Quotes about work
page 24

“You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened.
Your co-workers ask
if everything's okay and you tell them
you're just tired.
And you're trying to smile. And they're trying to smile.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Smile

“A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station….”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Training

“Forward momentum only worked as a strategy if one had correctly identified which way was forward.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Komarr (1998), Chapter 16 (p. 268)

Way

“Technology frightens me to death. It's designed by engineers to impress other engineers, and they always come with instruction booklets that are written by engineers for other engineers — which is why almost no technology ever works.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

BBC interview http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2002/11/20/john_cleese_die_another_day_interview.shtml on Die Another Day (20 November 2002)]

Death

“Work freely and rollickingly as though you were talking to a friend who loves you. Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters.”

Brenda Ueland (1891–1985) Journalist and writer

Source: If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

Love, Time

“When to people tell the same lie…"
"They are working together," Will finished”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess

People, Lie

“Keep working. Keep trying. Keep believing. You still might not make it, but at least you gave it your best shot. If you don’t have calluses on your soul, this isn’t for you. Take up knitting instead.”

David Eddings (1931–2009) American novelist

Soul

“He looks like a man.'

'How descriptive,' Susan said in a droll tone. 'Remind me never to advise you to seek work as a novelist.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: How to Marry a Marquis

“I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don't work. People don't rise from nothing…. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

People, Success, Personality

“After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life.”

Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) Russian and American poet and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

Life

“The small are always dependent on the great; they are “small” precisely because they think they are independent. The great thinker is one who can hear what is greatest in the work of other “greats” and who can transform it in an original manner.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1961), p. 35

Thinking, Dependency

“Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Life, Hope, Feeling

“I could never kill myself. What if it doesn't work. Then I'll have failed at the only thing that could save me from my failures. Where do you go from there?”

Tucker Max book Assholes Finish First

Source: Assholes Finish First

Failure

“As more people of color raise our consciousness and refuse to be pitted against one another, the forces of neo-colonial white supremacist domination must work harder to divide and conquer.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Killing Rage: Ending Racism

People, Color

“Truth brought to public light recruits the best of us to work for change. On the other hand, even the best-intentioned "noble lie" ultimately discredits the finest of causes.”

Christina Hoff Sommers (1950) American author and philosopher

Source: Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women

Truth, Lie, Light, Change

“Rose, I'm an addict with no work ethic who is likely going to go insane. I'm not like you. I'm not a super-hero."
"Not yet," I said.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“The plain working truth is that it is not only good for people to be shocked occasionally, but absolutely necessary to the progress of society that they should be shocked pretty often.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Source: The Quintessence of Ibsenism

People, Truth

“There was nothing you couldn't do if you wanted it bad enough, and were willing to work hard enough to get it.”

Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels

“I wanted to tell her that being loved is a talent too, that it takes as much guts and as much work as loving; that some people, for whatever reason, never learn the knack”

Tana French book The Likeness

Source: The Likeness

Love, People, Learning

“Kind people have a way of working their way inside me and rooting there.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

People, Way

“You know how writers are… they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

“My instructors in science and technology have taught us about how the brain works. It's full of electrical impulses. It's like a computer. If you stimulate one part of the brain with an electrode, it…
- They know nothing.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

Science, Parting

“Perfectionism is a shield that we carry with a thought process that says this, 'If I look perfect, live perfect, work perfect, and do it all perfectly, I can avoid or minimize feeling shame, blame, and judgement.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Feeling, Perfection

“I'm afraid I'll lose myself in you, Gideon. I'm scared I'll lose the part of me I worked so hard to get back.""
""I'd never let that happen."" he promised fiercely. ”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Chapter 8, pg 140
Source: Reflected in You

Parting

“When he worked, he really worked. But when he played, he really PLAYED.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

“This is what one thirsts for, I realize, after the smallness of the day, of work, of details, of intimacy - even of communication, one thirsts for the magnitude and universality of a night full of stars, pouring into one like a fresh tide.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Source: Gift from the Sea

Star, Communication, Universe, Night

“But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Truth

“You must be prepared to work always without applause.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“For man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

Universe

“Coincidences happen, but I've come to believe they are actually quite rare. Something is at work, okay? Somewhere in the universe (or behind it), a great machine is ticking and turning its fabulous gears.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Universe

“The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.”

Marge Piercy (1936) American novelist and poet

Love

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Context: I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

Men, God, Hate, People

“It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

“Love is no game! It is no flowery softness! It is hard work- It demands everything from you- especially the truth. Only then does it yield results.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Love, Truth, Game

“If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build, end up building us.”

Jack Canfield (1944) American writer

The Power of Focus: How to Hit Your Business, Personal and Financial Targets with Confidence and Certainty

“… When it was finished, the scaled dragon looked around and as the thing spotted V, a growl rippled up to the bleachers, then ended in a snort. "You finished, big guy?" Va called down. "FYI, goalpost over there would work righteous as a toothpick.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Revealed

Source: Lover Revealed

Guy

“Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species”

Edward O. Wilson book The Ants

Source: The Ants

“Of course I wasn't abused. If I were; things would be so simple. I'd have a reason to for being in a shrinks office. I'd have a justification and something to work on. The world wasn't going to give me something that tidy.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

World

“the reward of our work is not what we get, but what we become”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

“I believe there's a calling for all of us. I know that every human being has value and purpose. The real work of our lives is to become aware. And awakened. To answer the call.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

“After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 1

Business, Holiday, Parting

“How could two people who were so in love not end up happily ever after? It had to work. Didn’t it?”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Love, People

“One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Way, Support

“We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Life, Solitude, Holiday

“Trying to forget really doesn't work. In fact, it's pretty much the same as remembering.”

