The highest reward for one's toil is not what one gets for it
but what one becomes by it.

-John Ruskin

The great composer does not set to work because he or she is inspired, but becomes inspired because he or she is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his or her figures. They didn't waste time waiting for an inspiration.

-Ernest Newman

Like the star that shines afar,
Without haste and without rest,
Let each one wheel with steady sway
Round the task that rules the day,
And do their best.

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at a rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it--but all that had gone before.
-Jacob Riis

Luck means the hardships and privations which you have not hesitated to endure; the long nights you have devoted to work. Luck means the appointments you have never failed to keep; the trains you have never failed to catch.

-Max O'Rell

The sincerest satisfactions in life come in doing and not dodging duty; in meeting and solving problems, in facing facts, in being a dependable person.

-Richard L. Evans


I studied the lives of great men and women, and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.

-Harry S. Truman


So much of unhappiness, it seems to me, is due to nerves; and bad nerves are the result of having nothing to do, or doing a thing badly, unsuccessfully or incompetently. Of all the unhappy people in the world, the unhappiest are those who have not found something they want to do. True happiness comes to those who do their work well, followed by a refreshing period of rest. True happiness comes from the right amount of work for the day.


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--not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of other people for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it.


I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.

-Helen Keller


You cannot build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his or her own improvement, and at the same time show a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.
-Marie Curie


Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other.

-Henry David Thoreau


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

-Thomas A. Edison

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half people's hunger.

-Kahlil Gibran

Happiness, I have discovered, is nearly always a rebound from hard work. It is one of the follies of men to imagine that they can enjoy mere thought, or emotion, or sentiment! As well try to eat beauty! For happiness must be tricked! She loves to see people at work. She loves sweat, weariness, self-sacrifice. She will not be found in palaces but lurking in cornfields and factories and hovering over littered desks: she crowns the unconscious head of the busy child. If you look up suddenly from hard work, you will see her,--but if you look too long she fades sorrowfully away.
-David Grayson


The beauty of work depends upon the way we meet it, whether we arm ourselves each morning to attack it as an enemy that must be vanquished before night comes--or whether we open our eyes with the sunrise to welcome it as an approaching friend who will keep us delightful company and who will make us feel at evening that the day was well worth its fatigue.
-Lucy Larcom


Starting out to make money is the greatest mistake in life. Do what you feel you have a flair for doing, and if you are good enough at it, the money will come.

-Greer Garson

Labor disgraces no person; unfortunately, you occasionally find people who disgrace labor.

-Ulysses S. Grant


Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Half effort does not produce half results, it produces no results. Work, continuous work and hard work, is the only way to accomplish results that last.

-Hamilton Holt


Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven't planted.

-David Bly

Continuity of purpose is one of the most essential ingredients of happiness in the long run, and for most people this comes chiefly through their work.

-Bertrand Russell



The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously, and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second is disastrous.

-Margot Fonteyn


I don't like work, but I like what is in work--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself, not for others--what no other person can ever know.
-Joseph Conrad


The return from your work must be the satisfaction that work brings you and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this--with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need--this life is hell.

-William du Bois

Work nourishes the soul. All the creatures of the universe are busy doing work, and we honor life when we work. The type of work is not important: the fact of the work is. All work feeds the soul if it is honest and done to the best of our abilities and if it brings joy to others.
-Matthew Fox


One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his or her work important.

-Bertrand Russell