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Quotes about Words

Quotes about Work


Quotes about Words

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Work is not necessarily work. It depends on how one views it. Work is like 'service' – to others or to humanity. Serving is a joyous activity. (Bob Abrahams)

My work is my lifetime biography. (Faisal Abu'Allah)

Work is like the rest of life. The best parts are free. (Scott Adams)

The actor has to develop his body. The actor has to work on his voice. But the most important thing the actor has to work on is his mind. (Stella Adler)

Divine ideas and sounds don't reveal themselves to us because we are good with materials and instruments. Great artistic achievements are not accidents and they don't just happen. You reap what you sow is not just a biblical adage, it is a natural law in everything. (Samuel Adoquei)

Nothing is ever ideal. You have to work all the same. (Rumaan Alam)

Work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts inevitably bring about right results. (James Allen)

A project is complete when it starts working for you, rather than you working for it. (Scott Allen)

I spend a lot of time idly. I go to sporting events, play my clarinet. I practise. But if you work every day, a certain amount on a steady basis, the work accumulates. (Woody Allen)

Proficiency is often nothing more than good work practices repeated. (David Allio)

People are most creative when they care about their work and they're stretching their skills. (Teresa Amabile)

My life will be the best illustration of all my work. (Hans Christian Andersen)

I'm a real workaholic. (Laurie Anderson)

Every time you work, you have to do it all over again, to rid yourself of this dross. I suppose for a person who is not an artist or not attempting art, it is not dross, because it is the common exchange of everyday life. (Carl Andre)

I have been told repeatedly that I am so lucky to be able to paint so well. Funniest thing, the more I paint, the luckier I get. (Anonymous)

A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his mind is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist. (St. Thomas Aquinas)

Art is right reason in the doing of work. Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do. (St. Thomas Aquinas)

If my doctor told me I had only six months to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. (Isaac Asimov)

All I do is write. I do practically nothing else, except eat, sleep and talk to my wife. (Isaac Asimov)

The wonderful thing about working is that the more you do it, the easier it is to do, and the less likely it is you'll get stuck. (Anna Held Audette)

I destroy things every day in the act of working and often recall a picture I had considered finished in order to rework it. (Frank Auerbach)

How could I possibly join them on to the little bit - two inches wide - of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labour. (Jane Austen)

For the progress of humanity, work alone is not adequate, but the work should be associated with love, compassion, right conduct, truthfulness and sympathy... (Sathya Sai Baba)

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work. (Richard Bach)

-on James Abbot McNeill Whistler...
He rose early, worked strenuously, and retired late. He seemed to forget the ordinary hours for meals and would have to be called over and over again, unfinished work frequently being taken in hand just at this time. (Otto Bacher)

As you work, the mood grows on you. There are certain images which suddenly get hold of me and I really want to do them. But it's true to say that the excitement and possibilities are in the working and obviously can only come in the working. (Francis Bacon)

Making cartoons means very hard work at every step of the way, but creating a successful cartoon character is the hardest work of all. (Joseph Barbera)

Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well as now. (P. T. Barnum)

It is not real work unless you would rather be doing something else. (James M. Barrie)

I go to work the minute I open my eyes. (Lynda Barry)

Just remember to shave and go to the studio. (Maxwell Bates)

It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself. (Charles Baudelaire)

Whistle while you work. Smile as you paint. It will remind you (and others) how fortunate you are. (Brenda Behr)

-Chips off the Old Benchley, 1949...
Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing. (Robert Benchley)

Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense. (Arnold Bennett)

The name of our proper connection to the earth is 'good work,' for good work involves much giving of honor. It honors the source of its materials; it honors the place where it is done; it honors the art by which it is done; it honors the thing that it makes and the user of the made thing. (Wendell Berry)

There is much good work to be done by every one of us and we must begin to do it. (Wendell Berry)

Observing and commenting, it is a piece of cake. Experiencing and sharing, that is a piece of work. (Toba Beta)

Let's talk of a system that transforms all the social organisms into a work of art, in which the entire process of work is included... something in which the principle of production and consumption takes on a form of quality. It's a Gigantic project. (Joseph Beuys)

Painting and working at the same time is difficult. The way to become a better painter is to paint, and paint, and paint, and paint some more. However, in order to get started in anything one often has to work overtime. (Denise Bezanson)

