Quotes about working
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“Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 14
Context: Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.

Back To Work, Music, Literature

“Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Life, Marriage, Personality, Happiness

“When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Reading

“I tried to hold myself apart, showing only what I wanted, doling out bits and pieces of who I was. But that only works out for so long. Eventually, even the smallest fragments can't help but, make a whole.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Help

“Not everything you wanted, deep inside, worked out.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: The MacKade Brothers: Devin and Shane

“Boys! Are they always this impossible? Do they always say cryptic, indecipherable things? (Note
to self: work with Liz to adapt her boy-to-English translator into a more mobile form—like maybe a
watch or necklace.)”

Ally Carter Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Source: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Boy

“… well, if women's work was never done, why trouble about how much of it wasn't being accomplished at any given moment?”

Diana Gabaldon book The Fiery Cross

Source: The Fiery Cross

Women

“In his heart, he knew that there was no reason to be impolite to someone, even if they did work for you. There was such a thing as manners after all.”

John Boyne (1971) Irish novelist, author of children's and youth fiction

Source: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Heart

“Be not Afraid of anything. You will do Marvelous work. it is Fearlessness that brings Heaven even in a moment.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Peaceful

“Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Parting

“Being a doctor at Johns Hopkins does not make me any better in God's sight than the individual who has not had the opportunity to gain such an education but who still works hard.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

God, Education

“Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is a supreme creative act.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Love

“In every community, there is work to be done.
In every nation, there are wounds to heal.
In every heart, there is the power to do it.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Communication, Heart

“You can clear out whatever obstacles are preventing you from living your most creative life, with the simple understanding that whatever is bad for you is probably also bad for your work.”

Elizabeth Gilbert Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Source: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Life, Understanding

“Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

“But maybe that isn't so bad. You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is ialways the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works.”

Sarah Dessen book That Summer

Source: That Summer (1996)
Context: Maybe not, she said as we came to the car. But maybe that isn't so bad. You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is always the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works.

Love, World, Way, Boy

“What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently: "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

Sun

“I dont work with collectives. I don't consult, i don't co-operate, I don't collaborate.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

“Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Pain, Fear, Hope, Feeling

“I sipped my own coffee, heavy on the sugar and cream, trying to make up for the late work the night before. Caffeine and sugar, the two basic food groups.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Cerulean Sins

Source: Cerulean Sins

Food, Coffee, Night

“breathing, sleeping, drinking, eating, working, dreaming, everything we do is dying. to live, in fact, is to die.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

Dreams, Drink, Sleep

“The pounding music, the cheers, the admiration work their way into my blood, and I can’t suppress my excitement. Cinna has given me a great advantage. No one will forget me. Not my look, not my name. Katniss. The girl who was on fire.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Music, Way, Girl, Forgetting

“it's good to have things done with
when they don't work
it's also good not to hate
or even forget
the person you've failed with.”

Charles Bukowski book Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit

Source: Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit

Hate, Personality, Forgetting

“You're lying through your fangs," Iggy accused.
Fang tried to play innocent--but "innocent Fang" is an oxymoron, so it didn't work.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Fang

Lying

“Despair is deep. An abyss that swallows dreams. A wall at the world's end. Behind it I await death. Because all our work has come to this.”

Catherine Fisher book Incarceron

Source: Incarceron

Death, World, Dreams, Despair

“I've always known who I am. I might not work perfectly, or be like them, but that's okay. I know I work in my own way.”

Sarah Dessen book Keeping the Moon

Source: Keeping the Moon

Way

“I believe in me, in my view of the world. I believe in my responsibility for my own destiny, guilt for my own sins, merit for my own good deeds, determination of my own life. I don't believe in miracles, I believe in hard work.”

Philippa Gregory (1954) English novelist

Life, World

“If it's meant to be, they'll find a way to make it work eventually.”

Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels

Way

“When she played her music even the night demons stopped their work & it took them some time to remember what it was they were doing & the best of them had no stomach for it for a long time after that.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

Music, Time, Night

“When you do nothing you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Hope, Hope, Feeling, Sense

“Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.”

Cal Newport (1982) American computer scientist

Source: So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love

Passion

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Motivational, Leadership, Back To Work

“Everybody's got something. In the end, what choice does one really have but to understand that truth, to really take it in, and then shop for groceries, get a haircut, do one's work; get on with the business of one's life.

That's the hope, anyway.”

