,'Driven Mad'.

  •    Art is not made only one way, art is a point of view† Rembrandt in our days would be Rembrandt again, because the work of the master is his self. But in order to be Rembrandt in ourdayshe would have used new ways that would give a new culture.

    - Marianne Werefkin
      Lettres a'   un Inconnu (1901^05).Translated by Mara R Witzling (ed) inVoicing OurVisions:Writings byWomen Artists (1992).

  • Work is the curse of the drinking classes. 910

    - Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
    Attributed.

  • I have at last come to a momentous decision. I am going to give up my press-clippings agency. I find that even a Wolf favourablenoticemakesmefeelsick nowadays,whilean unfavourable one, even from a small provincial newspaper, puts me off my work for days.

    -Plum
      Letter to Denis Mackail,15 Oct.

  • If you work very hard, and give life everything you've got, you may not quite make it.

    - Elwy Yost
      Comment,17 Jan.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Learn more about work

link/cite print suggestion box