Quotes about working
page 27

“Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.”

Marian Wright Edelman (1939) American children's rights activist

“You destroy buildings, fight monsters openly in the streets of the city, work with the police, show up in newspapers, advertise in the phone book, and ride zombie dinosaurs down Michigan Avenue, and think that you work in the shadows? Be reasonable.”

Jim Butcher book Skin Game

Source: Skin Game

Books, Thinking, Fight

“That's right," he said. "I created a a bunch of Forsaken Warriors, had them attack the Institute and kill Madeleine and nearly kill the rest of us, just so that I could keep Clary from at home. And lo and behold, my diabolical plan is working.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Home

“I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end.'In the end'? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

“I thank God for my handicaps. For through them, I have found myself, my work and my God.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

God

“Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

As quoted by Josiah Quincy III, in Looking Toward Sunset : From Sources Old and New, Original and Selected (1865) by Lydia Maria Francis Child, p. 431
Attributed

Exercises, Horse

“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think”

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

People, World, Way, Nature

“Even the greatest fool can accomplish a task if it were after his or her heart. But the intelligent ones are those who can convert every work into one that suits their taste.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

Fools, Intelligence, Heart

“It was the work of the quiet mountains, this torrent of purity at my feet.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

Mountain

“I unbuckled my seat belt.
“Are you going to jump onto his car?” Julie asked. “I can get closer.”
“What are you, out of your mind? No, I’m not jumping on his car. That only works in movies.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Shifts

Cars

“When they attack you and you notice that you love them with all your heart, your Work is done.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

Love, Heart

“My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums…”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"Messenger"
Variant: My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird — equal seekers of sweetness
Source: Thirst (2006)

World

“Making money is art. And working is art. And good business is the best art.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), p. 92
Context: Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. After I did the thing called 'art' or whatever it's called, I went into business art. I wanted to be an Art Businessman or a Business Artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippies era people put down the idea of business – they'd say 'Money is bad', and 'Working is bad', but making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

Motivational, Business, Money, Art

“Romans 6 - Our flesh is the instrument that Satan works through. When we say no to the flesh, we say no to the devil.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

“Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Sea

“Outlaws, like lovers, poets, and tubercular composers who cough blood onto piano keys, do their finest work in the slippery rays of the moon.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

Lovers

“It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Love, Hate

“Do you work at the grocery store? Then why are you checking me out?”

Lisi Harrison (1970) Canadian writer

Source: Best Friends for Never

“He wasn't surprised. He was used to this anticlimactic feeling, where by the time you've done all the work to get something you don't even want it anymore.”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

Feeling, Time

“Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It’s something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Life, School, Home, Parting

“The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 25
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Context: I think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature, which are inevitably dualistic, full of subjects and objects and their relationship to one another; or with programs full of things for other people to do. I think that kind of approach starts it at the end and presumes the end is the beginning. Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. <!-- p. 304

World, Heart

“I’m done. I’m old, I’m sad - that’s on a good day. I want out of this mess. But I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Death, Sadness, Art

“Overhead, the two moons worked together to bathe the world in a strange light.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

World, Light

“Wherever goodness lay, it did not lie in ritual, unthinking obeisance before a deity but rather, perhaps, in the slow clumsy, error-strewn working out of an individual or collective path.”

Salman Rushdie book The Enchantress of Florence

Source: The Enchantress of Florence

Lie, Error

“Now," said Halt, "all I have to do is work out a way of beating these horse-riding devils."
Erak grinned at him. "That should be child's play," he said. "The hard part will be convincing Ragnak about it.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Battle for Skandia

Way, Horse, Parting

“Work harder to appreciate your ordinary day.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

“Thank you, Daniel, that is very good to know. But if staying here means working within 10 yards of you, frankly, I'd rather have a job wiping Saddam Hussein's arse.”

Helen Fielding book Bridget Jones's Diary

Source: Bridget Jones's Diary

“The child molester skipped breakfast, but said he'd grab a little something on the way to work.”

George Carlin book Brain Droppings

Source: Brain Droppings

Way

“You've got to have as many good times as bad, or it all becomes too painful and too much work.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Pain, Time

“It is important to keep in mind that our bodies must work pretty well, or their wouldn't be so many humans on the planet.”

