Household Work Quotes & Sayings

So much were employers of wage-labor unenthusiastic about proletarianization that, in addition to fostering the gender age division of labor, they also encouraged, in their employment patters and through their influence in the political arena, recognition of defined ethnic groups, seeking to link them to specific allocated roles in the labor-force, with different levels of real remuneration for their work. Ethnicity created a cultural crust which consolidated the patterns of semi-proletarian household structures. — Immanuel Wallerstein

With the right support, a child growing up in a dysfunctional household, who was destined for a lifetime on benefits could be put on an entirely different track - one which sees them move into fulfilling and sustainable work. In doing so, they will pull themselves out of poverty. — Iain Duncan Smith

What moved me, in the first instance, to attempt a work like this, was the discomfort and suffering which I had seen brought upon men and women by household mismanagement. I have always thought that there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife's badly-cooked dinners and untidy ways. — Isabella Beeton

The situation. First time in the country and she had found St. Jarlath's Crescent with no difficulty. "You must be Noel. I hope I'm not too early for the household." "No, we were all up. We're about to go to work, you see, and you are very welcome, by the way." "Thank you. Well, shall I come in and say hello and good-bye to them?" Noel realized that he might have left her forever on the doorstep, but then he was only half awake. It took him until about eleven a.m., when he had his first vodka and Coke, to be fully in control of the day. Noel was absolutely certain that nobody at Hall's knew of his morning injection of alcohol and — Maeve Binchy

To what extent the machine abases us. - The machine is impersonal, it deprives the piece of work of its pride, of the individual goodness and faultiness that adheres to all work done by a machine - that is to say, of its little bit of humanity. In earlier times all purchasing from artisans was a bestowing of a distinction on individuals, and the things with which we surrounded ourselves were the insignia of these distinctions: household furniture and clothing thus became symbols of mutual esteem and personal solidarity, whereas we now seem to live in the midst of nothing but anonymous and impersonal slavery. - We must not purchase the alleviation of work at too high price. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The conventional public opposition of 'liberal' and 'conservative' is, here as elsewhere, perfectly useless. The 'conservatives' promote the family as a sort of public icon, but they will not promote the economic integrity of the household or the community, which are the mainstays of family life. Under the sponsorship of 'conservative' presidencies, the economy of the modern household, which once required the father to work away from home - a development that was bad enough - now requires the mother to work away from home, as well. And this development has the wholehearted endorsement of 'liberals,' who see the mother thus forced to spend her days away from her home and children as 'liberated' - though nobody has yet seen the fathers thus forced away as 'liberated.' Some feminists are thus in the curious position of opposing the mistreatment of women and yet advocating their participation in an economy in which everything is mistreated. — Wendell Berry

Years from now no one will remember all the extra projects you took on or your meticulously organized garage. What they - and you - will recall is the time you said no to a work assignment to take your kids to the science museum or when you ignored household chores to enjoy the sunset. — Valerie Young

Strax gave a snort of amusement. 'It is surely a very simple choice. One option is for a quiet life with honest work amongst other humans paying a living wage and with prospects of promotion within a distinguished household. The other... ' He drew himself up to his full height and looked up at them, 'is the prospect of constant danger, fear and risk. No chance of ever seeing your friends again, or making new ones. The knowledge that death waits around the next corner and you are unlikely to see the end of the next week without at the very least a serious injury. A glorious alternative. — Justin Richards

I balance my hormones with bioidentical hormones, I eat organic, I take supplements as determined by lab work, I sleep eight hours nightly, I use organic cosmetics and green household cleaners, and I avoid toxins as best I can. — Suzanne Somers

Lovingly crafted and super-creative cupcakes are not exactly on tap in my household after a full day at work, and I do not blame my mother for a second that they were not on tap in hers, either. — Emily Oster

Every kind of work can be a pleasure. Even simple household tasks can be an opportunity to exercise and expand our caring, our effectiveness, our responsiveness. As we respond with caring and vision to all work, we develop our capacity to respond fully to all of life. Every action generates positive energy which can be shared with others. These qualities of caring and responsiveness are the greatest gift we can offer. — Tarthang Tulku

My dad worked very hard for the money he made, and my mom worked very hard to keep this household up and running and all the kids fed and everything. And she did it in a brilliant fashion. They both did. In fact, the work ethic, to me, is so important in this life. — Kim Basinger

