Quotes About Work

Meritocracy is a good thing. Whenever possibly, people should be judged based on their work and results, not superficial qualities.

Hollywood is the most superficial thing you could possibly be a part of and if I weren't attractive I wouldn't be working at all.

The way I work, and the material we work with, I think if you analyze too much and have too many specific ideas, it just becomes a little bit too superficial, and then performances might become too self-conscious and project relatively narrow things.

There is time only to work slowly There is no time not to love

You, you only, exist. We pass away, till at last, our passing is so immense that you arise: beautiful moment, in all your suddenness, arising in love, or enchanted in the contraction of work. To you I belong, however time may wear me away. From you to you I go commanded. In between the garland is hanging in chance; but if you take it up and up and up: look: all becomes festival!

For somewhere reigns an old hostility / between living one's Life and doing one's Work.

And those, who come together in the night and are twined in quivering pleasure, are performing a serious work and are heaping up sweetness, depth and force for the song of some coming poet, who will arise to express inexpressible ecstasies

What goes on in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love; you must somehow keep working at it and not lose too much time and too much courage in clarifying your attitude toward people. Rilke, Rainer Maria (1993-09-17). Letters to a Young Poet (p. 22). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Among people, particularly those I love, I so easily get talking and give out everything possible in conversation, so that it is not available for my work. It is a stupid piece of clumsiness that I am so wanting in the gift of sociability, the talent for easy but at the same time recreative conversations, in which one does not exert and expend onesel

Those who come together in the night time and entwine in swaying delight perform a serious work and gather up sweetness, depth and strength for the song of some poet that is to be, who will rise to tell of unspeakable bliss.

Why should you want to exclude from your life all unsettling, all pain, all depression of spirit, when you don't know what work it is these states are performing within you?

I believe in old age; to work and to grow old: this is what life expects of us. And then one day to be old and still be quite far from understanding everything - no, but to begin, but to love, but to suspect, but to be connected to what is remote and inexpressible, all the way up into the stars. (Letters on Life)

Est-ce en exemple que tu te proposes? Peut-on se remplir comme les roses, en multipliant sa subtile matière qu'on avait faite pour ne rien faire? Car ce n'est pas travailler que d'être une rose, dirait-on. Dieu, en regardant par la fenêtre, fait la maison.

Like so much else, people have also misunderstood the place of love in life, they have made it into play and pleasure because they thought that play and pleasure were more blissful than work; but there is nothing happier than work, and love, just because it is the extreme happiness, can be nothing else but work.

Don't you know the quickest way to die is to retire?

All our work had been very little, no great change had been made. And it was all my fault. I'd been so fascinated by the motion that I'd forgotten to measure what it was bringing forth. I'd been asleep, dreaming.

Whenever a clamor is raised, and idle men get to work, it is highly necessary to examine facts carefully, and without unreasonably suspecting men of falshood, to examine, and enquire attentively, under what impressions they act.

Do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.

The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who knows why will always be his boss.

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.

When I go into the garden with a spade and dig a bed I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.

In the work of a writer of genius, we rediscover our own neglected thoughts.

The day is always (hers or) his, who works in it with serenity and great aims.

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the way of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired.