Quotes & Sayings About Living To Work

[I]nfectious disease is merely a disagreeable instance of a widely prevalent tendency of all living creatures to save themselves the bother of building, by their own efforts, the things they require. Whenever they find it possible to take advantage of the constructive labors of others, this is the path of least resistance. The plant does the work with its roots and its green leaves. The cow eats the plant. Man eats both of them; and bacteria (or investment bankers) eat the man ... — Hans Zinsser

[Amy Carmichael's] great longing was to have a "single eye" for the glory of God. Whatever might blur the vision God had give her of His work, whatever could distract or deceive or tempt other to seek anything but the Lord Jesus Himself she tried to eliminate. — Elisabeth Elliot

Just like today, the Protestants and their teachings had to fight with the prevalent order of the day which taught that: Work is only for making profit. Make money with minimum effort. The culture of the day viewed work as a burden to be avoided. The secular world of the time taught that you should do no more than what was enough for good living. — Sunday Adelaja

A testimony is a conviction, a quiet inward certainty of the reality of the living God, of the divinity of His Beloved Son, of the restoration of Their work in this time. It demands that we do what He has asked us to do. — Gordon B. Hinckley

I came to see soldiers as men willing to lay down their lives for the sake of others. They fight for themselves and the generation under immediate attack, but certainly they fight for the futures of free peoples. Decades beyond World War II, I am one who benefited. That I can vote in presidential elections and not bend my knee to Hirohito's grandson is testament to the enduring work of the veterans of World War II. That I can write books for a living instead of sweating in a Third Reich factory is a product of Allied triumph. — Marcus Brotherton

Religions are moral exoskeletons. If you live in a religious community, you are enmeshed in a set of norms, relationships, and institutions that work primarily on the elephant to influence your behavior. But if you are an atheist living in a looser community with a less binding moral matrix, you might have to rely somewhat more on an internal moral compass, read by the rider. That might sound appealing to rationalists, but it is also a recipe for anomie - Durkheim's word for what happens to a society that no longer has a shared moral order.63 (It means, literally, "normlessness.") We evolved to live, trade, and trust within shared moral matrices. When societies lose their grip on individuals, allowing all to do as they please, the result is often a decrease in happiness and an increase in suicide, as Durkheim showed more than a hundred years ago. — Jonathan Haidt

People who choose to earn money first, people who put off their real plans until later, until they are rich, are not necessarily wrong. People who want only to live, and who reckon living is absolute freedom, the exclusive pursuit of happiness, the sole satisfaction of their desires and instincts, the immediate enjoyment of the boundless riches of the world [ ... ] such people will always be unhappy. It is true [ ... ] that there are people for whom this kind of dilemma does not arise, or hardly arises, either because they are too poor and have no requirements beyond a slightly better diet, slightly better housing, slightly less work, or because they are too rich, from the start, to understand the import or even the meaning of such a distinction. But nowadays and in our part of the world, more and more people are neither rich nor poor: they dream of wealth, and could become wealthy; and that is where their misfortunes begin."
-from "Things: A Story of the Sixties — Georges Perec

I'm a freelance writer, and I work alone at a big desk in the living room of my apartment. There are many days when I don't utter a single word to anyone but my husband. — Robin Marantz Henig

Stop praying that God should make you a leader if you are not ready to do hard work. — Bidemi Mark-Mordi

What a great pleasure to work for your living? — Lailah Gifty Akita

A conclusion I've come to at the Idler is that it starts with retreating from work but it's really about making work into something that isn't drudgery and slavery, and then work and life can become one thing. — Tom Hodgkinson

15 "probable illnesses" that are afflicting the curial body, including those of feeling "indispensable;" of excessive work habits and not enough time to rest and recharge before the Lord; of a spiritual hardening of hearts; of over-planning and not leaving room for the Holy Spirit to function; of a lack of collaboration; of living autonomously while forgetting salvation history; of vanity; of living a double life; of the "terrorism of gossip"; of egotistic opportunism; of indifference; of pessimism; of materialism; of cliquishness; and of the allures of power. — Anonymous

Under a monopolistic economic system the opportunity to earn a living by one's labour comes to be regarded as a privilege instead of a natural right. Women are simply held to be less entitled to this privilege than men. — Suzanne La Follette

When you are living your dreams it doesn't feel like work, but it's important to take some time away for yourself. It's goot to make some time for your own company. — Jared Leto

Fear of living without a map is the main reason people are so insistent that we tell them what to do. The reasons are pretty obvious: If it's someone else's map, it's not your fault if it doesn't work out. If you've memorized the sales script I gave you and you don't make the sale, who's in trouble now? Not only does the map insulate us from responsibility, but it's also a social talisman. We can tell our friends and family that we've found a good map, a safe map, a map worthy of respect. — Seth Godin

After Elsa's death, Einstein established a routine that as the years passed varied less and less. Breakfast between 9 and 10 was followed by a walk to the institute. After working until 1pm he would return home for lunch and a nap. Afterwards he would work in his study until dinner between 6.30 and 7pm. If not entertaining guests, he would return to work until he went to bed between 11 and 12. He rarely went to the theatre or to a concert, and unlike Bohr, hardly ever watched a movie. He was, Einstein said in 1936, 'living in the kind of solitude that is painful in one's youth but in one's more mature years is delicious'. — Manjit Kumar

We have brought destruction upon a million Arab refugees, by calling upon them and pleading with them to leave their lands, their homes, their work and their business, and we have caused them to be barren and unemployed though each one of them had been working and qualified in a trade from which he could make a living. — Khalid Al-Azm

Writers have the purity of their art and what they want to achieve with that, and that this purity is bound up with the messy material conditions of trying to make a living while doing that work. — Chad Harbach

I often would think about how we have built our society, and when you describe it out loud, it sounds rather insane. The idea of being funnelled through a conventional life progression of education, work, career, marriage, kids, divorce, retirement and then death doesn't seem that inspiring to me.
Then we're told we have to struggle to make a living, sacrifice enjoyment to have a family, delay our happiness until we're retired, fight the next person for a job, climb the ladder of success to get an even more stressful job,
spend more money than we earn, go into debt, live in fear of being blown up by some terrorist and then have TV passed off as the only way to escape it all. And when all of this gets too much and you can't keep up, you get prescribed antidepressants and made to feel like you've failed. — Josh Langley

Directing is a nice job. It's the best job for me. If i had to pay money to do it, I would do itIt's problematical. It's disapointing often. It's very challenging. It's frustrating as hell. It's extremely demanding and totally satisfying work. And if I wasn't doing this, I would have to do legitimate work for a living. There are guys out there really working for a living, cleaning streets or coal mining, teaching. Directing is playing. Acting. — William Friedkin

There's no violence worse than the violence of Iraq. For the last fifty years Iraq has been living a nightmare of violence and terror. It's been a horrible experience and people in Iraq will need a lot of time and work to get over the disastrous effects. But first we have to think about how to stop the violence, so that the bloodshed stops. In spite of everything, on the personal level I don't easily lose hope. — Hassan Blasim

To be a living sacrifice will involve all my time. God wants me to live every minute for Him in accordance with His will and purpose, sixty minutes of every hour, twenty-four hours of every day, being available to Him. No time can be considered as my own, or as "off-duty" or "free." I cannot barter with God about how much time I can give to serve Him. Whatever I am doing, be it a routine salaried job, or housework at home, be it holiday time and free, or after-work Christian youth activities, all should be undertaken for Him, to reveal His indwelling presence to those around me. The example of my life must be as telling as my preaching if He is to be honored. — Helen Roseveare

You live in a world where you can drive through the drive-thru, flop down in a chair to work all day, and spend your evening on the couch, in front of the TV, before you crawl off to your cozy bed. Even if you work hard all day, your day-to-day living can make your body soft. And that softness is a modern-day killer, the equivalent of the savanna-dweller's lion (actually, the lion was better, since it kept people moving). — Cameron Diaz