I used to have a little silent prayer: 'Dear God, let my ability to get work be the same as my celebrity.' That would be a hard burden: to be a household name and not be able to get work. — Ted Danson

Most Americans stopped looking at what was happening through a variety of coping mechanisms - starting with women entering paid work and then everyone working longer hours and using their homes for raising equity and generating more money through debt. The typical household basically staved off the day of reckoning. — Robert Reich

The Burden of Work You are submerged by a flood of troubles that the size of your household places on your shoulders. You must, then, call upon our Lord all the more and beg for his holy help, so that the work you must do will be agreeable to him and so that you will embrace it for his honor and glory. Our days are few (cf. Job 14:1), and consequently our labor cannot be overlong. By means of a little patience, we will get through it with honor and contentment, for we have no greater consolation at the end of the day than to have worked hard and shouldered its pains. — Francis De Sales

Then Allen said, I've discovered a way to have a lot more time. In the past, I used to look at my time as if it were divided into several parts. One part I reserved for Joey, another part was for Sue, another part to help with Ana, another part for household work. The time left over I considered my own. I could read, write, do research, go for walks. But now I try not to divide time into parts anymore. I consider my time with Joey and Sue as my own time. When I help Joey with his homework, I try to find ways of seeing his time as my own time. I go through his lesson with him, sharing his presence and finding ways to be interested in what we do during that time. The time for him becomes my own time. The same with Sue. The remarkable thing is that now I have unlimited time for myself! — Thich Nhat Hanh

A long time ago, in a town with which I used to be familiarly acquainted, there dwelt an elderly person of grim aspect, known by the name and title of Doctor Grimshawe, whose household consisted of a remarkably pretty and vivacious boy, and a perfect rosebud of a girl, two or three years younger than he, and an old maid of all work, of strangely mixed breed, crusty in temper and wonderfully sluttish in attire. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

One of the key moments in the creation of modernity occurs when production moves outside the household. So long as productive work occurs within the structure of households, it is easy and right to understand that work as part of the sustaining of the community of the household and of those wider forms of community which the household in turn sustains. As, and to the extent that, work moves outside the household and is put to the service of impersonal capital, the realm of work tends to become separated from everything but the service of biological survival and the reproduction of the labor force, on the one hand, and that of institutionalized acquisitiveness, on the other. Pleonexia, a vice in the Aristotelian scheme, is now the driving force of modern productive work. — Alasdair MacIntyre

At twenty-one he had arrived in America a penniless bodybuilder, born in an obscure Austrian village, armed only with the immigrant's time-honored weapons of hope, ambition, and an almost supernatural belief in the great American dream.
Now, through the traditional virtues of hard work, talent, charm, intelligence, positive mental attitude, and persistence, Arnold Schwarzenegger had become a household name. — Wendy Leigh

Apart from their work and production, households perform other important economic functions. Most CONSUMPTION occurs within the household ... In developed capitalist economies, private consumption spending accounts for half or more of GDP. — Jim Stanford

Let every woman ask herself: "Why am I the slave of man? Why is my brain said not to be the equal of his brain? Why is my work notpaid equally with his? Why must my body be controlled by my husband? Why may he take my labor in the household, giving me in exchange what he deems fit? Why may he take my children from me? Will them away while yet unborn?" Let every woman ask. — Voltairine De Cleyre

Women who work at home rearing children and attending to various household tasks are expected to provide something that is absolutely essential yet costs nothing, like the air we breathe. — Mary Jo Weaver

When you have given yourself to Christ, leave yourself there, and go about your work as a child in His household. — Charles Seymour Robinson

I work out with my trainer or do an hour of pilates at 6 or 7AM. I'm done by the time my household is awake. — David Beckham

In modern marriage, then, what was once a difference of work became a division of work. And in this division the household was destroyed as a practical bond between husband and wife. It was no longer a condition, but only a place. It was no longer a circumstance that required, dignified, and rewarded the enactment of mutual dependence, but the site of mutual estrangement. Home became a place for the husband to go when he was not working or amusing himself. It was the place where the wife was held in servitude. A sexual difference is not a wound, or it need not be; a sexual division is. And it is important to recognize that this division - this destroyed household that now stands between the sexes - is a wound that is suffered inescapably by both men and women. — Wendell Berry

