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Work: Activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a result.  Oxford Dictionary

• Work: A job or activity that you do regularly especially in order to earn money. Merriam Webster
• Work: Exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil. Dictionary.com
• Work: An activity, such as a job, that a person uses physical or mental effort to do, usually for money. Cambridge Dictionary
• Hard work,  Purpose,  Meaning,  Productivity,  Diligence,  Effort,  Losing your job

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The right work is not a prison sentence but a gift

• Work is not man’s punishment. It is his reward and his strength and his pleasure. George Sand
• Let us realize that: the privilege to work is a gift, the power to work is a blessing, the love of work is success! David O. McKay
• Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.  Malcolm Gladwell
• Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him. John Burroughs
• Life is a gift

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Work can bring great rewards

• Manual labor to my father was not only good and decent for its own sake, but as he was given to saying, it straightened out one’s thoughts. Mary Ellen Chase
• May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work. John O’Donohue
• They who labor diligently need never despair, for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor. Menander
• The foundation of lasting self-confidence and self-esteem is excellence, mastery of our work. Brian Tracy
• Loyal and efficient work in a great cause, even though it may not be immediately recognized, ultimately bears fruit. Jawaharlal Nehru

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Work can bring great happiness and fulfilment …

• All happiness depends on courage and work. Honoré de Balzac
• Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours. Dale Carnegie
• 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
• Earning happiness means doing good and working, not speculating and being lazy. Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction.  Anne Frank
• Few persons realize how much of their happiness is dependent upon their work, upon the fact that they are busy and not left to feed upon themselves. Blessed is the person who has some congenial work, some occupation in which to place one’s heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces that are in him or her.  John Burroughs
• Happiness is the real sense of fulfillment that comes from hard work. Joseph Barbara
• 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
• There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something. Henry Ford
• Occupation was one of the pleasures of paradise, and we cannot be happy without it. Anna Brownell Jameson
• 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. Lin Yutang
• Happiness,  Fulfilment

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… if you have a sense of success in it

• 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. John Ruskin
• The secret of joy in work is contained in one word–excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it. Pearl S. Buck
• Success,  Achievement

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Work nourishes the soul …

• 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
• Nothing feeds the center of being so much as creative work. Anne Morrow Lindbergh
• The soul doesn’t distinguish between good and bad as much as between what is nutritious and what isn’t. Finding the right work is like discovering your own soul in the world. Thomas Moore
• 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
• When our inner self connects to our work and our work to our inner self, the work knows no limit, for the inner self knows no limit. Matthew Fox
• The soul

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… if you feel it is worth doing

• Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. Theodore Roosevelt
• I would be content with any job, however thankless, in any quarter, however remote, if I had the chance of making a corner of the desert blossom and a solitary place glad. John Buchan
• No man needs sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. Theodore Roosevelt
• Meaning

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Work can bring an intense sense of satisfaction

• I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it and one is the feeling that I haven’t just been sitting on my ass all afternoon. William F. Buckley
• Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction. Anne Frank
• Earning happiness means doing good and working, not speculating and being lazy. Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction.  Anne Frank
• The three horrors of modern life – talk without meaning, desire without love, work without satisfaction. Mignon McLaughlin
• Those three things – autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward – are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. Malcolm Gladwell

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Work can be fun

• Work is much more fun than fun. Noel Coward
• Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun. Colleen C. Barrett
• Fun

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Work can be an expression of creativity

• Work is not slavery, then. Work is creativity. It is the expression of ourselves that no one else can duplicate. Joan Chittister
• Work is creativity accompanied by the comforting that one is bringing forth something really good and necessary, with a conviction that a sudden, arbitrary cessation would cause a sensitive void, produce a loss. Jenny Heynrichs
• Creativity,  Creative expression

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Work can keep you young

• To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth. Pearl S. Buck
• I believe in hard work. It keeps the wrinkles out of the mind and the spirit. It helps to keep a woman young. Helena Rubinstein
• Youth

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Work can be part spiritual

• Put in an honest day’s work. It is the building block of a spiritual life. Philip T. Sudo
• Spirituality

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Work can realise dreams and opportunities

• Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls, and looks like work. Thomas A. Edison
• Go and get your things,’ he said. ‘Dreams mean work.’ Paulo Coelho
• Dreams,  Opportunity

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Work is important for mental health

