Work and Profession

What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure - as a mere automaton of duty?

The sedentary life...is the real sin against the holy spirit.

That is an artist as I love artists, modest in his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread and his art - panem et Circen.

Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.

Business people - Your business - is your greatest prejudice: it ties you to your locality, to the company you keep, to the inclinations you feel. Diligent in business - but indolent in spirit, content with your inadequacy, and with the cloak of duty hung over this contentment: that is how you live, that is how you want your children to live!

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.

Action is the foundational key to all success.

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

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.

It is not the employer who pays—he only handles the money. It is the product that pays wages.

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.

Such a land [British Columbia] is good for an energetic man. It is also not so bad for the loafer.

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

Showing up is 80 percent of life.

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

It proves, on close examination, that work is less boring than amusing oneself.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

We work to become, not to acquire.

What you have inherited from your fathers, earn over again for yourselves, or it will not be yours.

Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing. It’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.

A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.