Work and Profession

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

Well begun is half done.

He works his work, I mine.

 

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.

 

The external and immediate result of an advocate’s work is but to win or lose a case. But remotely what the lawyer does is to establish, develop, or illuminate rules which are to govern the conduct of men for centuries; to set in motion principles and influences which shape the thought and action of generations which know not by whose command they move.

 

[ Advice to writers :] First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. . . . Habit is persistence in practice.

 

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

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.

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

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

The joy of life is to put out one’s power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other. And the real misery is not to do this.

As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take the examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one would be a penny the stupider.

It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do that is the secret of happiness.

One of the eternal conflicts out of which life is made up is that between the efforts of every man to get the most he can for his services and that of society disguised under the name of capital to get his services for the least possible return.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

Hammer the iron that lies on your anvil instead of daydreaming about working silver.

 

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.

 

Life is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain.

 

Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth.

Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.

There is a general prejudice to the effect that lawyers are more honorable then politicians but less honorable than prostitutes. That is an exaggeration.

Well, I don't know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell how to do what I want to do.

I bowl so slow that if after I have delivered the ball I don’t like the look of it, I can run after it and bring it back.

It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.