One of the many blessings of being an artist is that you don't have to wait for someone to hire you before you can work. That's wealth beyond measure. (Eleanor Blair)

-The Marriage of Heaven and Hell...
To create a little flower is the labour of ages. (William Blake)

Genius is the gold in the mine. Talent is the miner who works and brings it out. (Marguerite Blessington)

Being a full-time artist is a creative profession, but it's also a job, and that means turning up for work more days than not. (Marion Boddy-Evans)

There is no short-cut to art, one has to work hard, be open and flexible in your mind, keep the child alive inside you, and through a whole lifetime be ready to learn new things and – of course – be mentally prepared for a hard punch on your nose – especially when you think you are doing well. (Bente Borsum)

My work is a self-portrait of my mind, a prism of my convictions. (Fernando Botero)

I work like a bee and feel that I accomplish little. (Louise Bourgeois)

Work is something you can count on - a trusted, lifelong friend who never deserts you. (Margaret Bourke-White)

I'm just an individual who doesn't feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I'm working for me. (David Bowie)

Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave. (Constantin Brancusi)

One day I noticed that I could go on working my art motif no matter what the weather might be. I no longer needed the sun, for I took my light everywhere with me. (Georges Braque)

In sinners and repenters you have the original division of labor. (Robert Brault)

Work on the right things at the right time for the right reasons. (Peter Bray)

People thrive by focusing on the question of who they really are - and connecting that to work that they truly love (and, in so doing, unleashing a productive and creative power that they never imagined). (Po Bronson)

Art works, if you do. (Peter William Brown)

To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth. (Pearl S. Buck)

Your work is to discover your work – and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. (Gautama Buddha)

I believe in working hard. Painting is serious. A vice, not a play thing. (Bernard Buffet)

Toil to some is happiness, and rest to others. This man can only breathe in crowds, and that man only in solitudes. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day. (George Burns)

As long as you're working, you stay young. (George Burns)

-The Way of All Flesh, 1903...
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him. (Samuel Butler, novelist)

Out of the work comes the work. (John Cage)

For some, it's a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers - of persistence, concentration, and insight - to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems, make art, think deeply. (Susan Cain)

Without work all life goes rotten. (Albert Camus)

-b.1913 d.1960...
What doesn't kill me makes me stronger. (Albert Camus)

If work if so terrific, why do they have to pay you to do it? (George Carlin)

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. (Thomas Carlyle)

Work alone is noble. (Thomas Carlyle)

Set me a task in which I can put something of my very self, and it is a task no longer; it is joy; it is art. (Bliss Carman)

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done. (Dale Carnegie)

Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves. (Dale Carnegie)

During the work, you have to be sure that you haven't left any holes, that you've captured everything, because afterwards it will be too late. (Henri Cartier-Bresson)

For the essential thing about the work of art is that it is work, and very hard work, too. (Joyce Cary)

You must work - we must all work - to make the world worthy of its children. (Pablo Casals)

I was at Mount Tamalpais near San Francisco hiking when a boulder came hurling down the mountainside and smashed my left hand. When I looked at my mangled bloody fingers, I had a strange reaction. 'Thank God I will never have to play again,' I said. The fact is that dedication to one's art does involve a sort of enslavement. (Pablo Casals)

Every man is the son of his own works. (Miguel de Cervantes)

Work isn't to make money; you work to justify life. (Marc Chagall)

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man. (Ray Charles)

There's no workman, whatsoever he be, / That may both work well and hastily. (Geoffrey Chaucer)

If you want to work on your art, work on your life. (Anton Chekhov)

- previous assistant to Damien Hirst, now children's book writer and illustrator...
Pretty much all I did was paint spots. I have no idea how many spot paintings I did, we kept no record, but we were pretty quick. There's not that much to think about apart from how quickly you can do it, and the colours, which were meant to be random so we could choose them. (Lauren Child)

I feel sorry for the person who can't get genuinely excited about his work. Not only will he never be satisfied, but he will never achieve anything worthwhile. (Walter Chrysler)

The bee is more honored than other animals, not because she labors, but because she labors for others. (Saint John Chrysostom)

-in a letter to Sir Winston Churchill...
You seem to have no real purpose in life and won't realize at the age of twenty-two that for a man life means work, and hard work if you mean to succeed... (Jennie Jerome Churchill)

