Work and Profession

Dear authors! Suit your topics to your strength, And ponder well your subject, and its length; Nor lift your load, before you’re quite aware What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear.

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

If a man love the labor of any trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.

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

I look on that man as happy, who, when there is a question of success, looks into his work for a reply.

I don’t like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself.

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

Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.

Blind alleys and garden paths leading nowhere are the principal hazards in research.

Like the PC, the Internet is a tidal wave. It will wash over the computer industry and many others, drowning those who don’t learn to swim in its waves.

Ability is not something to be saved, like money, in the hope that you can draw interest on it. The interest comes from the spending. Unused ability, like unused muscles, will atrophy.

A special ability means a heavy expenditure of energy in a particular direction, with a consequent drain from some other side of life.

Ability and achievement are bona fides no one dares question, no matter how unconventional the man who presents them.

There are many rare abilities in the world which Fortune never brings to light.

Home is the girl's prison and the woman's workhouse.

The tyranny that forbids you to make the road with pick and shovel is worse than that which prevents you from lolling along it in a carriage and pair.

Domestic servants, by making spoiled children of their masters, are forced to intimidate them in order to be able to live with them.

A man enjoys what he uses, not what his servants use.

The perfect servant, when his master makes humane advances to him, feels that his existence is threatened, and hastens to change his place.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

ONE MACHINE CAN DO THE WORK OF 50 ORDINARY MEN. NO MACHINE CAN DO THE WORK OF ONE EXTRAORDINARY MAN.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

GOLF IS A DAY SPENT IN A ROUND OF STRENUOUS IDLENESS.

It is foolish and quite unfitting for an educated man to spend all his time on acquiring bulging muscles, a thick neck and mighty thighs. The large amounts they are compelled to eat make them dull-witted.