• It takes a highly intellectual individual to enjoy leisure. . . . Most of us had better count on working. What a man really wants is creative challenge with sufficient skills to bring him within the reach of success so that he may have the expanding joy of achievement. . . . Few people overwork; plenty overeat, overworry, overdrink. . . . Few realize real joy and happiness of conquest. The basis of mental health for the average adult is more work, provided the work is not mere drudgery. Fay B. Nash
• Health

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Work can even be a way out of depression

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

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Without work, life goes rotten

• The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure is occupaton. George Bernard Shaw
• A lot of what passes for depression these days is nothing more than a body saying that it needs work. Geoffrey Norman
• Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies. Albert Camus
• A human being must have occupation, of he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world. Dorothy L. Sayers
• Our labour preserves us from three great evils — weariness, vice, and want. Voltaire
• Work keeps us from three great evils, boredom, vice and need. Voltaire
• Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds. Gordon B. Hinckley.

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Find work that you love …

• Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else. M. Barrie
• If a man love the labour of any trade apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him. Robert Louis Stevenson
• If you choose a job that you like you will never have to work a day in your life. Confucius
• In work, do what you enjoy. Lao Tzu
• Where our joy is, there should our work be. Tertullian
• The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work. Richard Bach
• Whenever it is possible, a boy should choose some occupation which he should do even if he did not need the money. William Lyon Phelps
• When work, commitment, and pleasure all become one and you reach that deep well where passion lives, nothing is impossible. Nancy Coey
• Do what you love,  Passion,  Enthusiasm

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… and you will add great quality, pleasure and joy to your life …

• Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. Confucius
• Find a job you like and you add five days to every week. H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
• When you like your work every day is a holiday. Frank Tyger
• Find work you love (but don’t hurry and rush into it). Do the best you can at it.  Let yourself enjoy every day at work, every task that you have to accomplish, and you’ll find that getting up in the morning becomes a pleasure, and coming home from work isn’t such a great relief– it’s going from one place you like to another. Tom Walsh
• When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery. Maxim Gorky
• If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are—if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.  Joseph Campbell
• Joy,  Pleasure,  Enjoyment

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Find work you love and you will blur the line between work and play

• Work and play can be the same. When you are following your energy and doing what you want to do all the time, the distinction between work and play dissolves. Work is no longer what you have to do, and play what you want to do. When you are doing what you love, you may work harder and produce more than ever before, because you are having fun. Shakti Gawain
• If I get to pick what I want to do, then it’s play…if someone else tells me that I have to do it, then it’s work. Patricia Nourot
• When he worked, he really worked. But when he played, he really PLAYED. Seuss
• The difference between work and play is only a matter of attitude. Work, fully done, is play. Gerald G. May
• The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play. Arnold Toynbee
• This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.  Alan Wilson Watts
• Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. Mark Twain
• Play

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Find work you love and you will nourish your soul

• When you spend your life doing what you love to do, you are nourishing your Soul. It matters not what you do, only that you love whatever you happen to do.  Some of the happiest people I’ve known have been nannies, gardeners, and housekeepers.  They put their hearts into their work, and they used the work itself as a vehicle to nourish their Souls. I’ve known other people with more prestigious professions who absolutely hated their jobs.  What good is it to be a doctor or a professional if you do not genuinely love what you do? Working in a job you do not love does nothing to nourish your Soul. Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross
• The soul

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Find work you love and you will do great work

• 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.If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. Steve Jobs
• The secret of joy in work is contained in one word–excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it. Pearl S. Buck
• Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. Aristotle
• What is it that you like doing? If you don’t like it, get out of it, because you’ll be lousy at it. Lee Iacocca

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Find work you love and you will succeed

• Make sure that the career you choose is one you enjoy. If you don’t enjoy what you are doing, it will be difficult to give the extra time, effort and devotion it takes to be a success. Kathy Whitworth
• I’d rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.  George Burns
• To be successful, the first thing to do is fall in love with your work. Sister Mary Lauretta
• Success

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Find work in what you’re good at

• Do what you feel you have a flair for doing, and if you are good enough at it, the money will come. Greer Garson

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Find work that is in keeping with your purpose

• An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man’s entire existence. Honoré de Balzac
• 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
• Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart. Rumi
• Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. the Buddha
• Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose. Leonardo da Vinci
• There is a criterion by which you can ascertain whether or not your work on earth is over. The criterion is: Are you still alive? If you are, there is still more work for you to do. Shantidasa
• Purpose