Human beings are of two classes: those whose work is work and whose pleasure is pleasure; and those whose work and pleasure are one. (Winston Churchill)

It may be that those whose work is their pleasure are those who most need the means of banishing it at intervals from their minds. (Winston Churchill)

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play. (John Cleese)

You don't have to invent the wheel everyday. Today you'll do what you did yesterday, tomorrow you'll do what you did today, eventually you will get somewhere. (Chuck Close)

-The Colbert Report...
Never let them see you sweat. Especially in HD, 'cause it looks like a mudslide. (Stephen Colbert)

No one asked you to be happy. Get to work. (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette)

I do it because I love acting, I love working, and whether it's radio, television, films, theater, I don't care as long as I can get out there and do it. (Joan Collins)

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. (Confucius)

I like what is in work – the chance to find yourself. Your own reality, for yourself, not for others. What no other can ever know. (Joseph Conrad)

This is what I believe to be true. You have to do everything you can. You have to work your hardest. And if you do, if you stay positive, then you have a shot at a silver lining. (Bradley Cooper)

You should always be well and bright, for so you do your best work; and you have so much beautiful work to do. The world needs it, and you must give it! (Marie Corelli)

Work is more fun than fun. (Noel Coward)

Breaks are good. No one can work nonstop - and if you can, you probably shouldn't. A lot of artists have noted that it's during breaks that the 'real' work happens and new ideas or insights spring to mind. (Mason Currey)

If I hadn't been at work all the time, I would have been a lunatic. (Mason Currey)

Handling too many pieces of paper is hazardous to your Breathing Space. (Jeff Davidson)

If you want to be the best, baby, you've got to work harder than anybody else. (Sammy Davis, Jr.)

Do all the work you can; that is the whole philosophy of the good way of life. (Eugene Delacroix)

I would make my job a work of art. (John Denver)

Housework can't kill you, but why take a chance? (Phyllis Diller)

Between 9am and 3pm is when I work most intensely. (Carol Ann Duffy)

I'm glad if my work can make a difference. (Lena Dunham)

The professional guts a book through – in full knowledge that what he is doing is not very good. Not to work is to exhibit a failure of nerve. (John Gregory Dunne)

We work because it's a chain reaction, each subject leads to the next. (Charles Eames)

The insignificant labor; the great create. (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach)

Do not think so much about what one should do, but rather about what one should be. Our works do not ennoble us; but we must ennoble our works. (Meister Johann Eckhart)

Being busy does not always mean real work. (Thomas Edison)

No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job. (T. S. Eliot)

There is no way to success in our art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

We should be aware that the process of work precedes the work of art. (John D. Engle-Jr.)

I often work by avoidance. (Brian Eno)

I'm bloody awful at multi-tasking. (Brian Eno)

My work is a game, a very serious game. (M. C. Escher)

I spend most of every day writing. I like to write every day if I can. I don't start extremely early. (Jeffrey Eugenides)

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 people really liked to work, we'd still be plowing the land with sticks and transporting goods on our backs. (William Feather)

My work has always been the thing that justifies my life. (Federico Fellini)

-The 4-Hour Workweek...
By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It's the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too. (Timothy Ferriss)

Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. (Richard Feynman)

I love what I do. And why not be nice? I mean, I've seen people who work and they're apparently not enjoying it, and they're making sure everybody knows it. (Nathan Fillion)

The man is nothing; the work is everything. (Gustav Floberg)

By the work one knows the workman. (Jean de La Fontaine)

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert. (B. C. Forbes)

We would sift through every inch of what it was that worked, or if it didn't, and wonder what was effective in it, in terms of paint, the subject matter, the size, the drawing. (Helen Frankenthaler)

Plough deep while sluggards sleep. (Benjamin Franklin)

The world is filled with willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them. (Robert Frost)

My object in living is to unite / My avocation and my vocation / As my two eyes make one in sight. (Robert Frost)

I spend 60 hours a week on my business but I don't work for a minute. Work is hard. But what I do - writing, speaking, researching, learning, and sharing information - is pure joy. It's what I was called to do. (Carmine Gallo)

-to high school grads...
Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs. (Bill Gates)

The work of a man is the explanation of the man. (Paul Gauguin)

