Quotes by American Authors - Page 28

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
Mark Twain
To love what you do and feel that it matters-how could anything be more fun?
Katherine Graham
Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.
Harriet Van Home
I believe in my work and in the joy of it. You have to be with the work and the work has to be with you. It absorbs you totally and you absorb it totally.
Louise Nevelson
Work is a world apart from jobs. Work is the way you occupy your mind and hand and eye and whole body when they're informed by your imagination.
Alice Koller
Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.
Henry David Thoreau
There must be bands of enthusiasts for everything on earth-fanatics who shared a vocabulary a batch of technical skills and equipment and perhaps a vision of some single slice of the beauty and mystery of things of their complexity fascination and unexpectedness.
Annie Dillard
Find something you're passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.
Julia Child
Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly.
Julie Andrews
The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.
Logan Pearsall Smith
I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I've ever known.
Walt Disney
What a richly colored strong warm coat is woven when love is the warp and work is the woof.
Marge Piercy
Duty is an icy shadow. It will freeze you. It cannot fill the heart's sanctuary.
Augusta Evans
I know a lot of people think it's monotonous down the black lines over and over but it's not if you're enjoying what you're doing. I love to swim and I love to train.
Tracy Caulkins
The high prize of life the crowning fortune of man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don't do that by sitting around wondering about yourself.
Katharine Hepburn
One principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling and divide and shift their attention among a multitude of objects and pursuits.
Nathaniel Emmons
One's lifework I have learned grows with the working and the living. Do it as if your life depended on it and first thing you know you'll have made a life out of it. A good life too.
Theresa Helburn
If you're in a good profession it's hard to get bored because you're never finished-there will always be work you haven't done.
Julia Child
You have to do what you love to do not get stuck in that comfort zone of a regular job. Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it.
Lucinda Basset
To find out what one is fitted to do and to secure an opportunity to do it is the key to happiness.
John Dewey
Whenever it is possible a boy should choose some occupation which he should do even if he did not need the money.
William Lyon Phelps
To find in ourselves what makes life worth living is risky business for it means that once we know we must seek it. It also means that without it life will be valueless.
Marsha Sinetar
Here I am where I ought to be.
Louise Erdrich
I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.
Margaret Mead
Ambition is destruction only competence matters.
Jill Robinson
A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it.
Alistair Cooke
I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.
Thomas A. Edison
Labor disgraces no man unfortunately you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.
Ulysses S. Grant
There is a kind of victory in good work no matter how humble.
Jack Kemp
Don't be afraid of hard work.
Marian Wright Edelman
Never turn down a job because you think it's too small you never know where it may lead.
Julia Morgan
There's no labor a man can do that's undignified if he does it right.
Bill Cosby
When I die my epitaph should read: She Paid the Bills.
Gloria Swanson
The world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
Helen Keller
Starting out to make money is the greatest mistake in life. Do what you feel you have a flair for doing and if you are good enough at it the money will come.
Greer Garson
Like plowing housework makes the ground ready for the germination of family life. The kids will not invite a teacher home if beer cans litter the living room. The family isn't likely to have breakfast together if somebody didn't remember to buy eggs milk or muffins. Housework maintains an orderly setting in which family life can flourish.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
The fun of being alive is realizing that you have a talent and you can use it every day so it grows stronger. ... And if you're in an atmosphere where this talent is appreciated instead of just tolerated why it's just as good as sex.
Lou Centlivre
After fifty years of living it occurs to me that the most significant thing that people do is go to work whether it is to go to work on their novel or at the assembly plant or fixing somebody's teeth.
Thomas McGuane
When I stop [working] the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm working.
Tennessee Williams
Work is a substitute "religious" experience for many workaholics.
Mary Daly
The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what it is that interests you and that you can do well and when you find it put your whole soul into it-every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have.
John D. Rockefeller III
Work and love - these are the basics. Without them there is neurosis.
Theodor Reik
It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate whose faithful work will answer for him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
How do I work? I grope.
Albert Einstein
The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.
Samuel Gompers
Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
Laurence J. Peter
I am only an average man but by George I work harder at it than the average man.
Theodore Roosevelt
A people so primitive that they did not know how to get money except by working for it.
George Ade
When your work speaks for itself don't interrupt.
Henry J. Kaiser
God gives every bird its food but he does not throw it into the nest.
J.G. Holland
Anyone who is honestly seeking a job and can't find it deserves the attention of the United States government and the people.
John F Kennedy
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.
Kahlil Gibran
Amateurs hope. Professionals work.
Garson Kanin
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.
Robert Benchley
When more and more people are thrown out of work unemployment results.
Calvin Coolidge
God gave man work not to burden him but to bless him and useful work willingly cheerfully effectively done has always been the finest expression of the human spirit.
Walter R. Courtenay
In a professional once engaged the performance of the job comes first.
Garson Kanin
Because it is less structured than work leisure time leaves workaholics at a loss for what to do. Workaholics practically climb the wall when they can't work.
Marilyn Machlowitz
The joy about our work is spoiled when we perform it not because of what we produce but because of the pleasure with which it can provide us or the pain against which it can protect us.
Paul Tillich