Bricklayer Quotes & Sayings

I used to help out my father, a bricklayer, in the summer. I'd catch the bricks (that were dropped). And it made me strong, catching those bricks. I wouldn't change anything about it. That's why I'm where I am today. Really. — Jerry Rice

An author is like an incompetent bricklayer - doesn't use mortar and keeps rearranging the bricks until someone tells him to stop. — Chris Everheart

He was a bricklayer; for fifty years, in Italy, America, France, then again in Italy, and finally in Germany, he had laid bricks, and every brick had been cemented with curses. He cursed continuously, but not mechanically; he cursed with method and care, acrimoniously, pausing to find the right word, frequently correcting himself and losing his temper when unable to find the word he wanted; then he cursed the curse that would not come. — Primo Levi

Hurrying on, Barbee nodded to the workman as casually as he could. His skin felt goose-pimpled under the thin red robe, and he couldn't help shivering to a colder chill than he felt in the frosty air. For the quiet city, it seemed to him, was only a veil of painted illusion. Its air of sleepy peace concealed brooding horror, too frightful for sane minds to dwell upon. Even the cheery bricklayer with the lunch pail might - just might - be the monstrous Child of Night. — Jack Williamson

One day a friend came by the job site and asked them separately what they were doing. The first said, "Aw, we're just laying brick. We've been doing this for thirty years. It's so boring. One brick on top of the other." Then the friend asked the second bricklayer. He just lit up. "Why, we're building a magnificent skyscraper," he said. "This structure is going to stand tall for generations to come. I'm just so excited that I could be a part of it." Each bricklayer's happiness or lack of it was based on their perspective. You can be laying a brick or you can be building a beautiful skyscraper. The choice is up to you. You can go to work each day and just punch in on the clock and dread being there and do as little as possible. Or you can show up with enthusiasm and give it your best, knowing that you're making the world a better place. — Joel Osteen

The important thing is to take the bricklayer and make him understand that he's building a home, not just laying bricks. — Herb Kelleher

I'm an actor. It's like being a bricklayer. Sometimes I'm building a little wall, and the next time I'm building a palace. — Corbin Bernsen

I felt that everything is beautiful, but that which man tries intentionally to make beautiful; that the work of an ordinary bricklayer is more valid than the artwork of all but a very few artists. — Ellsworth Kelly

Three bricklayers were working on the same building. When asked what they were doing, the first answered grumpily, "I'm laying bricks." The second replied with a bit more vision, "I'm putting up a wall." The third bricklayer's response was different. He replied enthusiastically and with pride, "I'm building a beautiful cathedral. It will be the finest building in town, and it will be a place of peace and comfort for everyone who walks by it!" What a difference knowing why makes. When you know why you do it, even the most mundane work can become meaningful. — Christy Wright

My mother has always been unhappy with what I do. She would rather I do something nicer, like be a bricklayer. — Mick Jagger

If I had been a bricklayer I'd still have been a journeyman. — Fred L. Turner

He never retorted that the artist is not a bricklayer at all, but a horseman whose business it is to catch Pegasus at once, not to practise for him by mounting tamer colts. This is hard, hot and generally ungraceful work, but it is not drudgery. For drudgery is not art, and cannot lead to it. — E. M. Forster

I am not a teacher in my heart," she said. "I am a doer, and all these little shitheads in front of me are do-nothings. There is racism in the world and they acknowledge it, but they sit in class listening to bullshit professors. Give me a bricklayer with a racist attitude. It is just more honest. — Allan Dare Pearce

Only when architect, bricklayer and tenant are a unity, or one and the same person, can we speak of architecture. Everything else is not architecture, but a criminal act which has taken on form. — Friedensreich Hundertwasser

I don't care if it takes you five years of doing nothing at all; I don't care if you decide after five years that what you really want is to be a bricklayer or a mechanic or a merchant seaman. Don't you see what I'm saying? It's got nothing to do with definite, measurable talents - it's your very essence that's being stifled here. — Richard Yates

I look upon myself as a musical bricklayer with architectural aspirations. — Robert Mayer

He has the obligation to society that any human being has. I don't think a satirist has any greater obligation to society than a bricklayer or anybody else. — Shel Silverstein

My father was a better bricklayer than I am a theologian. I am still in too much of a hurry. But if the work I have done in theology is of any use, it is because of what I learned on the job, that is, you can lay only one brick at a time. — Stanley Hauerwas

I had a guidance counsellor who made me take an aptitude test, and told me I should be a bricklayer. — Harmony Korine

Music is my life. The last job I had, I was a bricklayer's apprentice. And I was happy with that job, too, because it was something that made me feel good. To build a wall for the side of a building felt really good to me. — Mark Wahlberg

The story of a man who saw three fellows laying bricks at a new building:
He approached the first and asked, What are you doing?
Clearly irritated, the first man responded, What the heck do you think I'm doing? I'm laying these darn bricks!
He then walked over to the second bricklayer and asked the same question.
The second fellow responded, Oh, I'm making a living.
He approached the third bricklayer with the same question, What are you doing?
The third looked up, smiled and said, I'm building a cathedral.
At the end of the day, who feels better about how he's spent his last eight hours? — Bill Vaughan

The only other thing that interested me as a kid was being a bricklayer. So if I hadn't become an actress, I would probably be a bricklayer. — Nikki Cox

I think with my hands, it was catching a lot of footballs and working with my father during the summer because he would always make me. My father was a bricklayer so I was a helper. My job was to make sure that he had bricks to lay. — Jerry Rice