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Find work that gives you a sense of meaning

• Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.  Malcolm Gladwell
• I believe that earning your living doing something you enjoy is one of the very best ways to nourish yourself. But even if you are employed at something that is not your ideal work, it is important to find ways to take as much pleasure in it as possible.  Living in the present moment can make ordinary activities more interesting and joyful; you may be surprised, if you only look, at what you will find.  If you try to stay connected with why you are doing what you are doing, for example, then even the parts of your life that aren’t especially interesting can become more meaningful. Nathaniel Branden
• It’s not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It’s whether or not our work fulfills us. Being a teacher is meaningful. Malcolm Gladwell
• The belief that you can have a meaningful career is the first step to finding one.  Sean Aiken
• Meaning

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Approach work with a positive attitude

• Let us realize that: the privilege to work is a gift, the power to work is a blessing, the love of work is success! David O. McKay
• What a person accomplishes in a day depends upon the way in which he or she approaches their tasks. When we accept tough jobs as a challenge to our ability and wade into them with joy and enthusiasm, miracles can happen. When we do our work with a dynamic, conquering spirit, we get things done. Arland Gilbert
• To bring one’s self to a frame of mind and to the proper energy to accomplish things that require plain hard work continuously is the one big battle that everyone has. When this battle is won for all time, then everything is easy. Thomas A. Buckner
• There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes. William J. Bennett
• The difference between work and play is only a matter of attitude. Work, fully done, is play. Gerald G. May
• When we do our work with a dynamic, conquering spirit, we get things done. Arland Gilbert
• 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
• As one woman told me, “When I decided to come in to work happy, everybody around me became happy.” This woman had decided to quit a job she hated, and on the last day of her two weeks’ notice, she woke up happy.  At the end of the day, she noticed that everybody around her was happy, too– so she didn’t quit after all.  She decided to come to work happy instead. Two years later, she’s still on the job, radiating happiness and love. Bernie Siegel
• Attitude,  Perception,  Cheerfulness,  Positivity

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Believe in your work

• 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
• Belief

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Have respect for the work you do

• At the end of the day, you want to respect what you do. In a certain sense, our work is us. We get into it, and it gets into us. John W. Rowe
• If you wish to work properly, you should never lose sight of two great principles: first, a profound respect for the work undertaken, and second, a complete indifference to its fruits.  Thus only can you work with the proper attitude. Brahmananda
• When someone at a party asks you “What Do You Do,”what do you say? And how do you feel when you say it? Danielle LaPorte
• Respect,  Self-respect

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See your work as a form of service

• It is the experience of those who have tried it, that working from a sense of duty, working for the work’s sake, working as a service, instead of for a living, or to make money, or in order to hoard up wealth, brings blessings into the life. Henry T. Hamblin
• Work done in the true spirit of service is considered as worship. Baha Allah
• Service,  Making a difference

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Take pride in your work

• What’s really important in life? Sitting on a beach? Looking the television eight hours a day? I think we have to appreciate that we’re alive for only a limited period of time, and we’ll spend most of our lives working. That being the case, I believe one of the most important priorities is to do whatever we do as well as we can. We should take pride in that. Victor Kiam
• A great business success was probably never attained by chasing the dollar, but is due to pride in one’s work, the pride that makes business an art. Henry L. Doherty
• Pride,  Self-esteem

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Develop a genuine interest in your work

• By thinking the right thoughts, you can make any job less distasteful. Your boss wants you to be interested in your job so that he or she will make more money. But let’s forget about what the boss wants.  Think only of what getting interested in your job will do for you.  Remind yourself that it may double the amount of happiness you get out of life, for you spend about one half of your waking hours at your work, and if you don’t find happiness in your work, you may never find it anywhere.  Keep reminding yourself that getting interested in your job will take your mind off your worries, and, in the long run, will probably bring promotion and increased pay.  Even if it doesn’t do that, it will reduce fatigue to a minimum and help you enjoy your hours of leisure. Dale Carnegie
• Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting.  And you don’t do that by sitting around wondering about yourself. Katharine Hepburn
• That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it. Charles Bukowski

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Don’t work purely for the money

