Quotes About Work

My life is not possible to tell. I change every day, change my patterns, my concepts, my interpretations. I am a series of moods and sensations. I play a thousand roles. I weep when I find others play them for me. My real self is unknown. My work is merely an essence of this vast and deep adventure.

The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work, I will love my husband, but I will fulfill myself.

There is no bleaker moment in life of the city than that one which crosses the boundary lines between those who have not slept all night and those who are going to work. It was for Sabina as if two races of men and women lived on earth, the night people and the day people, never meeting face to face except at this moment.

You cannot do any more for me, I said. Since I have begun to depend on you I feel weaker than ever before. I have disappointed you by acting neurotically at the very moment when I should have shown the wisdom of your guidance. I don't want to ever come back to you. I feel that I must go and work and live and forget about all this.

Perhaps, said the Doctor pensively. It may also be that you Americans are work-cultists, and work is the structure that holds you up, not the joy of pure living.

I love my mystery, I love the abstract, fuyant world I live in as long as I don't begin my work, the forcing out of delicate, profound, vague, obscure, voluptuously wordless sensations into something you can seize on—perhaps never.

I think now that at the root of all my writing lies the fact that very early in life I lost the desire to participate with others on the basis laid down by society. All I have been doing, possibly, in my work, is to protest and explain wherein I'm different.

Nevoia de a creÈ™te È™i de a tr?i intens e atât de puternic? în mine, încât nu-i pot rezista. Voi lucra, îmi voi iubi soÈ›ul, dar m? voi împlini.

I turned away from life to work, to bring the work up to date. This is our time of peace, when one writes music.

Sunshine is only a restorative—not a stimulus to work. I would write more but I am ashamed to ask for more paper. Love. Henry

Great idea on the arrangement of my work. It will make a difference to me to disentangle certain passages, bring certain phrases in relief, help me to find my own bearings. The literalness is not to be attributed to the high and noble reasons I gave you (all that stuff on Rimbaud, metaphysical-artistic imperatives), just sheer laziness, between you and me.

I retract what I said about [Louis-Ferdinand Céline's] Voyage au Bout de la Nuit. You will have to read it in June. There are affinities there with your earlier work. It's another form of absolute, and therefore valuable.

Our hankering for a state of leisure or leisure state is the proof of the fact that most of us are working at a task to which we could never have been called by anyone but a salesman, certainly not by God or by our own natures. Traditional craftsmen whom I have known in the East cannot be dragged away from their work, and will work overtime to their own pecuniary loss. Why Exhibit Works of Art?

It is only when the maker of things is a maker of things by vocation, and not merely holding down a job, that the price of things is approximate to their real value.

Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.

De armoede van de mens is een slaaf; om te eten aanvaardt ze werk waarin ze geen vreugde heeft; alle werk dat niet vreugdevol is, is verwerpelijk, dacht ik, en ik betaalde de rust van velen. Ik zei: 'Werk maar niet; je vindt het vervelend.' Ik droomde voor ieder van hen van de vrijheid waarzonder niets nieuws kan ontbloeien, geen enkel kwaad, geen enkele kunst.

There is no use being alive if one must work. The event from which each of us is entitled to expect the revelation of his own life's meaning - that event which I may not yet have found, but on whose path I seek myself - is not earned by work.

Forse, pinsò Montalbano, abbisognava fari un gran monumento, come il Vittoriano a Roma dedicato al Milite Ignoto, in memoria dei lavoratori clandestini ignoti morti sul lavoro per un tozzo di pane.

Dice sul serio?" "Sul lavoro non scherzo mai", replica duro il delegato. E nemmeno fuori dal lavoro, se è per questo.

The intelligence of women is not out in the world, acting on its own behalf; it is kept small, inside the home, acting on behalf of another. This is true even when the woman works outside the home, because she is segregated into women's work, and her intelligence does not have the same importance as the lay of her ass.

people ask, well, dont sweet things happen? yes, indeed, many sweet things, but sweet doesnt keep you from dying, making love doesnt keep you from dying unless you get paid, writing doesnt keep you from dying unless you get paid, being wise doesnt keep you from dying unless you get paid, facts are facts, being poor makes you face facts which also does not keep you from dying

If you're looking for pity, forget it, Connie retorted. You've passed up more dates than I care to count. You're married to your work. A pause. And maybe to the past.

One doesn't need a lot to be able to live. The great thing is to be free in your work. Ofcourse it's important to print or exhibit, but if that's not possible you are still left with the most important thing of all -- being able to work without asking anybody's permission.

All creative work strives for simplicity, for perfectly simple expression; and this means reaching down into the furthest depths of the recreation of life. But that is the most painful part of creative work: finding the shortest path between what you want to say or express and its ultimate reproduction in the finished image. The struggle for simplicity is the painful search for a form adequate to the truth you have grasped.