-in Tahiti...
Why work? The gods are there to lavish upon the faithful the good gifts of nature. (Paul Gauguin)

My work is my play; my ego made visible. (Stephanie Gauvin)

Well, I've always just - I've never really gone out looking for work. I always waited for it to sort of hit me on the head. (Frank Gehry)

The head governs, the heart assists, the body acts. (Robert Genn)

The #1 guideline to success is you must be in business for yourself. When you work for someone else, you sell your time at wholesale to your employer, who then re-sells it at retail to the customer. (John Paul Getty)

Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working. (Alberto Giacometti)

Our work is the presentation of our capabilities. (Edward Gibbon)

A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute. (Edward Gibbon)

When you work, you fulfill a part of earth's fondest dream assigned to you when that dream is born. (Kahlil Gibran)

Work is love made visible. (Kahlil Gibran)

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison? (Kahlil Gibran)

All civilized people see the day beginning at dawn or a little after or a long time after or whatever time their work begins; this they lengthen according to their work, during what they call 'all day long'; and end it when they close their eyes. It is they who say the days are long. On the contrary, the days are round. (Jean Giono)

If I work incessantly to the last, nature owes me another form of existence when the present one collapses. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do that makes life blessed. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech. (Vincent van Gogh)

I work even in the middle of the day, in the full sunshine, and I enjoy it like a cicada. (Vincent van Gogh)

The harder I work the luckier I get. (Samuel Goldwyn)

When students asked me how they might improve their paintings, my reply was always the same: 'Do more work.' Occasionally I would vary it by saying, 'You're not doing enough work.' But then, who does? (Frank Gordon)

To take my work seriously would be the height of folly. (Edward Gorey)

If I did not have my work, I would not have any life. (Temple Grandin)

Inspiration doesn't come when you are idle. It comes when you have steeped yourself in work. (Irwin Greenberg)

I'm proud to be an artist and proud to think of it as a blue-collar job. We work everyday. It's not play; it's hard work. It's not as easy as we make it look. (Stephanie Greene)

The highest compliment that you can pay me is to say that I work hard every day, that I never dog it. (Wayne Gretzky)

Painting is manual labor, no different from any other; it can be done well or poorly. (George Grosz)

It's true that every day away from work requires two more days to get back into it. (Judith Guest)

Work can only be universal if it is rooted in a part of its creator which is most privately and particularly himself. (Sir William Tyrone Guthrie)

The artist must express the summation of his feeling, knowing and believing through the unity of his life and work. (Ernst Haas)

-An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth...
It's almost comical that astronauts are stereotyped as daredevils and cowboys. As a rule, we're highly methodical and detail-oriented. Our passion isn't for thrills but for the grindstone, and pressing our noses to it. (Chris Hadfield, astronaut)

Delegating work works, provided the one delegating works, too. (Robert Half)

I need to get to work and disregard all the silly vagaries of personal feelings. Always somehow if one keeps working, something comes through. (Lawren Harris)

Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. (Vaclav Havel)

Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. (Stephen Hawking)

Spend a lifetime in hard work with a humble mind. (Charles Hawthorne)

Hard work and effort? Many of us have been misled by self-appointed art experts, gallery owners and critics who in the end do not know the first thing about art. They think that art is just the result of an impulsive gesture captured in a fleeting moment or two. (Heidi Hehn)

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after the first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cold and you warm as you write. (Ernest Hemingway)

Everyone enjoys doing the kind of work for which he is best suited. (Napoleon Hill)

I always feel like the art's there and I just see it, so it's not really a lot of work. (Damien Hirst)

Most artists work all the time... especially good artists... I mean, what else is there to do? (David Hockney)

Often, I work out of my work. One work takes me to the next thing. (Jim Hodges)

My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built. (Sherlock Holmes)

It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it. (Lena Horne)

We work to become, not to acquire. (Elbert Hubbard)

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. (Elbert Hubbard)

They intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really are. (Aldous Huxley)

We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art. (Henry James)

One works without thinking how to work. (Jasper Johns)

Work like you don't need the money. (Joseph Joubert)

Work grows out of other work, and there are very few eureka moments. (Anish Kapoor)

Most important, for openers, work six hours a day for seven days a week for six years. Then, if you like it, you can get serious about it. (Alex Katz)

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)

