Quotes About Work

It is awfully hard work doing nothing.  However, I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind.

It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done.

Industry is the root of all ugliness.

The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour.

It is pure unadulterated country life. They get up early because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.

We live in the age of the over-worked, and under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

In 1964 something totally unexpected happened. I got a job I enjoyed.

All a publisher has to do is write cheques at intervals, while a lot of deserving and industrious chappies rally round and do the real work.

Work, the hobby of the philosopher and the poor man's friend.

I say, you don't know how I could raise fifty quid somehow, do you? Why don't you work? Work? said young Bingo, surprised. What, me? No, I shall have to think of some way.

I call it rotten work, springing unexpected offspring on a fellow at the eleventh hour like this.

Hear him now as he toils. He has a long garden-implement in his hand, and he is sending up the death-rate in slug circles with a devastating rapidity.             Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay              Ta-ra-ra BOOM— And the boom is a death-knell. As it rings softly out on the pleasant spring air, another stout slug has made the Great Change.

But the work had told upon the Editor. Work of that sort carries its penalties with it. Success means absorption, and absorption spells softening of the brain.

This is peculiarly an age of young men starting out in business for themselves; of rare, unfettered spirits chafing at the bonds of employment and refusing to spend their lives working forty-eight weeks in the year for a salary.

Had I been alone, a casual glance in passing would have contented me, but for Ukridge the spectacle of somebody else working always had an irresistible fascination, and, gripping my arm, he steered me up to assist him in giving the toiler moral support. About two minutes after he had started to breathe earnestly on the man's neck, the latter, seeming to become aware that what was tickling his back hair was not some wandering June zephyr, looked up with a certain petulance.

Work, the what's-its-name of the thingummy and the thing-um-a-bob of the what d'you-call-it

Look at the tall, thin one with the face like a motor-mascot. Has he ever done an honest day's work in his life? No! A prowler, a trifler, and a blood-sucker! And I bet he still owes his tailor for those trousers!

Every day, hands are creating the world -from In Praise of Ironing

Cumpliendo con mi oficio piedra con piedra, pluma a pluma, pasa el invierno y deja sitios abandonados, habitaciones muertas: yo trabajo y trabajo, debo substituir tantos olvidos, llenar de pan las tinieblas, fundar otra vez la esperanza.

It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.

Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.

Inspiration existis, but it has to find us working.

Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.