I am an inveterate homemaker, it is at once my pleasure, my recreation, and my handicap. Were I a man, my books would have been written in leisure, protected by a wife and a secretary and various household officials. As it is, being a woman, my work has had to be done between bouts of homemaking. — Pearl S. Buck

Dollying the rest up is your baby. (Btw, did I mention it's cheap?) Most of the procedures described can be done by virtually anyone with the parts currently residing on their drive-to-work banger. The rest are low-budget (cheap!) and can be carried out with household or garage tools. All of these are things that I did to one or more of the Beetles I've had. — Christina Engela

If someone should ask, "how should an Opposition function?" the best answer would be, "in the manner of a traditional mother-in-law who watches the performance of household work by a daughter-in-law and follows her about with her comments. — R.K. Narayan

The problem with the 'masculinity crisis' is not that women have excelled too much and therefore created a crisis for men, but that we have such a stein inability to let go of what it has traditionally meant to be a man ... As long as we perpetuate the myth that men have inherent qualities that make them more suitable than women for certain types of work, the shifting nature of the economy (and women's attainment of better jobs) is going to continue to be interpreted as a crisis of masculinity. — Samhita Mukhopadhyay

The heroes who emerged first from the rubble of the September 11 attacks were not politicians or generals and they didnt become household names in the months that followed. They were, instead, public servants who continued to work day in and day out to protect our communities and ensure hometown security. — Ben Nelson

A household has to be tended if it is to flourish and grow. Housework is never 'done' in the same sense that gardening is never done or that God's providential involvement in the world is never done. Housework and gardening and God's providence itself are exercises not in futility but in faithfulness - faithfulness to the work itself, to the people whose needs that work serves, and to the God whose own faithfulness invites our faithful response. — Margaret Kim Peterson

The first element in a symmetrical life is work. Three-fourths of our time is probably spent in work. Of course the meaning of it is that our work should be just as religious as our worship, and unless we can work for the glory of God three-fourths of life remains unsanctified. The proof that work is religious is that most of Christ's life was spent in work. During a large part of the first thirty years of His life He worked with the hammer and the plane, making ploughs and yokes and household furniture. Christ's public ministry occupied only about two and a half years of His earthly life; the great bulk of His time was simply spent in doing common everyday tasks, and ever since then work has had a new meaning. — Henry Drummond

The ordinary you, the you that has to go to work every morning, the you that has to run a household, pay bills, do all of those things
that you is somehow changed into an exciting, artistic, fully alive you. That's what Paris does. — Alexander McCall Smith

When you have arrived at your country house and have saluted your household, you should make the rounds of the farm the same day, if possible; if not, then certainly the next day. When you have observed how the field work has progressed, what things have been done, and what remains undone, you should summon your overseer the next day, and should call for a report of what work has been done in good season and why it has not been possible to complete the rest, and what wine and corn and other crops have been gathered. — Cato The Elder

I think several generations of my family had novels in the drawer. You know the montage in 'The Royal Tenenbaums' where each character has produced some sort of minor work? It was like having a magician in the household. — Garth Risk Hallberg

In Virgil's account of the good housewife, who rises early in order to measure out the work of the household, and in Solomon's description of the thrifty woman of his time, one sees the value set upon feminine industry and economy in times far removed from our own. — Julia Ward Howe

I was born in a very poor family. I used to sell tea in a railway coach as a child. My mother used to wash utensils and do lowly household work in the houses of others to earn a livelihood. I have seen poverty very closely. I have lived in poverty. As a child, my entire childhood was steeped in poverty. — Narendra Modi

yield. In April, Bradford had decided that each household should be assigned its own plot to cultivate, with the understanding that each family kept whatever it grew. The change in attitude was stunning. Families were now willing to work much harder than they had ever worked before. In previous years, the men had tended the fields while the women tended the children at home. "The women now went willingly into the field," Bradford wrote, "and took their little ones with them to set corn." The Pilgrims had stumbled on the power of capitalism. — Nathaniel Philbrick

the exploiter asks of a piece of land only how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?) The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible. The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order - a human order, that is, that accommodates itself both to other order and to mystery. The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place. The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, "hard facts"; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind. — Gregory Pence