David Rakoff (1964–2012) writer

Source: Half Empty

Life, Truth, Hope, Understanding

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Work, my dear Blushweaver, is like fertilizer.”
“It smells?”
He smiled. “No, I was thinking that work is like fertilizer in that I’m glad it exists; I just don’t ever want to get stuck in it.”

Brandon Sanderson book Warbreaker

Source: Warbreaker

Smile, Thinking

“A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)
Context: A child, from the time he can think, should think about all he sees, should suffer for all who cannot live with honesty, should work so that all men can be honest, and should be honest himself. A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.

Thinking

“I hope they change my drugs soon. Whatever I'm on isn't working.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Hope, Change

“Every good writer I know needs to go into some deep, quiet place to do work that is fully imagined. And what the Internet brings is lots of vulgar data. It is the antithesis of the imagination. It leaves nothing to the imagination.”

Jonathan Franzen (1959) novelist

Imagination

“The world makes much less sense than you think. The coherence comes mostly from the way your mind works.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow

World, Way, Thinking, Sense

“Let his name be cleared and everyone else adjust their thinking. He had put in time, now they must do the work. His business was simple. Find Cecilia and love her, marry her and live without shame.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Love, Business, Thinking, Time

“Ka works and the world moves on.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: Wolves of the Calla

World

“I am a person who works well under pressure. In fact, I work so well under pressure that at times, I will procrastinate in order to create this pressure.”

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (1968) Canadian writer

Time, Personality

“It's not a man's working hours that is important, it is how he spends his leisure time.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Time

“If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely.”

Don DeLillo book The Names

Source: The Names (1982), Ch. 4

Love, Literature, Dead

“Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.”

Roger von Oech (1948) Creativity theorist and inventor

Failure, Learning

“Hard work, sacrifice and focus will never show up in tests.”

Lance Armstrong (1971) professional cyclist from the USA

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

May 24, 2005 http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050524-3.html <br class="br">2000s, 2005

Truth

“Anyway, seeking work is a tad difficult given the poor design of the streets with their prohibitive curbs and driveways that don't quite line up.”

Steve Martin book The Pleasure of My Company

Source: The Pleasure of My Company

“If a couple has their picture taken at a wedding or other social gathering, and the woman looks hot, her guy could be blinking, chewing, or even mid-sneeze, and she’ll still display it on her desk at work.”

Brian P. Cleary (1959) American writer

Guy, Wedding

“A work-in-progress generates its own energy field. You, the artist or entrepreneur, are pouring love into the work; you are suffusing it with passion and intention and hope.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: Do the Work

Love, Hope, Passion

“I think the most significant work we'll do in our whole life, in our whole world is done within the four walls of our home.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

Life, World, Home, Thinking

“If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?”

Milton Berle (1908–2002) American comedian and actor

Cute, Mother's Day, For Parents, For Mother

“Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others.”

Harriet Lerner (1944) American psychologist

“My left brain is doing the best job it can with the information it has to work with. I need to remember, however, that there are enormous gaps between what I know and what I think I know.”

Jill Bolte Taylor (1959) American neuroscientist

Source: My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey

Thinking

“The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity…”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Love, God, Effort, Light

“If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works”

John Dos Passos (1896–1970) novelist, playwright, poet, journalist, painter

"Looking Back on U.S.A.," New York Times, Oct 25 1959
Context: If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works, with all the misconceptions, the omissions, the failures that any finished work of art implies.

Hell

“Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Source: Post Office (1971)

Back To Work, Fools

“Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.”

Bette Davis (1908–1989) film and television actress from the United States

From Davis' running commentary in Whitney Stine's Mother Goddam https://books.google.com/books?id=kxs_AAAAIAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22Attempt+the+impossible+in+order+to+improve+your+work.%22 (1974), p. 123 ISBN 0-8015-5184-6

“You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet, because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Source: http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/65-aug.htm Bob Dylan Interview

People

“We do not wait for inspiration. We work because we've jolly well got to. But when all is said and done, we toil at this particular job because it's turned out to be our particular job, and in a weird sort of way I suppose we may be said to like it.”