Are you living to work or working to live? (Dr. Melvyn Kinder)

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work. (Stephen King)

When I rest, I rest and when I work, I work hard and sometimes for long hours. I always try to be rested when I work... (Simmie Knox)

For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying. (Kathe Kollwitz)

Look, we're all saddled with things that make us better or worse. This world is a crazy place, and I've chosen to make my work about that insanity. (Barbara Kruger)

I have done all the work myself, not assistants. That's why I'm in a wheelchair: I've been doing it physically - it's hard labour - throughout my life. (Yayoi Kusama)

A human being isn't meant to be some kind of machine designed only for production. No. Human life isn't just for work... (Dalai Lama)

Nobody ever drowned in his own sweat. (Ann Landers)

But I always thought anyone could do it. (Mark A. Landis)

- Dorothea Lange and the Documentary Tradition by Karin Becker...
I worked then as I would not have done, I am sure, if I had gone back to my habitual life. There in my studio on Montgomery Street, I was surrounded by evidences of the Depression. (Dorothea Lange)

When I say 'work' I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs. (Margaret Laurence)

What you work hardest at, you love the most. (T. Allen Lawson)

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find that the harder I work the more of it I have. (Stephen Leacock)

I love the fact that I get something new to do almost every day and have new challenges. (Jim Lee)

Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity. Posterity has done nothing for us. (Abraham Lincoln)

Industry is a better horse to ride than genius. (Walter Lippmann)

The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender. (Vince Lombardi)

Let us, then, be up and doing, /With a heart for any fate;/ Still achieving, still pursuing,/ Learn to labour and to wait. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

And at the end of the day, I just want my work to speak for itself. (Jennifer Lopez)

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. (Audre Lorde)

Every person born into this world their work is born with them. (James Russell Lowell)

Working hard is very important. You're not going to get anywhere without working extremely hard. (George Lucas)

There are a million people who can come up with little bits. The hard work is making those bits into something. (Jeff Lynne)

Find something you love to do, and you'll never work a day in your life. (Harvey Mackay)

Do work you love, in which you can excel: The smaller the gap between who you are in your personal life and who you are at work, the happier you will be. (Lauren Mackler)

Creativity is part sweat – not just beads of it, but sometimes buckets. (Eric Maisel)

Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. (Bernard Malamud)

I need to work to feel well. (Edouard Manet)

I respect all artists, just some more than the others. Because it's something that really needs to be done. (Brice Marden)

If you do not feel yourself growing in your work, and your life broadening and deepening, if your task is not a perpetual tonic to you, you have not found your place. (Orison Swett Marden)

If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light, not in one flamboyant hour, but in the ledger of his daily work. (Beryl Markham)

Through the work the creative process can take hold. Without the work there is no growth and the creative spark will die. (Jeanean Songco Martin)

The fact that people who create are good workers tends to be lost. (Abraham Maslow)

Work cures everything. (Henri Matisse)

One gets into a state of creativity by conscious work. (Henri Matisse)

Particularly with writing, or painting, a man will work in order to complete himself. And if he feels himself to be complete, he will find no need to work. (Peter Mayne)

Even if what you're working on doesn't go anywhere, it will help you with the next thing you're doing. Make yourself available for something to happen. Give it a shot. (Cormac McCarthy)

Be different, stand out, and work your butt off. (Reba McEntire)

Where the whole man is involved there is no work. Work begins with the division of labor. (Marshall McLuhan)

Do what you love and the necessary resources will follow. (Peter McWilliams)

I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs. (H. L. Mencken)

Take your work seriously but yourself lightly. (C. W. Metcalf)

Tracking the shiny is so much easier than digging for gold! (Laura Miller)

I work like a gardener. (Joan Miro)

I work like a labourer on a farm or in a vineyard. Things come to me slowly. My vocabulary of forms, for instance, has not been the discovery of a day. It took shape in spite of myself... That is why I am always working on a hundred different things at the same time. (Joan Miro)

When I work I forget all the rest. (Claude Monet)

I spend my time out-of-doors on the shingle when the weather's stormy or when the boats go out fishing; otherwise I go into the country which is so lovely here... and naturally I'm working all the time... (Claude Monet)

I'm hard at work with four paintings under way; it's now a matter of finishing them and doing four more and so on. (Claude Monet)

