Work Quotes · Page 7

Find meaning and motivation in your career with powerful work quotes from achievers who understood the value of purpose-driven effort and craftsman's dedication.

178 quotes · Page 7 of 8

“Divided the work will thus become brief.”

— Martial

“'Tis a hard task this, not to sacrifice manners to wealth.”

— Martial

“Genius consists of equal parts of natural aptitude and hard work.”

— André Maurois

“Why should I let the toad work / Squat on my life?”

— Philip Larkin

“The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.”

— John Buchan

“Genius begins beautiful works, but only labor finishes them.”

— Joseph Joubert

“A work is perfectly finished only when nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away.”

— Joseph Joubert

“Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to…”

— Rollo May

“Reason works better when emotions are present; the person sees sharper and more accurately when his emotions are engaged.”

— Rollo May

“Of course, there are many things to be said for the afternoon performance, chief among them being that it cuts in so generously on one's work.”

— Dorothy Parker

“It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value.”

— David Hume

“God hides nothing. His very work from the beginning is revelation, — a casting aside of veil after veil, a showing unto men of truth after truth.”

— George MacDonald

“Though one discovery always surpasses another, and though the chemical and physical knowledge accumulated since his time has gone beyond all Lavoisier's dreams, his work, like…”

— Louis Pasteur

“But it is the software that gives the orders, acting on the outside world and on machines that exist only as functions of software and evolve so that they can work out ever more…”

— Italo Calvino

“Labour itself is but a sorrowful song, The protest of the weak against the strong.”

— Frederick William Faber

“Works of art express space as opportunity for movement and action.”

— John Dewey

“The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under…”

— John Cheever

“I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.”

— J.K. Rowling

“Don’t let me get away with anything. Don’t try to play my game. Be real. Be passionate. Hold your ideas. Give me resistance. Give me traction I can work against.”

— Stephen Colbert