Ngaio Marsh (1895–1982) New Zealand writer

Source: Ngaio Marsh: A Life

Way, Waiting

“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

God

“Work is the only thing that gives substance to life.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Life

“There's a difference between writing for a living and writing for
life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises….
If you write for life, you'll work hard; you'll do what's honest,
not what pays”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

Life

“If it's knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

Wisdom, Knowledge

“I like living, breathing better than working… my art is that of living. Each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral, it's a sort of constant euphoria.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Art

“Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

World, Parting, Cheating, Selfishness

“Right, well, we've got to work out what we need. We've got to work out what we need, how we get it, and what we need to get to get what we need.”

Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

“Never ask people about your work.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

People

“adj.
It has always been my habit, ever since junior high school, to ask that question:
“What are you thinking?”
It is always an act of desperation, and I keep on asking, even though I know it will never work the way I want it to.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

School, Way, Question, Thinking

“Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells 'em off for a coupla stones.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

“You do not need to work to become spiritual. Youspiritual; you need only to remember that fact. Spirit is within you. God is within you. (67)”

Julia Cameron (1948) American writer

Source: God is No Laughing Matter

God

“You know anything about investigative work?"
"Sure. Annoy the people involved until the guilt party tries to make you go away.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bites

People

“For men and women alike, this journey is a the trajectory between birth and death, a human life lived. No one escapes the adventure. We only work with it differently.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

Life, Death, Women, Men

“When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

Funny, Back To Work, For Men

“It is a risk to love.
What if it doesn't work out?
Ah, but what if it does.”

Peter McWilliams (1949–2000) American author and civil liberties advocate

Love

“Nowadays silence is looked on as odd and most of my race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by saying little. Now tongues work all day by themselves with no help from the mind.”

Toni Morrison Love

Source: Love

Beauty, Silence, Help

“In the months that follow you bend to the work, because it feels like hope, like grace--and because you know in your lying cheater's heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

Hope, Feeling, Lying, Heart

“The true work of art
is but a shadow of the divine perfection”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

Art, Perfection

“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

As quoted in The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (2003) by Oren Harari, p. 164.
2000s

Success, Life, Business, Powerful

“We’re all works in progress, honey. And believe me when I tell you that I’ve had to work harder than most.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Ain't She Sweet

“In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.”

Robert McKee (1941) American academic specialised in seminars for screenwriters

Source: Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

World, Art

“It's going to be a lot of work, Gideon," Eva warned him.

"I'm not afraid of work." He was touching me restlessly as if it were as necessary to him as breathing. "I'm only afraid of losing you.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

“We all have our different skills. You’re patient to a fault, which sometimes doesn’t work to your advantage. I, on the other hand, have the patience of a wet cat. Only on rare occasions does that come in handy.”

Mary E. Pearson book The Kiss of Deception

Source: The Kiss of Deception

Cats, Patience

“I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story; and I have never believed that the novelist who properly performed this first condition of his art, was in danger, on that account, of neglecting the delineation of character — for this plain reason, that the effect produced, by any narrative of events is essentially dependent, not on the events themselves, but on the human interest which is directly connected with them. It may be possible in novel-writing to present characters successfully without telling a story; but it is not possible to tell a story successfully without presenting characters: their existence, as recognizable realities, being the sole condition on which the story can be effectively told. The only narrative which can hope to lay a strong hold on the attention of readers is a narrative which interests them about men and women — for the perfectly obvious reasons that they are men and women themselves.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: Collins explaining what he calls the literary principal guiding him, in the preface of the second edition of The Woman in White. Also in Reality's Dark Light: The Sensational Wilkie Collins by Maria K. Bachman & Don Richard Cox [University of Tennessee Press, 2003, ISBN 1-572-33274-3] ( p. xiv https://books.google.com/books?id=_X8AlmIp0dwC&pg=PR14)

Women, Men, Hope, Art

“A scientist’s work is determined by two things: his interests and those of his time. Everything has led to this.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Time

“If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Motivational, Back To Work, Heart

“True life lies in laughter, love and work.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Love, Life, Laughter

“To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.”

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

Source: Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope

Way, Communication

“Marriage is compromise and hard work, and then more hard work and communication and compromise. And then work. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Marriage, Hope, Communication

“The song we’re composing already exists in potential. Our work is to find it.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: Do the Work

“In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D. C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Country

“If A is success in life, then A = x + y + z. Work is x, play is y and z is keeping your mouth shut.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Said to Samuel J Woolf, Berlin, Summer 1929. Cited with additional notes in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice and Freeman Dyson, Princeton UP (2010) p 230
1920s
Variant: 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.

Success, Life, Success