Think of me getting up before 6, I'm at work by 7 and I continue until 6.30 in the evening, standing up all the time, nine canvases. It's murderous... (Claude Monet)

My work is the only ground I've ever had to stand on. I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation - but I'm working on the foundation. (Marilyn Monroe)

-Oath of Fealty...
To the gods belong power, and to us the work of our hands. (Elizabeth Moon)

The wealthy have never liked to pay for the labor that enriches them. Ever since slavery was eliminated, they have been trying to keep it as close to slavery as they can without violating the slave laws. (Michael Moore)

Nothing should be made by man's labour which is not worth making or which must be made by labour degrading to the makers. (William Morris)

Better to toil blindly, beating every stone in turn for grains of gold, whether they contain any or not, than lie down in apathetic decay. (John Muir)

In twenty years I've never had a day when I didn't have to think about someone else's needs. And this means the writing has to be fitted around it. (Alice Munro)

If I couldn't afford to have help... I'd just paint flat. I don't want my work to become something I can't deal with physically. (Elizabeth Murray)

If you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work. (Ogden Nash)

It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn't. (Martina Navratilova)

Take your work seriously and yourself lightly. (Bob Nelson)

I believe in my work and the joy of it. You have to be with the work and the work has to be with you. It absorbs you totally and you absorb it totally. Everything must fall by the wayside by comparison. (Louise Nevelson)

I knew that a day I took away from the work did not make me too happy. (Louise Nevelson)

The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else. (Earl Nightingale)

-Between You and Me, 1948...
A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist. (Louis Nizer)

Night time is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep. (Catherine O'Hara)

One works because I suppose it is the most interesting thing one knows to do. The days one works are the best days. On the other days one is hurrying through the other things one imagines one has to do to keep one's life going... (Georgia O'Keeffe)

A man's work is in danger of deteriorating when he thinks he has found the one best formula for doing it. If he thinks that, he is likely to feel that all he needs is merely to go on repeating himself... so long as a person is searching for better ways of doing his work, he is fairly safe. (Eugene O'Neill)

Private study. (Peter O'Toole)

I worked like a crazyman. I worked day and night, often days and nights at a time – without sleep. Gallons of coffee kept me awake; the paintings kept me fired up. (Jules Olitski)

Expect nothing. Do your work. Celebrate! (Jules Olitski)

-Messenger
My work is loving the world. (Mary Oliver)

I simply do not distinguish between work and play. (Mary Oliver)

I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God's a workman. I don't think there's anything better than a workman. Or a workwoman. (Sir Laurence Olivier)

Americans think anything you do not get paid for is not worth doing. As a consequence, the things that don't get done are often the most worthwhile. (Laurence Overmire)

Make the workmanship surpass the materials. (Ovid)

We work because since the dawn of life there has been a need to hunt for food. The desire or need to work is built-in, programmed into our genes. There are lazy genes too, but in an earlier era the lazy ones starved. (Dudley Parker)

To the artist his work is an absorbing passion. He keeps no union hours, he does not ask for vacations, and again and again he has worked without pay and with the most limited recognition. (Lockie Parker)

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. (C. Northcote Parkinson)

Nothing came easy. I was just born with a need to explore every part of my mind. And with long searching and hard work, I became devoted to my restlessness. (Gordon Parks)

Work harder, get closer and be passionate about what you photograph. (Martin Parr)

Not uncommonly one hears some romantic young woman say, 'Oh, I would give anything to be a writer.' But she would not; and 'anything' is not enough. One must give everything. (Isabel Paterson)

I come closer to my desk as to a bulwark against life. (Fernando Pessoa)

My favourite subject at school was avoiding unnecessary work. (Prince Philip)

We always think every other man's job is easier than our own. The better he does it, the easier it looks. (Eden Phillpotts)

Work is a necessity for man. Man invented the alarm clock. (Pablo Picasso)

It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction. (Pablo Picasso)

- sign seen over the table on which he kept his materials when Peter Shulman visited, early 1960s...
Tandis que d'autres parlent Je travaille - While others talk, I work. (Pablo Picasso)

No one can find inner peace except by working, not in a self-centered way, but for the whole human family. (Peace Pilgrim)

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work. (Plato)

You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing. (Amy Poehler)

A man's life is his work; his work is his life. (Jackson Pollock)