Ina May Gaskin (1940) American midwife

Source: Ina May's Guide to Childbirth

“You could put your confusion and upset and worries into whatever book you were reading. You could sort of set them down in there, and you could come out with your head on a little straighter. I don't why stories worked that way, but they did.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Story of Us

Books, Way, Reading

“Who you get, and how it works out - there's so much luck involved, as well as the million branching consequences of your unconscious choice of mate, that no one and no amount of talking can untangle it if it turns out unhappily.”

Ian McEwan book Enduring Love

Page 82.
Source: Enduring Love (1997)

“Human beings are such knotted, desperate pieces of work-it's a rare thing to know one completely, to the core, and still love him.”

Dean Koontz book Your Heart Belongs to Me

Source: Your Heart Belongs to Me

Love

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Way

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.”

Anaïs Nin book The Diary of Anaïs Nin

The Diary of Anaïs Nin , Volume One 1931-1934
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Death, Children, Pleasure, Books

“Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Thinking

“I continue
to believe in miracles. But i know that miracles come to those
who work very hard”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Gray Wolf Throne

“I always channel my emotions into my work. That way, I don't hurt anyone but myself.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Way, Hurt

“Wait. You work for me?"
"I prefer to think of it as managing your incompetence.”

Jim Butcher book Cold Days

Source: Cold Days

Thinking, Waiting

“People who love work, love life.”

Louise Fitzhugh book Harriet the Spy

Source: Harriet the Spy

Love, Life, People

“Choose a love and work to make it true, and somehow, something will happen, something you couldn’t plan, will come along to move like to like, to set you loose, to set you on the way to your next brick wall.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit

Love, Way

“Mutilated corpses with a chance of afternoon showers. I got dressed and went to work.”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Variant: Another beautiful Miami day. Mutilated corpses with a chance of afternoon showers. I got dressed and went to work.
Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Chance

“She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of silicon against the tender flesh between her toes. That's life. It hurts, it's dirty, and it feels very, very good.”

Orson Scott Card book Children of the Mind

Source: Children of the Mind

Life, Pain, Feeling, Hurt

“I believe in the hands that work, in the brains that think, and in the hearts that love… I believe in sunshine, fresh air, friendship, calm sleep, beautiful thoughts.”

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

Love, Friendship, Beauty, Thinking

“The victory one would gain after a whole life of work and effort is better than one that is gained sooner.”

Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Life, Effort, Victory

“In me is working a power stronger than every other power. The life that is in me is a thousand times bigger than I am outside.”

Smith Wigglesworth (1859–1947) British evangelist

Life, Time

“If something is rubbing so hard against you, you can be sure it's working on you.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“You don't read it in the sense of reading a message; it doesn't work like that. What's happening is that the Shadows are responding to the attention you pay them.”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Source: The Golden Compass

Sense, Reading

“I have never known anyone else," Egwene said to him, "who will work so hard to avoid hard work, Matrim Cauthon.”

Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time

Source: A Memory of Light

“The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Way

“When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”

William Blake Songs of Innocence and of Experience

St. 5
1790s, The Tyger (1794)
Source: Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Smile, Star, Tear

“He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“And lo and behold, my diabolical plan is working.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“To do good work one must eat well, be well housed, have one's fling from time to time, smoke one's pipe, and drink one's coffee in peace”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Peace, Coffee, Drink, Time

“Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Life, Thinking, Time

“A feeling of aversion or attachment toward something is your clue that there's work to be done.”

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

Feeling

“Your welcome means more to me, Ivy Alisha Tamwood, than a thousand souls. Watching Rachel work is a wonder of one catastrophe after another.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Soul

“Love isn't just a feeling. It's an art. And like any art, it takes not only inspiration but also a lot of work.”

Paulo Coelho book Adultery

Source: Adultery

Love, Art, Feeling

“Nothing will work unless you do.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

“Some people have been unkind. If I say I want to grow as an actress, they look at my figure. If I say I want to develop, to learn my craft, they laugh. Somehow they don't expect me to be serious about my work.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

People, Learning

“We play at believing ourselves imortal. We delude oursleves in the appraisal of our own works and in our perpetual misappraisal of the works of others. See you at the Nobel, writers say, as one might say: see you in hell.”

Roberto Bolaño book 2666

Source: 2666

Hell

“I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

People, Birth, Sister, Siblings

“One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Love, World

“The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding.”

