Quotes on Work

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.

Every woman dreams of a workplace where her boss doesn't suggest they grab a drink after work, where there isn't that colleague you'd just rather not get stuck in the office with alone and where your job prospects don't depend, however subtly, on whether you put up with lascivious comments from a man who has power over you.

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.

Most of the good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program.

Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice.

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

There is a time for weighing evidence and a time for acting. And if there's one thing I've learned throughout my work in finance, government, and conservation, it is to act before problems become too big to manage.

In your own life, you should take particular care with endings, for their color will forever tinge your memory of the entire relationship and your willingness to reenter it.

Every human being should be taught that his first duty is to take care of himself, and that to be self-respecting he must be self-supporting. To live on the labor of others, either by force which enslaves, or by cunning which robs, or by borrowing or begging, is wholly dishonorable. Every man should be taught some useful art.

I always think first about the nature of the story. When I had the idea for 'The Namesake,' I felt that it had to be a novel - it couldn't work as a story.

I have just gone over my comet computations again, and it is humiliating to perceive how very little more I know than I did seven years ago when I first did this kind of work.

We focus on two things when hiring. First, find the best people you can in the world. And second, let them do their work. Just get out of their way.

I always panic on the first day of work. You can do all the Stanislavsky-backstory homework, but when that moment arrives and you are in the clothes, hair, and makeup of somebody else, and you're saying the words created by somebody else - I never know how to do it. It's a complete mystery to me.

Because I have work to care about, it is possible that I may be less difficult to get along with than other women when the double chins start to form.

I am always for the man who wishes to work.

I don't care who's No. 1 on the call sheet or how big my trailer is. I care about the work. I don't care who gets the laughs. I just care that the laugh comes.

And, inasmuch [as] most good things are produced by labour, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them. But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.

I want people to help take care of each other at work. That's what I want. Do you know how many hours we spend at work? We spend more time at work than we spend at home. When people are suffering, we don't help enough.

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

My mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.