If I work toward an end, meantime I am confined to a process. (Hugh Prather)

We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause. (Steven Pressfield)

Art is the only thing you cannot punch a button for. You must do it the old-fashioned way. Stay up and really burn the midnight oil. There are no compromises. (Leontyne Price)

I hope my work provides inspiration for a person to do today what they couldn't do yesterday, no matter what it is. (Noah Purifoy)

A good deal of large and rather interesting work is drifting my way. (Howard Pyle)

If what you're working for really matters, you'll give it all you've got. (Nido Qubein)

To work without attachment is to work without the expectation of reward... (Ramakrishna)

I try to work every day, even when I'm not motivated. Ritual is very important to me. (Mel Ramos)

Example is contagious behavior. (Charles Reade)

The good work proceeds with tenacity, intention, without interruption, with an equal measure of passion and reason and it must surpass that goal the artist has set for himself. (Odilon Redon)

Love, work, and knowledge are the wellsprings of our lives; they should also govern it. (Wilhelm Reich)

In the practice of art... it is necessary to keep a watchful and jealous eye over ourselves; idleness, assuming the specious disguise of industry... may be employed to evade and shuffle off real labor - the real labor of thinking. (Sir Joshua Reynolds)

I work on two levels. I occupy my conscious mind with things to do, lines to draw, movements to organize, rhythms to invent. In fact, I keep myself occupied. But that allows other things to happen which I'm not controlling... the more I exercise my conscious mind, the more open the other things may find that they can come through. (Bridget Riley)

-on her husband, Diego...
His capacity for work breaks clocks and calendars. (Frida Kahlo Rivera)

You must always work. (Auguste Rodin)

You must learn to translate wisdom and strong feelings into labor. (Jim Rohn)

Labor gives birth to ideas. (Jim Rohn)

Work harder on yourself than you do on your job. (Jim Rohn)

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things. (Theodore Roosevelt)

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress. (Philip Roth)

Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart. (Rumi)

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it. (John Ruskin)

Life without work is guilt; work without art is brutality. (John Ruskin)

Whether for life or death, do your own work well. (John Ruskin)

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first is unpleasant and ill-paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. (Bertrand Russell)

I work without commercial considerations. (Paul Russo)

I don't work... I only play. That's how I design. (Paul Sandip)

Mine is the horny hand of toil. (John Singer Sargent)

People who work crossword puzzles know that if they stop making progress, they should put the puzzle down for a while. (Marilyn vos Savant)

- Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity...
Successful creators engage in an ongoing dialogue with their work. (R. Keith Sawyer)

I'm working like hell because I don't have enough time left to do what I want to do. (Graham Scholes)

You have to put yourself in a situation, a lifestyle, that makes you do the work. Even if it's a monastery. (Martin Scorsese)

Work out of your work. Don't work out of anybody else's work. (Richard Serra)

When he worked, he really worked. But when he played, he really PLAYED. (Dr. Seuss)

If all the year were playing holidays, / To sport would be as tedious as to work. (William Shakespeare)

A good day is when no one shows up and you don't have to go anywhere. (Burt Shavitz)

When I do work, I get so much done in such a concentrated time that once I'm through a series, I'm so drained I don't want to get near the camera. (Cindy Sherman)

Working in my mind has always preceded working on my canvas. (Peter Shulman)

Work is a mistake from which I learn. (Herbert Siebner)

The most important thing in industry is the person who does the industry, which is the worker... Labor is the only source of wealth. (Eli Siegel)

-interview, Art of Watercolor, Dec, 2011...
Some of them happen in one go, others get to a point that requires fresh eyes and decisions. They get put away in the "curing shed" while I think about them, or alternatively, forget about them. (Nicholas Simmons)

Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable. (Samuel Smiles)

What my work is, is my approach to it. It's the practice. And my work is about the effort that I make to get there. And I think if there's anything artistic, it's in that middle space. (Anna Deavere Smith)

I think of my work as this kind of holy trinity - funny, dirty, sad. (Jill Soloway)

Work was like a stick. It had two ends. When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality; when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eye-wash. (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him. (Robert Louis Stevenson)

Luck is the by-product of busting your fanny. (Don Sutton)

A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. (Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky)

So many worlds, so much to do, so little done, such things to be. (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