• A great business success was probably never attained by chasing the dollar, but is due to pride in one’s work, the pride that makes business an art. Henry L. Doherty
• I believe you are your work. Don’t trade the stuff of your life, time, for nothing more than dollars. That’s a rotten bargain.  Rita Mae Brown
• Working as a service, instead of for a living, or to make money, or in order to hoard up wealth, brings blessings into the life. Henry T. Hamblin
• Whenever it is possible, people should choose some occupation which they should do even if they did not need the money. William Lyon Phelps
• Never work just for money or for power. They won’t save your soul or help you sleep at night. Marian Wright Edelman
• 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
• True wealth,  Wealth,  Live rich, don’t die rich

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Put love into your work

• All work is empty save when there is love. And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God. Khalil Gibran
• Work without love is slavery. Mother Teresa
• 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. Khalil Gibran
• If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work. Kahlil Gibran
• Love

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Put passion into your work …

• Desire! That’s the one secret of every man’s career. Not education. Not being born with hidden talents. Desire. Bobby Unser
• When people go to work, they shouldn’t have to leave their hearts at home. Betty Bender
• It does not matter what your work is on the earth. What does matter is that you do your work with all your heart and with all your strength and all your mind. White Eagle
• That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it. Charles Bukowski
• The force, the mass of character, mind, heart, or soul that a man can put into any work is the most important factor in that work. P. Peabody
• Passion,  Immerse yourself in what you do,  Enthusiasm

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… doing your best and giving it your all

• Demand the best from yourself, because others will demand the best from you… Successful people don’t simply give a project hard work. They give it their best work. Win Borden
• Do your work; not just your work and no more, but a little more for the lavishings sake that little more which is worth all the rest.  Dean Briggs
• 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 now. T. Barnum
• Do your best

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Strive for excellence in your work

• All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• As Aristotle said, ‘Excellence is a habit.’ I would say furthermore that excellence is made constant through the feeling that comes right after one has completed a work which he himself finds undeniably awe-inspiring. He only wants to relax until he’s ready to renew such a feeling all over again because to him, all else has become absolutely trivial. Criss Jami
• The secret of joy in work is contained in one word–excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it. Pearl S. Buck
• If one is called to be a street sweeper, one should sweep the streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. One should sweep the streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his or her job well. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Those who would attain to any marked degree of excellence in a chosen pursuit must work, and work hard for it, prince or peasant. Bayard Taylor
• The secret of greatness is simple: do better work than any other man in your field – and keep on doing it. Wilfred A. Peterson
• Excellence

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Realise no work is perfect

• If you have a job without aggravation, you don’t have a job. Malcolm Forbes

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Work to find yourself

• 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
• Discovery,  Self-knowledge

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Work to become

• We work to become, not to acquire. Elbert Hubbard
• The most important question to ask on the job is not “What am I getting?” The most important question to ask on the job is “What am I becoming?” Jim Rohn
• The highest reward for people’s toil is not what they get for it but what they become by it. John Ruskin

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Work to use yourself up in a worthy purpose

• I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. George Bernard Shaw
• It is better to wear out than to rust out. Richard Chamberland
• This is the true joy in life being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a might one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown in the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you consistent. George Bernard Shaw
• Purpose

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Create effective work habits

• Your success in life and work will be determined by the kinds of habits that you develop over time. The habit of setting priorities, overcoming procrastination, and getting on with your most important task is a mental and physical skill. As such, this habit is learnable through practice and repetition, over and over again, until it locks into your subsconscious mind and becomes a permanent part of your behaviour. Brian Tracy
• People with good self-control mainly use it not for rescue in emergencies but rather to develop effective habits and routines in school and at work. Roy Baumeister
• Habit

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Work smart

• Efficiency is intelligent laziness. David Dunham
• One must, however, not just work hard. One must work smart. As the saying goes, the efficient person gets the job done right the effective person gets the right job done. John-Roger and Peter McWilliams
• The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. Henry David Thoreau
• The combination of hard work and smart work is efficient work. Robert Half
• A sense of the value of time–that is, of the best way to divide one’s time into one’s various activities- -is an essential preliminary to efficient work; it is the only method of avoiding hurry. Arnold Bennett
• Intelligence,  Efficiency,  Productivity

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Be effective in your work

• Don’t mistake activity with achievement. John Wooden
• The really idle man get nowhere. The perpetually busy man does not get much farther. Sir Heneage Ogilvie
• Working on the right thing is more important than working hard. Caterina Fake
• It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the business of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall. Stephen Covey
• Effectiveness