First, there's the job - where the goal is simply to earn a living and support your family. Then there's the career - where you trace your progress through various appointments and achievements. Finally, there's the calling - the ideal blend of activity and character that makes work inseparable from life. — Robert Bella

It became clear to me in an instant that living a gay life without publicly acknowledging it is simply not enough to make any significant contribution to the immense work that lies ahead on the road to complete equality. — Zachary Quinto

Soldiering was about fighting. It was about killing people before they killed you. It was about having your way by force and guile in a dangerous world, taking a shit in the woods, living in dirty, difficult conditions, enduring hardships and risks that could - and sometimes did - kill you. It was ugly work. Which is not to say that certain men didn't enjoy it, didn't live for it. Garrison was one of those men. He embraced its cruelty. He would say, this man needs to die. Just like that. Some people needed to die. — Mark Bowden

Those who have failed to work toward the truth have missed the purpose of living. — Gautama Buddha

The elements of trial and error, similar to earth and sky, and fire and water, delineates the constituent modules of our lives. Living robustly includes more failures than successes. We achieve adeptness to living by exhibiting a willingness to make good faith mistakes and learn from each misadventure. Every effort that fails to achieve our expected result is understandably frustrating. The fact is that without ideas and dreams and devoid of occasional crash landings, a person can never hope to achieve any worthy acts to temper resounding personal disappointment. Meaningful success is ultimately defined when a person dies, when an entire life's work devoted to performing passionate and compassionate enterprises can be judge as a whole unit. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Don't try to use God to achieve your purpose. Rather, aim to achieve His — Sunday Adelaja

The average Frenchman would shrug, as if to say: These notions of yours are all very fascinating, no doubt, but we make a decent living. Nobody has ulcers. I have time to work on my monograph about Balzac, and my foreman enjoys his espaliered pear trees. I think as a matter of fact, we do not wish to make the changes that you suggest. — Julia Child

The dreaming world, they'd think we were crazy. Those people still in bed, they'd be asleep another hour, then washing their faces, under their arms, and between their legs, before going to the same work they did every day. Living that same life, every day. — Chuck Palahniuk

Fair-minded people make a concerted effort to pull their own weight rather than living off the hard work of others. — Frank Sonnenberg

I just want to keep living on and enjoying food! Even though I'm gaining weight, I want to record if the Lord wants me to still record, and I just want to do my work on the road as long as I got those fans out there. — George Jones

Don't let the covers fool you. Books, like lives, are wiggling, evolving, living things. They're not bound by pages or authors or schools of thought. They're not born when they're printed; in fact, they only start to live once they're read. So first of all, we thank you, reader. You dignify this work we do, and we're sincerely grateful for your time and attention. — Kelly G. Wilson

(...) he was beginning to be himself. And now he wanted madly to be free to go on. A home, his work, and absolute freedom to move and to be, in her, with her, this was his passionate desire. He thought in a kind of ecstasy, living an hour of painful intensity. — D.H. Lawrence

There's only one thing worse than to live without working, and that is to work without living. — Evan Esar

During the war, the holders of power in all countries found it necessary to bribe the populations into cooperation by unusual concessions. Wage-earners were allowed a living wage, Hindus were told they were men and brothers, women were given the vote, and young people were allowed to enjoy those innocent pleasures of which the old, in the name of morality, always wish to rob them. The war being won, the victors set to work to deprive their tools of advantages temporarily conceded. — Bertrand Russell

The anthology meets with two different kinds of reactions in living poets. They will either write toward the anthology or away from it. Anti-anthology poets often overreach themselves, inflicting protective distortions on their work - as parents in old Central Europe often deliberately maimed their sons to save them from compulsory military service. — Laura Riding

The principal advantages of living in your station's section house is that it is cheap, close to work and it's not your parents' flat. The disadvantages are that you're sharing your accommodation with people too weakly socialised to live with normal human beings, and who habitually wear heavy boots. The weak socialisation makes opening the fridge an exciting adventure in microbiology, and the boots mean that every shift change sounds like an avalanche. — Ben Aaronovitch

