Work and Profession

Well begun is half done.

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

Thinking is hard work. One can’t bear burdens and ideas at the same time.

If you direct your whole thought to work itself, none of the things which invade eyes or ears will reach the mind.

The passions that motivate you may change, but it is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees.

Yet such is off the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere. J. R.

 

He works his work, I mine.

 

They carried him 2 not to bury him: They carried him down to crown him…. The poet flourished here, disheveled, Who would not bow before votive lamps But to the common spade.

 

The riders in a race do not stop short when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voice of friends and to say to one’s self: “The work is done.” But just as one says that, the answer comes: “The race is over, but the work never is done while the power to work remains.” The canter that brings you to a standstill need not be only coming to rest. It cannot be, while you still live. For to live is to function. That is all there is in living.

 

Great editors do not discover nor produce great authors; great authors create and produce great publishers.

As I sit looking out of a window of the building I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new metal.

To crush, to annihilate a man utterly, to inflict on him the most terrible of punishments so that the most ferocious murderer would shudder at it and dread it beforehand, one need only give him work of an absolutely, completely useless and irrational character.

HOW LITTLE OUR CAREERS EXPRESS WHAT LIES IN US, AND YET HOW MUCH TIME THEY TAKE UP. IT’S SAD, REALLY.

Between my finger and my thumb

When we, the Workers, all demand: ‘What are WE fighting for?’ …

The man who really counts in the world is the doer, not the mere critic, the man who actually does the work, even if roughly and imperfectly, not the man who only talks or writes about how it ought to be done.

Teach us, good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest: To give and not to count the cost; To fight and not to heed the wounds; To toil and not to seek for rest; To labor and not ask for any reward Save that of knowing that we do Thy will.

 

The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one has to do.

Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind.

[ Groucho Marx, replying to the comment, “You’re awfully shy for a lawyer” :] You bet I’m shy. I’m a shyster lawyer.

A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.

Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.