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Don’t wait for the right mood

• I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work. Pearl S. Buck
• Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it. Madeleine L’Engle
• Mood

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Work early

• A person who has not done one half his day’s work by ten o’clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone. Emily Brontë

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Work on yourself, not just your job

• 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
• Work harder on yourself than you do on your job. Jim Rohn
• If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development.  Brian Tracy
• Character,  Envision who you want to become

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Work with a vision

• A vision without work is but a dream; a work without a vision is drudgery, alas; a vision and a work is the hope of the world. From a church in Sussex
• Vision

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Learn your trade

• Don’t waste time learning the “tricks of the trade.” Instead, learn the trade. Jackson Brown, Jr.

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Take ownership of your career

• The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else…The driving force of a career must come from the individual. Remember: Jobs are owned by the company, you own your career!  Earl Nightingale

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Look for ways to be original and innovative in your work

• As a job seeker, remember this: You only lack experience if they want it done the same old way. Robert Brault
• Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a raise. Robert Brault
• Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work. Gustave Flaubert
• Innovation

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Aim high in work

• Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood . . . Make big plans; aim high in hope and work. Daniel Burnham

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Focus in your work

• Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus. Alexander Graham
• To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. Mary Oliver
• Eliminating all distractions for a set time while you work is one of the most effective ways to get things done. So, lock your door, put a sign up, turn off your phone, close your email application, disconnect your internet connection.  You can’t remain in hiding forever, but you can be twice as productive while you are.  Marc and Angel Chernoff
• Focus

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Make time for thinking in your work

• Thinking is the hardest work anyone can do, which is probably the reason why we have so few thinkers. Thomas S. Monson
• An hour of effective, precise, hard, disciplined, and integrated thinking can be worth a month of hard work. Thinking is the very essence of, and the most difficult thing to do in, business and life. Empire builders spend hour after hour on mental work…while others party. If you’re not consciously aware of putting forth the effort to exert self- guided integrated thinking, if you don’t act beyond your feelings and you take the path of least resistance, then you’re giving in to laziness and no longer control your life. David Kekich
• A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor. Victor Hugo
• Set aside dedicated time to think

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Set goals in your work

• Give yourself something to work toward constantly. Mary Kay Ash
• Goal setting

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By all means take your work seriously …

• The most 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 disastrous. Margot Fonteyn

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… but not to excess

• One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. Bertrand Russell
• It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious. John Irving
• A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.  Marilyn Monroe
• Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you’re wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn’t love you anymore. Lady Gaga
• Excess

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Have a job but have a life too

• Don’t ever confuse the two, your life and your work. That’s what I have to say. The second is only a part of the first. Anna Quindlen
• You don’t have to die in order to make a living. Lynn Johnston
• You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are. So I suppose the best piece of advice I could give anyone is pretty simple: get a life. Anna Quindlen
• More men are killed by overwork than the importance of this world justifies. Rudyard Kipling
• Nobody on his deathbed ever said, “I wish I had spent more time at the office.” Paul Tsongas
• A life spent in constant labor is a life wasted, save a man be such a fool as to regard a fulsome obituary notice as ample reward. George Jean Nathan
• Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live. Margaret Fuller
• Don’t confuse having a career with having a life. Hillary Rodham Clinton
• Don’t let making a living prevent you from making a life.  John Wooden

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Take breaks from your work and enjoy your leisure time

• Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen. Leonardo da Vinci
• 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
• In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you. Leo Tolstoy
• The idle man does not know what it is to enjoy rest. Albert Einstein
• Suppose you came upon someone in the woods working to saw down a tree. They are exhausted from working for hours. You suggest they take a break to sharpen the saw. They might reply, ” I didn’t have time to sharpen the saw, I’m busy sawing!” Stephen Covey
• Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected. George Macdonald
• 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. Lin Yutang
• Rest and renewal

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Find balance between work and the rest of your life