Rebecca Stead book When You Reach Me

Source: When You Reach Me

Forgetting

“I still doubt it will work."
"You'd doubt the sun's rising if you weren't proven wrong each day," Raoden
said with a smile.”

Brandon Sanderson Elantris

Source: Elantris

Smile, Sun

“I know that an author must be brave enough to chop away clinging tentacles of good taste for the sake of a great work. But this is no great work, you see.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

“Beckendorf, whose legs were now working fine (nothing like being chased by a huge monster to get your body back in order) shook his head and gasped for breath. “You shouldn’t have turned it on! It’s unstable! After a few years, automatons go wild!”

Rick Riordan book The Demigod Files

Source: The Demigod Files

“Working inspires inspiration. Keep working. If you succeed, keep working. If you fail, keep working. If you are interested, keep working. If you are bored, keep working.”

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer

“Work is what you do for others, liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.”

Stephen Sondheim (1930) American composer and lyricist

Source: Sunday in the Park With George

Art

“We'll have to work on your bunny phobia later.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

“Expressing yourself when he takes for granted doesn't work.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

“Dance like it hurts. Love like you need money. Work when people are watching. -- Dogbert's Motto”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

Love, Money, People, Dance

“Do not work primarily for money; do your duty to patients first and let the money follow; our life is short, we don't live twice; the whirlwind will pick up the leaves and spin them, but then it will drop them and they will form a pile.”

John Hersey book Hiroshima

Source: Hiroshima

Life, Money

“Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

31 May 1830.
Table Talk (1821–1834)
Context: The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

Imagination

“Otis," I said.

"Shhh," he said. "I'm incognito. Call me… Otis."

"I'm not sure that's how incognito works, but okay."

Otis, aka Otis climbed into the chair I'd reserved for Sam.”

Rick Riordan book The Hammer of Thor

Source: The Hammer of Thor

“By faithfully working eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

For Team, Back To Work, Funny

“We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come. Bye now. You are fabulous creatures, each and every one. And I bless you: More Life. The Great Work Begins.”

Tony Kushner Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

Source: Angels in America

Life, Death, Secret, World

“That's the thing about being the product of happily marries parents, You grow up thinking the fairy tale is real, and more than that, you think you're entitled to live it. So far, though, it wasn't working out as planned.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

Thinking, Parent

“I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

God, Peace, Thinking, Light

“I can’t think. I can’t work or sleep. My body aches for you. I can make you want me again. Let me try.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Thinking, Sleep

“God’s plan and His ways of working out His plan are frequently beyond our ability to fathom and understand. We must learn to trust when we don’t understand.”

Jerry Bridges (1929–2016) American writer

Source: Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts

God, Way, Understanding, Learning

“Beseeching is a true, gracious, lasting will of the soul, oned and fastened into the will of our Lord by the sweet inward work of the Holy Ghost.”

Julian of Norwich book Revelations of Divine Love

The Fourteenth Revelation, Chapter 41
Source: Revelations of Divine Love

Soul

“My urge to write is an urge not to self-expressionism but to self-transcendence. My work is both bigger and smaller than I am.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

“When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Failure, Sense

“The dog ran into the kitchen, stuck his nose in Grandma's crotch, and snuffled.
Dang," Grandma said. "Guess my new perfume really works. I'm gonna have to try it out at the seniors meeting.”

Janet Evanovich book Hot Six

Source: Hot Six

Dogs, Grandma

“I have lived a long time, and one thing I have come to see is that one is well served by a degree of both humility and charity when judging the inner workings of another person's heart”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Time, Heart, Personality

“If we do not live where we work and when we work we are wasting our lives and our work too.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

“Where people aren’t having any fun, they seldom produce good work.”

David Ogilvy book Confessions of an Advertising Man

Source: Confessions of an Advertising Man

People

“There is plenty of work for love to do.”

Alexander McCall Smith book Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

Source: Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

Success, Love

“I love the detail about the workings of the human heart and mind that only fiction can provide - film can't get in close enough.”

Nick Hornby (1957) English novelist

Love, Heart

“To love righteousness is to make it grow, not to avenge it. Throughout his life on earth, Jesus resisted every impulse to work more rapidly for a lower good.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

Love, Life

“Work is a blessing when it helps us to think about what were doing; but it become a curse when its sole use is to stop us thinking about the meaning of our life.”

Paulo Coelho book Like the Flowing River

Source: Like the Flowing River

Life, Thinking, Help

“Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Love, Money

“I swear. Everyone here gets so worked up over the most minute details.
~Mayuri Kurotsuchi”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

“Work as if you were in the early days of a better nation.”

Alasdair Gray (1934–2019) Scottish writer and artist

Frontispiece Variants on this epigraph appear in other books by Alasdair Gray; one of them, "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation", is now engraved on a wall of the Scottish Parliament building. http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/vli/holyrood/faq/answers/art006.htm They are all loose paraphrases of a couplet from Dennis Lee's "Civil Elegies": And best of all is finding a place to be in the early days of a better civilization. http://election.theherald.co.uk/homepage/electionnews/display.var.1370748.0.canadians_should_look_out_for_scottish_election.php Gray later devised a more distinct variant of this, because he believed the "nation" version should be credited to Lee: Work as if you live in the early days of a better world. As quoted in "Early Days of a Better Nation" by Harry Mcgrath, in Scottish Review of Books (28 March 2013) https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2013/03/early-days-of-a-better-nation/ <br class="br">Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983)

“… if I die suddenly, my gravestone might appropriately offer this insight into my departure: "God got tired." I require lots of work.”

Beth Moore (1957) American evangelist

Source: Believing God

God, Departure