Quotes about working
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“Besides, when not hard at work with this research, I'm actually conducting a side experiment on how cigarettes and gin increase charisma. As you might guess, the results are looking very promising.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

“If a man does not work passionately - even furiously - at being the best in the world at what he does, he fails his talent, his destiny, and his God.”

George Lois (1931) American art director, designer and author

God, World, Passion

“So that makes us robbers of robbers," said Bug, "who pretend to be robbers working for a robber of other robbers.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

“I can't promise we'll ever use you for a hasty getaway," Cole said, "but with a little work, you might be able to race my grandmother-while she's on her scooter.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Alice in Zombieland

“Go and get your things,' he said. 'Dreams mean work.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Back To Work, Dreams

“The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.”

Walter Mosley (1952) American writer

“Out here, you find out that the city fools you about how things really work.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

Fools

“Education… is a painful, continual and difficult work to be done in kindness, by watching, by warning,… by praise, but above all -- by example.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Pain, Education

“After that, work and hope. But never hope more than you work”

Beryl Markham book West with the Night

Source: West with the Night

Hope

“Don't hope more than you're willing to work.”

Rita Mae Brown (1944) Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist

Hope

“The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the hillside.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

World, Dreams, Heart

“The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Fear

“I can buy your contract.” “No, you can’t. Any sale of our mortgage requires my consent, and I won’t consent to it.” He grinned. “You don’t want to work under me?” “I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

“I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

Way

“But things worked out. Everything works out. Though sometimes they work out sideways.”

Knut Hamsun (1859–1952) Norwegian novelist and Nobel Prize recipient

Source: Ringen sluttet

“But it's funny how the memory works and how sometimes we just belive whatever we want.”

Chris Bohjalian (1962) American novelist

Source: Secrets of Eden

Memory

“Intelligence is a harder gift. For this you must work, you must practice it, challenge it, and maybe toward the end of your life you will master it. Cleverness is the shadow, whereas intelligence is the substance.
-Doc”

Bryce Courtenay (1933–2012) Australian novelist

Life, Intelligence

“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.
:This quote, often attributed to Jomo Kenyatta, was first written in a fiction play published by holocaust doubter Rolf Hochhuth, in his controversial The Deputy, a Christian tragedy (1964), Grove Press, p. 144. No reference to any historical or original source was given. Other citations are found in books written by critics of religion, such as Christos Tzanetakos's "The Life and Work of an Atheist Pioneer", iUniverse; and Jack Huberman's "Quotable Atheist: Ammunition for Nonbelievers, Political Junkies, Gadflies, and Those Generally Hell-Bound" (2008), 175. No references are given.
: In Desmond Tutu: A Biography (2004) by Steven Gish, p. 101; is clarified Tutu used it as a joke which was not of him.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Misattributed

Life, Books, Religion, Quotes

“The outward work will never be puny if the inward work is great.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

“… If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires. (151)”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

World, Imagination

“I avoid that bleak first hour of the working day during which my still sluggish senses and body make every chore a penance. I find that in arriving later, the work which I do perform is of a much higher quality.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

Sense

“Love turns work into rest.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Love

“The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be "out there" and the person that appears to be "in here" are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.”

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

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 26
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Appearance, Personality

“Some people see things that are and ask, Why?
Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not?
Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that.”

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

Cf. Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah (1921), Pt. I : In the Beginning: I hear you say "Why?" Always "Why?" You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"
Books, Brain Droppings (1997)
Variant: Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that shit.

People, Dreams, Time

“My life will be the best illustration of all my work.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

Source: The Fairy Tale of My Life: An Autobiography

Life

“If letting go, if letting people and things work themselves out in the way that they needed to without your help was the most important thing, then it was also the hardest.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Six Rules of Maybe

Moving On, People, Way, Help

“Watching him with one eye, she wondered if men ever figured out that they were more appealing when they were pursuing their own work than when they were pursuing a woman.”

Mary Doria Russell The Sparrow

Source: The Sparrow

Men

“We shall all have to be judged according to our works, whether they be towards man or towards beast.”

Anna Sewell book Black Beauty

Source: Black Beauty

“No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

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

Back To Work

“That ones yours, huh?"he asked, pointing to 3A."How come it just says 'Kyle'? Doesnt he have a last name?"
"Kyle wants to be a rock star,"Simon said, heading down the stairs."I think his working the one-name thing. Like Rihanna.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Star, Thinking

“Love & Marriage are about work & Compromise. They're about seeing someone for what he is, being disappointed and deciding to stick around anyway. They're about commitment and comfort, not some kind of sudden, hysterical recognition.”

Ayelet Waldman book Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

Source: Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

Love, Marriage, Disappointment

“Life doesn't work out the way we plan, but maybe it works out the way it's supposed to after all.”

Kristin Harmel (1979) American journalist

Source: The Sweetness of Forgetting

Life, Way

“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Motivational, Art

“The fall of one regime does not bring in a utopia. Rather, it opens the way for hard work and long efforts to build more just social, economic, and political relationships and the eradication of other forms of injustices and oppression.”

Gene Sharp book From Dictatorship to Democracy

Source: From Dictatorship to Democracy

Way, Effort

“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Variant: We lived, as usual by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.
Source: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Chapter 10 (p. 56)
Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Deep

“We can buy you one of those books they have for little kids 'Timmy Has Two Dads'. Except I don't think they have one called 'Timmy Has Two Dads and One of Them Was Evil'. That part you're just going to have to work through on your own.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Books, Thinking, Evil, Parting

“I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

http://www.girlscantwhat.com/2007/10/15/i-am-my-own-experiment/ <br class="br">Variant: I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art.

Art

“I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

People

“We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can
play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the
morning.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Preface.
Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966 (1967)
Context: We come after. We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning. To say that he has read them without understanding or that his ear is gross, is cant. In what way does this knowledge bear on literature and society, on the hope, grown almost axiomatic from the time of Plato to that of Matthew Arnold, that culture is a humanizing force, that the energies of spirit are transferable to those of conduct?

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