• There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life. Alain de Botton
• Balance in your life between work and your personal life is very important. Without balance, you eventually burn out, negatively affecting your performance at work.  Byron Pulsifer
• You were intended not only to work, but to rest, laugh, play, and have proper leisure and enjoyment. To develop an all- around personality you must have interest outside of your regular vocation that will serve to balance your business responsibilities. Grenville Kleiser
• There’s time for fun, and there’s time for work. The relationship between the two seems to be a pattern within all natural systems; you can feel it in your gut whether you’re on or off track.  When your life is all fun and no work, you feel unclean somehow.  When it’s all work and no fun, you’re out of balance and hardly of use to anyone.  In fact, it’s because the problems of the world are so serious that we need to do whatever it takes to lighten up sometimes.  One of the ways you know you’re in the flow is if you’re seriously of service and seriously enjoying yourself at the same time. It feels right because it is right.  Marianne Williamson
• Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Robert Fulgham
• It’s all about quality of life; finding a happy balance between work, friends and family.  Philip Green
• Balance is a feeling derived from being whole and complete; it’s a sense of harmony. It is essential to maintaining quality in life and work. Natalie A. Gahrmann
• Work, love and play are the great balance wheels of man’s being. Orison Swett Marden
• Your work. Your relationships. Your inner life. In his book of the same name, David Whyte calls these “the three marriages.” These fundamental components of our existence must work to support one another, not to vie for unfaltering attention. Danielle LaPorte
• Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And youre keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. And once you truly understand the lesson of the five balls, you will have the beginnings of balance in your life. James Patterson
• When people talk about a work-life balance, they mean that we should find a balance between work and our personal lives, which is definitely true. But it’s important to realize that if work is really something you love, you don’t need to cut it short in order to spend more time at home in front of the television. So the key is to remember that what we’re looking for is a balance between the things we love — not just work and the rest of life, but work and family and hobbies and chores and everything else.  Leo Babauta
• Full engagement begins with feeling eager to get to work in the morning, equally happy to return home in the evening and capable of setting clear boundaries between the two.  Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
• Balance

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Our work rubs off on who we are …

• You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid, monotonous work, chances are you’ll end up boring, stupid, and monotonous. Bob Black
• Work is an extension of personality. It is achievement. It is one of the ways in which a person measures his or her worth and humanity. Peter F. Drucker
• At the end of the day, you want to respect what you do. In a certain sense, our work is us. We get into it, and it gets into us. John W. Rowe

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… but we are better off not letting our work define us

• I am a person before I am anything else. I never say I am a writer. I never say I am an artist…I am a person who does those things. Edward Gorey
• Sometimes you have to be forced away from your work to realize you’ve made too much of it, to remember it doesn’t define you. Rachel Held Evans
• For many people a job is more than an income — it’s an important part of who we are. So a career transition of any sort is one of the most unsettling experiences you can face in your life. Paul Clitheroe

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We live in a world where certain jobs are not as respected

• People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up. Ogden Nash
• Labor disgraces no person; unfortunately, you occasionally find people who disgrace labor. Ulysses S. Grant

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However, be assured there is great dignity in all form of labour from the heart

• All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Dignity does not float down from heaven it cannot be purchased nor manufactured. It is a reward reserved for those who labor with diligence. Bill Hybels
• There’s no labor we can do that’s undignified, if we do it right. Bill Cosby
• There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes. William J. Bennett, The Book of Virtues
• No human pursuit achieves dignity until it can be called work. Beryl Markham
• No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. Booker T. Washington
• An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. John W. Gardner
• Every job from the heart is, ultimately, of equal value. The nurse injects the syringe; the writer slides the pen; the farmer plows the dirt; the comedian draws the laughter. Monetary income is the perfect deceiver of a man’s true worth. Criss Jami
• If one is called to be a street sweeper, one should sweep the streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. One should sweep the streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his or her job well. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Dignity

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The secret in life is to work hard …

• 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
• I don’t pretend to tell people how to live their lives other than to do the right thing and work hard. Everything else should take care of itself. Dave Anderson
• Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds. Gordon B. Hinckley
• The man who rolls up his sleeves seldom loses his shirt. Thomas Cowan
• Is there magic in this world? Certainly! But it is not the kind of magic written about in fantasy stories. It is the kind of magic that comes from ideas and the hard work it often takes to make them real. Robert Fanney
• I’ve met a few people in my time who were enthusiastic about hard work. And it was just my luck that all of them happened to be men I was working for at the time. Bill Gold
• Hard work,  Diligence

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… if you want to get anywhere …

