Work Quotes

If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.

Joshua Reynolds

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Parkinsons Law

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.

Genesis 3:19

If any would not work, neither shall he eat.

Set thy heart upon thy work but never upon its reward.

Bhagavadgita

For most of my life I refused to work at any problem unless its solution seemed to be capable of being put to commercial use.

Thomas Edison

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution, it’s that they can’t see the problem.

G K Chesterton

Forward ever, backward never.

Kwame Nkrumah

How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top.

Drive thy business, or it will drive thee.

Benjamin Franklin

To have work that you feel you must do is the simplest way of feeling needed and useful.

The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.

David Allen

The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.

Corita Kent

Work is not man’s punishment. It is his reward and his strength and his pleasure.

George Sand

How doth the little busy bee

Improve each shining hour,

And gather honey all the day

From every opening flower!

Isaac Watts

It is only when I am doing my work that I feel truly alive.

Federico Fellini

Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.

J M Barrie

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.

The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavour.

Vince Lombardi

If it’s to be it’s up to me.

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.

Thomas Edison

Everything yields to diligence.

Thomas Jefferson

Plough deep while sluggards sleep.

Benjamin Franklin

The essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its demands, while we are doing it, to the exclusion of all else.

Steven Pressfield

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.

Elbert Hubbard

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

Theodore Roosevelt

Be a maker in the morning and a manager in the afternoon.

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.

Benjamin Franklin

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.

Eleanor Roosevelt

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Seek progress, not perfection.

To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.

John Dewey

A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.

Charles Schwab

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

Seek results, not perfection.

I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.

Thomas Edison

Practice, practice, practice.

The rain falls on all the fields, but crops grow only in those that have been tilled and sown.

Chinese Proverb

As much as talent counts, effort counts twice.

Angela Duckworth

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.

Abraham Lincoln

It isn’t the hours you put in, but what you put in the hours.

I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.

Thomas Edison

You don’t need to be a leader or a change-maker, just a good student, a hard worker, and a friendly colleague. You’re free to ask for help. You’re free to make mistakes.

Never confuse motion with action.

Benjamin Franklin

There is no substitute for hard work.

Thomas Edison

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Matthew 11:30

Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.

Seth Godin

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

Thoreau

The Creator has prepared no place for the stagnating practice of indolence.

Ellen G White

Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t.

Angela Duckworth

If you do not work on important problems, how can you expect to do important work?

James Clear

The path of duty lies in what is near, and man seeks for it in what is remote.

Mencius

Business is not about greed; it’s about solving a problem that isn’t your own. It’s about demonstrating God’s kindness to the world.

Jeremy Zwiker

I must do the work that I am best suited for.

Edward Weston

The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it.

Chinese Proverb

Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.

Farrah Gray

More bricks, less straw.

What you do is what matters, not what you think or say or plan.

Jason Fried

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

Steve Jobs

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.

Sam Ewing

If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.

Martin Luther King Jr

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

John Wooden

Without effort, your talent is nothing more than unmet potential.

Angela Duckworth

Work is the activity of play through discipline. Without discipline, there is no freedom. Without play, craft and skills are sterile.

Keith Smith

Do it with will. Do it with might. Things done by halves are never done right.

It is an example of the spectacular creativity that accrues from dissecting the details of multiple diverse domains and disciplines and applying the discovered best practices.

Story Musgrave

To invent, you need a good imagination, and a pile of junk.

Thomas Edison

If you do little things like they’re big things, God will do big things like they’re little things.

Mark Batterson

Do what you can with what you’ve got, where you are.

Theordore Roosevelt

You gotta ask yourself, ‘Is the juice worth the squeeze?’

Zoe Foster Blake

Never let your work be self serving.

There’s lots of bad reasons to start a company. But there’s only one good, legitimate reason and I think you know what it is. It is to change the world.

Phil Libin

You need three hobbies – One that makes you money. One that keeps you in shape. One that stokes your creativity.

Fruition Lab

For your business to get better, you have to get better.

For me, it was never a strategic move to make this my job. It was a side project that was almost like a raft – I had my career as an architect that was the stable boat, but someone else was always driving. So I made my own little raft to kick off the side, and even if it was never sea-worthy, it was my thing, my little beacon of hope. Without your own little raft, it can be so easy to become disenchanted.

Chaz Hutton

We cannot predict the value our work will provide to the world. That’s fine. It’s not our job to judge our own work. It is our job to create it, to pour ourselves into it, and to master our craft as best as we can.

James Clear

Practice makes for improvement.

Many are willing to suffer for their art. Few are willing to learn to draw.

Simon Munnery

I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

Florence Nightingale

Don’t do it for the money. Solve a problem and the money will come.

If you want to conquer fear, don't sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

Dale Carnegie

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

Thoreau

You can increase your surface area for good luck by taking action. The forager who explores widely will find lots of useless terrain, but is also more likely to stumble across a berry patch than the person who stays home. Similarly, the person who works hard, pursues opportunity, and tries more things is more likely to stumble across a lucky break than the person who waits.

James Clear

All the good maxims have been written. It only remains to put them into practice.

Blaise Pascal

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing.

Thomas Jefferson

Talk does not cook rice.

Chinese Proverb

Laziness travels so slow that poverty soon overtakes him.

Benjamin Franklin

Let everyone mind his own business, and endeavour to be what he was made.

Thoreau

I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.

Margaret Thatcher

Art is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling. There are in store for you many unsuccessful days and whole unsuccessful seasons: there will be great misunderstanding and deep disappointments. You must be prepared for all this, expect it, and nevertheless, stubbornly, fantastically follow your own way.

Anton Chekov

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

Theodore Roosevelt