The position of women, over the years, has definitely changed for the worse. we women have behaved like mugs, We have clamoured to be allowed to work as men work. Men, not being fools, have taken kindly to the idea. Why supoort a wife? What's wrong with a wife supporting herself? She wants to do it. By golly, she can go on doing it!
it seems sad that having established ourselves so cleverly as the "weaker sex" we should now be broadly on a par with the women of primitive tribes who toil in the fields all day, walk miles to gather camelthorn for fuel, and on trek carry all the pots, pans, and household equipment on their heads, while the gorgeous, ornamental male sweeps on ahead, unburdened save for one lethal weapon with which to defend his women. — Agatha Christie

As Liljana sat stitching a sampler or darning a sock, she dreamed her way into life as a grown woman with her own household to run, her own home to tidy, her own children to mind, and her own husband to cheer after a long day's work as they sat together by the fire. The life that future generations would dismiss as dull and degrading offered Liljana the liberating prospect of being mistress in her own home rather than living to serve others. — Fiorella De Maria

Feminists of my mother's generation argued that both mom and dad should work a little less and each do some of the household chores. My parents, for example, split everything 50/50. Even though my father is a terrible cook, he still made dinner exactly half the time. — Emily Oster

By liberating women from household work and helping to abolish professions such as domestic service, the washing machine and other household goods completely revolutionised the structure of society. — Ha-Joon Chang

In spite of lip service paid to domestic duties, in 1881 the Census excluded women's household chores from the category of productive work and, for the first time, housewives were classified as unoccupied. — Gabrielle Palmer

In the household in which I was raised, the themes were pretty simple. 'Work hard. Don't quit. Be appreciative, be thankful, be grateful, be respectful. Also, never whine, never complain. And always, for crying out loud, keep a sense of humor.' — Michael Keaton

Human beings weren't designed to handle the amount of stress our modern life loads on us, which makes it difficult to hear our natural parenting instincts. It's almost as if we're forced to parent in our spare time, after meeting the demands of work, commuting and household responsibilities. — Laura Markham

How could a very thin woman do all the things that women needed to do: to carry children on their backs, to pound maize into flour out at the lands or the cattle post, to cart around the things of the household - the pots and pans and buckets of water? And how could a thin woman comfort a man? It would be very awkward for a man to share his bed with a person who was all angles and bone, whereas a traditionally built lady would be like an extra pillow on which a man coming home tired from his work might rest his weary head. To do all that you needed a bit of bulk, and thin people simply did not have that. — Alexander McCall Smith

People see I am a mother and head of a household. Today in Chile, one-third of households are run by women. They wake up, take the children to school, go to work. To them I am hope. — Michelle Bachelet

In the end, we all want a wife. But the home has become increasingly invaded by the ethos of work, work, work, with twin sets of external clocks imposed on a household's natural rhythms. — Sandra Tsing Loh

and were greatly distressed that their only son must be taken from them. We felt a spirit of prayer for him, and earnestly besought the Lord to spare his life. We believed that he would get well, although to all appearances there was no possibility of his recovery. It was a powerful season. My husband raised him in his arms, and exclaimed, 'You will not die, but live!' We believed that God would be glorified in his recovery. We left Dartmouth, and were absent about eight days. When we returned, the sick boy came out to meet us. He had gained four pounds in flesh. We found the household rejoicing in God for his wonderful work. — James White

In the forties [1940s] in Washington it was still unusual for a rich and socially well-connected married woman to work. If she did, her husband was assumed by his peers to be unable to support a household on his own and somehow to be inadequate. — David Brinkley

Advancing the agenda of America's wealthiest winners under such circumstances would ordinarily be a hard sell. After all, in 2011, twenty-four million Americans were still out of work. The Great Recession had wiped out some $9 trillion in household wealth. But after forty years, the conservative nonprofit ecosystem had grown quite adept at waging battles of ideas. The think tanks, advocacy groups, and talking heads on the right sprang into action, shaping a political narrative that staved off the kind of course correction that might otherwise have been expected. — Jane Mayer

Eastman demanded equal pay for equal work and a "revolution in the early training and education of both boys and girls. It must be womanly as well as manly to earn your own living, to stand on your own feet. And it must be manly as well as womanly to know how to cook and sew and clean and take care of yourself." She was aware that "men will not give up their privilege of helplessness without a struggle" and that they actually "cultivated ignorance about household matters. — Frances Goldin

They really just taught me at an early age the values of hard work. Both my parents are two of the hardest working people that I know, so that was a big foundation for me and something I really cherish and it really helped me to grow up in that kind of household. — Blake Griffin