• I learned that the only way you are going to get anywhere in life is to work hard at it. Whether you’re a musician, a writer, an athlete or a businessman, there is no getting around it. If you do, you’ll win if you don’t you won’t. Bruce Jenner
• I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work. Thomas A. Edison
• 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
• 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
• The most practical, beautiful, workable philosophy in the world won’t work if you won’t.  Zig Ziglar
• If you care about what you do and work hard at it, there isn’t anything you can’t do if you want to. Jim Henson
• Progress,  Success,  Achievement

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… if you want to be successful…

• Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you’re willing to pay the price. Vince Lombardi
• Success is dependent upon the glands sweat glands. Zig Ziglar
• The only thing that separates successful people from the ones who aren’t is the willingness to work very, very hard. Helen Gurley Brown
• Instead of thinking about where you are, think about where you want to be. It takes twenty years of hard work to become an overnight success. Diana Rankin
• Working hard overcomes a whole lot of other obstacles. You can have unbelievable intelligence, you can have connections, you can have opportunities fall out of the sky. But in the end, hard work is the true, enduring characteristic of successful people. Rear Admiral Marsha Evans
• Successful people are not gifted; they just work hard and then succeed on purpose. K. Nielson
• I studied the lives of great men and women, and I found that the people 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
• Success

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… if you want to reap a harvest…

• Before the reward there must be labor. You plant before you harvest. You sow in tears before you reap joy. Ralph Ransom
• Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted. David Bly

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… if you want to be lucky…

• The harder I work, the luckier I get. Sam Goldwyn
• I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest who complained of bad luck. Henry Ward Beecher
• Luck is always waiting for something to turn up. Labor, with keen eyes and strong will, always turns up something. Luck lies in bed and wishes the postman will bring news of a legacy. Labor turns out at six o’clock and with busy pen or ringing hammer, lays the foundation of a competence. Luck whines. Labor whistles. Luck relies on chance, labor on character. Richard Cobden
• 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
• Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it, and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t. Lucille Ball
• Luck

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… if you want to excel at what you do

• Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work. Henry Ford
• Those who would attain to any marked degree of excellence in a chosen pursuit must work, and work hard for it, prince or peasant. Bayard Taylor
• Much good work is lost for the lack of a little more. Edward H. Harriman
• If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all. Michelangelo
• Industry and determination can do anything that genius and advantage can do and many things that they cannot. Theodore Roosevelt.
• Excellence,  Mastery,  Expertise

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Not everyone loves work

• I have never liked working. To me a job is an invasion of privacy. Danny McGoorty
• Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so? There’s a support group for that. It’s called everybody, and they meet at the bar. Drew Carey
• If work were nice, the rich would not have left it to the poor. Haitian proverb
• My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it. I never did like to work, and I don’t deny it. I’d rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh – anything but work. Abraham Lincoln

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Some advocate laziness …

• I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early. Charles Lamb
• I’ve heard that hard work never killed anyone, but I say why take the chance? Ronald Reagan
• I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. Jerome K. Jerome
• We pretend to work because they pretend to pay us.
• Many people quit looking for work when they find a job.
• Laziness,  Efficiency

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… for by working hard, you’ll just be given more to do

• Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties. Doug Larson
• By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day. Robert Frost
• The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more. Jonas Salk

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Thoughts on meetings

• If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.”  Dave Barry
• A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.
• Meetings and conventions are something you attend to learn things you already know, but don’t have time to put into practice, because there are too many meetings and conventions to attend.

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Thoughts on being a boss

• If you are the boss it’s wise to remember that there are lots of things you don’t know and lots of people who hope you won’t find out. Michael Josephson
• In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way. Tina Fey

