quotations about work
One in three stressed workers is turning to comfort foods, such as chocolate, biscuits, doughnuts and crisps, as therapy. The figure rises to four in ten of those aged 35 to 44 as they battle to meet deadlines, wade through blizzards of emails and balance long hours with a family life. The pressure to achieve and bring in a good salary means career takes precedence over family for four in ten fathers and one in four mothers, according to a new study. Eating is generally seen as a more powerful way to cope with problems than exercise or talking things through with friends, family or colleagues.
SEAN POULTER
"How stress at work drives one in three employees to reach for the biscuit tin, chocolate or doughnuts", Daily Mail, February 5, 2016
The reveries of the dreamer advance his hopes, but not their realization. One good hour of earnest work is worth them all.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Hard work never hurt anyone who hired someone else to do it.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
ROBERT FROST
attributed, The New Speaker's Treasury of Wit and Wisdom
Looking for work in order to be paid: in civilized countries today almost all men are at one in doing that. For all of them work is a means and not an end in itself. Hence they are not very refined in their choice of work, if only it pays well. But there are, if only rarely, men who would rather perish than work without any pleasure in their work. They are choosy, hard to satisfy, and do not care for ample rewards, if the work itself is not to be the reward of rewards. Artists and contemplative men of all kinds belong to this rare breed, but so do even those men of leisure who spend their lives hunting, traveling, or in love affairs and adventures. All of these desire work and misery only if it is associated with pleasure, and the hardest, most difficult work if necessary. Otherwise their idleness is resolute, even if it spells impoverishment, dishonor, and danger to life and limb. They do not fear boredom as much as work without pleasure.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The Gay Science
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
ELBERT HUBBARD
A Thousand and One Epigrams
Work almost always has a double aspect: it is a bondage, a wearisome drudgery; but it is also a source of interest, a steadying element, a factor that helps to integrate the worker with society. Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Coming of Age
There's only one thing worse than to live without working, and that is to work without living.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Past and Present
The more powerful the work, the more powerless the worker.
KARL MARX
"Alienated Labor", Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
Retirement wasn't a reward at the end of a well-run career ... it was a void surrounded by endless dull hours, haunted by memories of work.
NORA ROBERTS
Blue Smoke
A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby.... The man is now a man.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Past and Present
Anyone familiar with office life knows that it's not exactly a non-stop thrill ride: the ceaseless emails, the unnecessarily confusing business jargon, the knock-down, drag-out fights with the photocopier. We're all looking for a little delight amid the tedium, and it's driving a new school of corporate thought--one that's changing the way we work. These days, the happiness of individual employees comes second only to profits on the list of priorities. Gone are the days of cartoonishly horrible bosses; instead, more managers are positively hell-bent on putting a smile on your face.
KATIE UNDERWOOD
"Why developing friendships at work is so important", Canadian Business, January 27, 2016
Family and work. Family and work. I can let them be at war, with guilt as their nuclear weapon and mutually assured destruction as their aim, or I can let them nourish each other.
ELLEN GILCHRIST
The Writing Life
Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work body and soul.
CHARLES BUXTON
Notes of Thought
The 21st-century adage of a work/life balance makes the nature of work as personally positive and enjoyable apparently incidental to our lives, the two understood as disparate entities rather than entwined for our pleasure 24/7.
PAULYNE POGORELSKE
"Faith: work is not a dirty word", The Age, March 25, 2017
People say they love hard workers but they really love natural talent--a bias with troubling implications when it comes to hiring.
ERIC JAFFE
"Hard Work Is Overrated", fastcodesign, January 19, 2016
When he worked, he really worked. But when he played, he really PLAYED.
DR. SEUSS
The King's Stilts
No man ever did or can do a great work alone.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
"Do what you love" has become a modern-day mantra that devalues actual work while obscuring the vast majority of workers. After all, if some work is elevated to being worthy of love, where does that leave all those doing unglamorous and menial work? They are nowhere, blanked from the culture, their lowly status even seen as somehow deserved because they didn't love hard enough.... We need to acknowledge all work as work, whatever it is, and to stand in solidarity with all who labour, whether they love their job or not. Our concern should not be with the select few occupations that are loveable but with making all employment more likeable -- through fair wages, job security, safe conditions and reasonable hours.
SIMON CASTLES
"Do what you love mantra devalues hard work", The Age, February 9, 2016