Skip to content

Work Quotes

On this page Carlyle is first by count, followed by Shakespeare, Lincoln, Karl Marx and Albert Pike. The line most worth keeping is Mark Twain’s from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876): work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play of whatever a body is not obliged to do. Emerson’s May-Day and Other Pieces (1867) has a good one on the crowded hour, and Woody Allen’s joke about immortality through not dying is here as well.

Three entries are flagged. “I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours” is credited to Oscar Wilde and marked misattributed. Two sayings credited to Publilius Syrus, about doing nothing both hastily and prudently and about the man who loves labour always having something to do, are disputed.

Random quote on Work

Most quoted on work:

Ther n' is no werkman whatever he be,
That may both werken wel and hastily.
This wol be done at leisure parfitly.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Who first invented work, and bound the free
And holyday-rejoicing spirit down * * *
To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? * * *
Sabbathless Satan!

Charles Lamb

We do 30 to 40 percent of the nation's work for 1 percent of the returns, and a huge pool of us is always kept unemployed to reduce the value of the labor of those who are.

George Jackson Blood in My Eye (1971)

Tools were made and born were hands,
Every understands.

William Blake

The error in positivism is that it takes as its standard of truth the contingently given division of labor, that between the science and social praxis as well as that within science itself, and allows no theory that could reveal the division of labor to be itself derivative and mediated and thus strip it of its false authority.

Theodor Adorno Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy? (1963)

It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.

Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat (1889)

I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth and never cherishes any memory except the face of the woman on the American silver dollar.
I ask you to come through and show me where you're pouring out the blood of your life.

Carl Sandburg

Honest labour bears a lovely face.

Thomas Dekker Patient Grissell (1599)

The labour we delight in physics pain.

William Shakespeare Macbeth (1605)

The economic system denies the right of the sincerest and most sympathetic to keep their hands out of the blood of their brothers. We may not go to our rest at night, or waken to our work in the morning, without bearing the burden of the communal guilt; without being ourselves creators and causes of the wrongs we seek to bear away. At every step, when we would do good, evil is present with us, and exacts its tribute from the very citadel of the soul.

George D. Herron Between Caesar and Jesus (1899)

When we have weighed everything, and when our relations in life permit us to choose any given position, we may take that one which guarantees us the greatest dignity, which is based on ideas of whose truth we are completely convinced, which offers the largest field to work for mankind and approach the universal goal for which every position is only a means: perfection.

Karl Marx Reflections of a Youth on Choosing an Occupation (1835)

And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure."

Richard Bach Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

God be thank'd that the dead have left still
Good undone for the living to do—
Still some aim for the heart and the will
And the soul of a man to pursue.

Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton

In books, or work, or healthful play.

Isaac Watts

Peacefulness to be found in writing. Why do I not write every day? Partly because I feel I ought to write well and know I can't. But that is not a good enough reason for not writing, if it gains me poise & peace.

E. M. Forster Commonplace Book (1985)

I believe that every employee, from the CEO suite to the factory floor, contributes to a business’ success, so everybody should share in the rewards – especially those putting in long hours for little pay.

Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign (2015)

The love of wisdom in its wholeness requires exploration of the sources of the things we take for granted, including the thinking that has sorted out all the various disciplines, making demarcations between fields as well as envisioning what is to be done within them.

Harvey Flaumenhaft Preface to Masterworks of Discovery series (2011)

If we expand the notion of work, which is something that a universal basic income would help us do, it would begin to compensate parents and caregivers; it would begin to recognize different forms of work.

Andrew Yang

There's a time when you have to separate yourself from what other people expect of you, and do what you love. Because if you find yourself 50 years old and you aren't doing what you love, then what's the point?

Jim Carrey A Touch of Class (2003)

I spent a busy day today, but got little done. This is because I am at last becoming perfect in the art of seeming busy, even when very little is going on in my head or under my hands. This is an art which every man learns, if he does not intend to work himself to death.

Robertson Davies The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949)

Related topics