Gretel Ehrlich (1946) American writer

Source: The Solace of Open Spaces

Truth, Art, Light, Weather

“Three is the number of those who do holy work;

Two is the number of those who do lover's work;

One is the number of those who do perfect evil

Or perfect good.”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Source: Abarat

Lovers, Evil, Perfection

“Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Soyez réglé dans votre vie et ordinaire comme un bourgeois, afin d'être violent et original dans vos œuvres. To Gertrude Tennant (December 25, 1876)
Correspondence
Variant: Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Back To Work, Life

“When people make a contract with the devil and give him an air-conditioned office to work in, he doesn't go back home easily.”

James Lee Burke (1936) Novelist, short story writer

Source: In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead

Back To Work, People, Home

“No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.”

Julia Cameron book The Artist's Way

Source: The Artist's Way

Life, Age, Dreams, Art

“Destiny is what we work toward. The future doesn't exist yet. Fate is for losers.”

Douglas Coupland book Girlfriend in a Coma

Source: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)

Fate, Future

“I have an everyday religion that works for me. Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line.”

Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman

Love, Religion

“The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Alcohol, Disease, Affliction

“She liked to imagine that when she passed, the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was. Except when she was at work, no one knew where she was at any time of day and no one waited for her. It was immaculate anonymity.”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

World, Imagination, Time, Waiting

“Sometimes, as much as writing saves one’s own life, you cannot imagine how it will save another’s. This is another reason why it is important to do the work, over and over again. It is food, the kind a soul needs.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Life, Food, Soul, Imagination

“I'm no good at anything. Not men. Not social skills. Not work. Nothing.”

Helen Fielding book Bridget Jones's Diary

Source: Bridget Jones's Diary

Men

“Of course in the present day […] the world of work begins to become — threatens to become — our only world, to the exclusion of all else. The demands of the working world grow ever more total, grasping ever more completely the whole of human existence.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 64–65
Source: Leisure: The Basis Of Culture

World

“Come on guys, you cant fight like this forever"
"Actually," Simon said, raising his hand,"I can".
Jace made a weird noise and I realized he was trying not to laugh-which by the way, wasn't working.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Way, Guy, Fight

“life is a work in progress.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Life

“No one expected you to amount to much," she told me. "Lori was the smart one, Maureen the pretty one, and Brian the brave one. You never had much going for you except that you always worked hard.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

“Begin with the end in mind. Start with the end outcome and work backwards to make your dream possible.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Dreams

“Thinking is hard work, which is why you don't see many people doing it.”

Sue Grafton (1940–2017) American writer

People, Thinking

“Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design.”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

Source: The Story of My Life

“The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Life, Art, Spring, Question

“Memory is a part of the present. It builds us up inside; it knits our bones to our muscles and keeps our hearts pumping. It is memory that reminds our bodies to work, and memory that reminds our spirits to work to: it keeps us who we are.~Candle”

Gregory Maguire book Son of a Witch

Source: Son of a Witch

Memory, Heart, Parting

“You can't spend the rest of your life tiptoeing around to try and avert disaster. It won't work. You'll just end up missing the life you have.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Life

“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

Success

“You're buying years of work, toil in the sun; you're buying a sorrow that can't talk.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

Sun

“Have you ever wondered why Republicans are so interested in encouraging people to volunteer in their communities? It’s because volunteers work for no pay. Republicans have been trying to get people to work for no pay for a long time.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

People, Communication, Time

“Why do men delight in work? Fundamentally, I suppose, because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done—a kind of satisfaction not unlike that which a hen enjoys on laying an egg.”

Gene Bedell

Three Steps to Yes: The Gentle Art of Getting Your Way
—H. L. Mencken O

Men, Pleasure, Sense

“Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

“Idleness, we are accustomed to say, is the root of all evil. To prevent this evil, work is recommended…. Idleness as such is by no means a root of evil; on the contrary, it is truly a divine life, if one is not bored….”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

Life, Evil

“The opposite of fear is love - love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at our dream and see if we can pull it off.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: Do the Work

Love, Fear, Dreams, Passion

“Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Interview with Jannika Hurwitt, published in Paris Review, 88 (Summer 1983) 82–127; reprinted in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Sixth Series (1984) (the interview took place in two parts: fall 1979/spring 1980)

Life, Sense