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• A baseball game is twice as much fun if you’re seeing it on the company’s time. William C. Feather
• A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don’t have a J.O.B. Fats Domino
• Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties. Doug Larson
• Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed be doing at that moment. Robert Benchley
• Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could. Charles J. Sykes
• Born loser : The window washer who steps back to admire his work.
• By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day. Robert Frost
• Corporations no longer try to fit square pegs into round holes; they just fit them into square cubicles. Robert Brault
• Even a mosquito doesn’t get a slap on the back until it starts to work.
• Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work. Robert Orben
• Executive Ability: The art of getting the credit for all the hard work that somebody else does.
• Executive: An under-worked over-paid person who is in over their head. Anonymous
• Farm: A hunk of land on which if you get up early enough mornings and work late enough nights you’ll make a fortune – if you strike oil on it.   Jim Jordan
• For a woman to get half as much credit as a man, she has to work twice as hard, and be twice as smart. Fortunately, that isn’t difficult.
• Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil. Paul Getty
• Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
• Hard work is an accumulation of easy things that should have been done last week
• Hard work is damn near as overrated as monogamy. Huey Long
• Hard work never killed anybody but why take a chance? Charlie McCarthy
• 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
• He worked like hell in the country so he could live in the city where he worked like hell so he could live in the country. Don Marquis
• Honeymoon: The vacation a man takes before starting to work for a new boss.
• I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early. Charles Lamb
• I am definitely going to take a course on time management… just as soon as I can work it into my schedule. Louis E. Boone
• I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it through not dying. Woody Allen
• I don’t work on weekends, or any other day that ends with “Y”.
• I like to call in sick to work at places where I’ve never held a job. Then when the manager tells me I don’t work there, I tell them I’d like to. But not today, as I’m sick. Jarod Kintz
• I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. Jerome K. Jerome
• I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by. Douglas Adams
• I love teamwork. I love the idea of everyone rallying together to help me win. Jarod Kintz
• I pretend to work as long as they pretend to pay me.
• I used to work at the unemployment office. I hated it, because when they fired me, I had to show up to work anyway. Wallace Wang
• I worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty. Groucho Marx
• I’m working as hard as I can to get my life and my cash to run out at the same time. If I can just die after lunch Tuesday everything would be perfect. Doug Sanders
• I’ve heard that hard work never killed anyone, but I say why take the chance? Ronald Reagan
• I’ve met a few people in my time who were enthusiastic about hard work. And it was just my luck that all of them happened to be men I was working for at the time. Bill Gold
• I’ve used up all my sick days so I’m calling in dead.
• I’m too lazy to work and too scared to steal. Tom Bolton
• If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut. Albert Einstein
• If a trainstation is where the train stops, what’s a workstation?
• If hard work is the key to success most people would rather pick the lock. Claude McDonald
• If hard work were such a wonderful thing surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves. Lane Kirkland
• If I told you I’ve worked hard to get where I’m at I’d be lying because I have no idea where I am right now. Jarod Kintz
• If I were a grave-digger or even a hangman there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment. Douglas Jerrold
• If inflation continues to soar, you’re going to have to work like a dog just to live like one. George Gobel
• If the world were coming to an end tomorrow, I’d probably call in sick to work. Jarod Kintz
• If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things. Plato
• If you don’t like your job you don’t strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way. Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
• In fifty years, he never worked a day. To him, nine to five was odds on a horse. Archie Bunker
• It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose your own. Harry S. Truman
• Law of the Alibi: If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the very next morning you will have a flat tire.
• Man : A creature made at the end of a week’s work when God was tired.
• Monday is a lame way to spend 1/7 of your life.
• Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes.
• My formula for success is rise early work late and strike oil. Paul Getty
• Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so? There’s a support group for that. It’s called everybody, and they meet at the bar. Drew Carey
• Researchers at Harvard say that taking a power nap for an hour in the afternoon can totally refresh you. They say that by the time you wake up you’ll feel so good, you’ll be able to start looking for a new job. Jay Leno
• Statistics indicate that, as a result of overwork, modern executives are dropping like flies on the nation’s golf courses. Ira Wallach
• Thank you paper clips, for being like staples that can’t commit. Jimmy Fallon
• The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity. George Carlin
• The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application form. Stanley J. Randall
• The first five days after the weekend are always the hardest.
• There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it. Andrew Jackson
• This isn’t an office. It’s hell with fluorescent lighting.
• Today’s Parenting Tip: Treat a difficult child the way you would your boss at work. Praise his achievements, ignore his tantrums and resist the urge to sit him down and explain to him how his brain is not yet fully developed. Robert Brault
• Wednesdays are like Mondays in the middle of the week! Lee Fox Williams
• What the world really needs is more love and less paper work. Pearl Bailey
• When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: ‘Whose?” Don Marquis
• When you see what some girls marry, you realize how they must hate to work for a living. Helen Rowland
• Work is a necessary evil to be avoided. Mark Twain
• Work is the curse of the drinking classes. Oscar Wilde
• Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do. Oscar Wilde
• Work: An unpopular way to earn money.
• Your Business clothes are naturally attracted to staining liquids. This attraction is strongest just before an important meeting. Scott Adams