The collection / 14,814 fragments

Work.

Explore passages mentioning work, labour. Topic suggestions use transparent word matching, not scholarly classification. Reviewed editorial meanings may also connect entries to this topic; those assignments are labelled separately from word matching.

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01Undated

Zeal without knowledge is fire without light.

Traditional · English / proverb

Meaning: Enthusiasm without understanding can cause disruption without helping. Strong motivation becomes more useful when guided by knowledge of the task and its consequences.

02c. 1593 AD

The best receipt—best to work and best to take—is the admonition of a friend.

Francis Bacon / quote

03c. 1842 AD

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give no peace.

Ralph Waldo Emerson / quote

04c. 1855 AD

Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work: this is the short formula in which we may sum up the teachings of the founders of New England,—a creed ample enough for this life and the next.

James Russell Lowell / quote

05c. 1716 AD

An honest man's the noblest work of God.

Alexander Pope / quote

06c. 1590 AD

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god!

William Shakespeare / quote

07c. 1838 AD

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life purpose. Labor is life.

Thomas Carlyle / quote

08c. 1851 AD

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 / quote

09c. 1807 AD

It is all nonsense about not being able to work without ale and cider and fermented liquors. Do lions and cart-horses drink ale?

Sydney Smith / quote

10c. 1838 AD

The modern majesty consists in work. What a man can do is his greatest ornament, and he always consults his dignity by doing it.

Thomas Carlyle / quote

11In print by 1896 AD

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and courageous feelings, seek for no other rule to judge the work by; it is good, and made by a good workman.

La Bruyère (identity unresolved) · Unknown culture / quote

12In print by 1896 AD

If a boy is not trained to endure and to bear trouble, he will grow up a girl; and a boy that is a girl has all a girl's weakness without any of her regal qualities. A woman made out of a woman is God's noblest work; a woman made out of a man is his meanest.

Beecher (identity unresolved) · Unknown culture / quote

13In print by 1896 AD

If the power to do hard work is not talent, it is the best possible substitute for it.

James A. Garfield (identity unresolved) · Unknown culture / quote

14In print by 1896 AD

It is not work that kills men, it is worry. Work is healthy, you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction. Fear secretes acids, but love and trust are sweet juices.

Beecher (identity unresolved) · Unknown culture / quote

15In print by 1896 AD

Method is essential, and enables a larger amount of work to be got through with satisfaction. "Method," said Cecil (afterward Lord Burleigh), "is like packing things in a box; a good packer will get in half as much again as a bad one." Cecil's despatch of business was extraordinary; his maxim being, "The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once."

Samuel Smiles (identity unresolved) · Unknown culture / quote

16In print by 1896 AD

What profusion is there in His work! When trees blossom there is not a single breastpin, but a whole bosom full of gems; and of leaves they have so many suits that they can throw them away to the winds all summer long. What unnumbered cathedrals has He reared in the forest shades, vast and grand, full of curious carvings, and haunted evermore by tremulous music; and in the heavens above, how do stars seem to have flown out of His hand faster than sparks out of a mighty forge!

Beecher (identity unresolved) · Unknown culture / quote

17In print by 1896 AD

When what you read elevates your mind and fills you with noble aspirations, look for no other rule by which to judge a book; it is good, and is the work of a master-hand.

La Bruyère (identity unresolved) · Unknown culture / quote

18In print by 1896 AD

The great highroad of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort.

Samuel Smiles (identity unresolved) · Unknown culture / quote

19In print by 1896 AD

Successful minds work like a gimlet,—to a single point.

Bovee (identity unresolved) · Unknown culture / quote

20In print by 1896 AD

If you do not wish for His kingdom do not pray for it. But if you do you must do more than pray for it, you must work for it.

Ruskin (identity unresolved) · Unknown culture / quote

21In print by 1896 AD

We enjoy ourselves only in our work, our doing; and our best doing is our best enjoyment.

Jacobi (identity unresolved) · Unknown culture / quote

22In print by 1896 AD

It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you could hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction.

Beecher (identity unresolved) · Unknown culture / quote

23c. 1838 AD

"A fair day's wages for a fair day's work," is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing; yet in what corner of this planet was that ever realised?

Thomas Carlyle / quote

24In print by 1893 AD

All art is great, and good, and true, only so far as it is distinctively the work of manhood in its entire and highest sense.

Ruskin (identity unresolved) · Unknown culture / quote