Love turns work into rest. (Saint Teresa of Avila)

Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying. (Studs Terkel)

I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers. (Nikola Tesla)

Whenever I feel I'm working in a groove it's invariably because I feel I am being the benefactor in the situation rather than the beneficiary. I am sharing my art with others, lending my craft to theirs, interest-free with no IOU. (Twyla Tharp)

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; there is where they should be. Now put foundations under them. (Henry David Thoreau)

I worked in between carpools and buying food and cooking and whatever else I had to do. I lived an outside life, but really I was living an inside life. (Anne Truitt)

The capacity to work feeds on itself and has its own course of development. This is what artists have going for them. (Anne Truitt)

I see what keeps people young: work! (Ted Turner)

The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work. (Mark Twain)

I work in waves, because I'm impatient. Because of a certain physicality, of lack of breath from standing. It has to be done and I do take liberties I wouldn't have taken before. (Cy Twombly)

I don't work 9 to 5. (Cy Twombly)

When you like your work every day is a holiday. (Frank Tyger)

The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both. (Lao Tzu)

Know that it is good to work. Work with love and think of liking it when you do it. It is easy and interesting. It is a privilege. There is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and the fear of failure. (Brenda Ueland)

An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it. (Paul Valery)

You have the right to work, but do not become so degenerate as to look for results. Work incessantly, but see something behind the work. Even good deeds can find a man in great bondage. Therefore be not bound by good deeds or by desires for name and fame. (Swami Vivekananda)

When I work I always find something. (Maurice de Vlaminck)

Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need. (Voltaire)

- Girl in Hyacinth Blue...
Everybody works... That's what life is. Work and a little play and a lot of prayer. (Susan Vreeland)

Winners take time to relish their work, knowing that scaling the mountain is what makes the view from the top so exhilarating. (Denis Waitley)

It's kind of surprising that you could just open up a site and let people work. (Jimmy Wales)

If I didn't have the outlet of my songs, I'd be dead, homeless, crazy. (Diane Warren)

In 1978 I decided not to work with Man Ray as an act of self-discipline. I didn't want to rely on him. Man Ray hated not working, though. He would come into my studio, see me drawing or working on photographs, and just slump down at my feet with a big sigh. Fortunately for both of us the year ended. Polaroid had invented a new camera, the twenty-by-twenty-four, and I was invited to Cambridge, Mass., to experiment with it. Naturally, I took Man Ray and we were working again. (William Wegman)

-Shall I Turn Professional? American Photography, 1912...
Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it may be. (Edward Weston)

In our daily life, we encounter people who are angry, deceitful, intent only on satisfying their own needs. There is so much anger, distrust, greed, and pettiness that we are losing our capacity to work well together. (Margaret J. Wheatley)

The work of a master reeks not of the sweat of the brow - suggests no effort - and is finished from its beginning. (James Abbott McNeill Whistler)

Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do. (Oscar Wilde)

When I stop working, the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing. (Tennessee Williams)

You have to be thick-skinned and bull-headed enough to do the work, but sensitive enough to understand the human condition, and that's a really difficult combination. (Peter Wolf)

Mural painting is overly physical. After months of painting, my right arm and shoulder becomes considerably larger than my left. I get so stiff that in order to continue working, I have to have regular massages. (William Woodward)

My work is a conversation with myself. (Lynne Yancha)

Everybody that I've ever seen that enjoyed their job was very good at it. (Chuck Yeager)

Poet and sculptor, do the work, / Nor let the modish painter shirk (William Butler Yeats)

A line will take us hours maybe; / Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught... Better go down upon your marrow-bones / And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones... For to articulate sweet sounds together / Is to work harder than all these, and yet / Be thought an idler by the noisy set... (William Butler Yeats)

A work of art is usually preceded by the art of work. (Margaret Yockers)

Hard labour to succeed in the world? Hard labour no, no, human constitution, human physiology, human intelligence is made of infinite creative potential of Natural Law and therefore no-one has to work hard for success. (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi)

You are the writer, director, and producer of your own life's work. You premiere it to the world every waking second. (Miles Patrick Yohnke)

Success is dependent upon the glands - sweat glands. (Zig Ziglar)

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work. (Emile Zola)

If you're a composer, there's never a moment you're not working. (Ellen Taaffe Zwilich)