A lot of people play single to work some angle. I'm always about keeping it real. If that's how I'm living, that's how I'm living. — Ice-T

What is it that a young man wants? Where is the central source of that wild fury that boils up in him, that goads and drives and lashes him, that explodes his energies and strews his purpose to the wind of a thousand instant and chaotic impulses? The older and assured people of the world, who have learned to work without waste and error, think they know the reason for the chaos and confusion of a young man's life. They have learned the thing at hand, and learned to follow their single way through all the million shifting hues and tones and cadences of living, to thread neatly with unperturbed heart their single thread through that huge labyrinth of shifting forms and intersecting energies that make up life - and they say, therefore, that the reason for a young man's confusion, lack of purpose, and erratic living is because he has not found himself. — Thomas Wolfe

If I wasn't in broadcasting I would like to grow a gigantic beard; and I would like to open a motorcycle garage somewhere in the desert in Nevada and I would disappear and work on bikes, make them really fast. I would love to just race motorcycles for a living if I could do it, but I'm just not that good at it so this is what I'm doing. — George Stroumboulopoulos

You don't want some tacky Vegas fly-by. You're serious. You're serious about friendships, about your work, your family. You're serious about Star Wars, and you active dislike of Jar Jar Binks
"
"Well, God. Come on, anyone who
"
"You're serious," she continued before he went on a Jar Jar rant, "about living your life on your terms, and being easygoing doesn't negate that one bit. You're serious about what kind of kryptonite is more lethal to Superman."
"You have to go with the classic green. I told you, the gold can strip Kryptonians' powers permanently, but
" ...
... "Mkae all the lists you want, Cilla. Love? It's green kryptonite. it powers out all the rest. — Nora Roberts

The payoff of living in the past or the future is you never have to do your work in the present. — Steven Pressfield

The work of your life is to discover your purpose and get on with the business of living it out. — Oprah Winfrey

You just have to work really hard to tune out the noise and the static. Because it gets louder, and people really have an opinion, and you don't want to shy away from taking chances for fear of what people will say, or living in the wreckage of the future [of] what may be if I do this. — Jennifer Aniston

Oliver, my professor, was a scientific bounder, a journalist by instinct, a thief of ideas, - he was always prying! And you know the knavish system of the scientific world. I simply would not publish, and let him share my credit. I went on working, I got nearer and nearer making my formula into an experiment, a reality. I told no living soul, because I meant to flash my work upon the world with crushing effect and become famous at a blow. I took up the question of pigments to fill up certain gaps. And suddenly, not by design but by accident, I made a discovery in physiology. — H.G.Wells

Film sets are a strange place, but an exciting place. I do love my work; I really enjoy going to work. But if you just spend all your time on film sets or even on stage, you can become a Michael Jackson figure, living in your own little universe. — James McAvoy

If you want to make yourself more sensitive to the small details in your work, cultivate a habit of imagining, as specifically as possible, what you expect to see and do when you get to your desk. Then you'll be prone to notice the tiny ways in which real life deviates from the narrative inside your head. If you want to become better at listening to your children, tell yourself stories about what they said to you at dinnertime last night. Narrate your life, as you are living it, and you'll encode those experiences deeper in your brain. If you need to improve your focus and learn to avoid distractions, take a moment to visualize, with as much detail as possible, what you are about to do. It is easier to know what's ahead when there's a well-rounded script inside your head. — Charles Duhigg

The first year I started in San Francisco, there was an American work on every program and there's been a lot of music by living composers and gradually that was part of the process of getting the audience really to trust me. — Michael Tilson Thomas

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. — Shannon Hale

[Winning an Oscar] was a beautiful thing that happened. It is in my house, and every time I look at, I see all the people who are a part of it, all the people who gave me opportunities to work, gave me opportunities to make a living at this thing [acting] that was a dream for me, growing up. And I got to do it, and then again and again and again, and make a living out of being an actress. — Penelope Cruz

Living alone,' November whispered, 'is a skill, like running long distance or programming old computers. You have to know parameters, protocols. You have to learn them so well that they become like a language: to have music always so that the silence doesn't overwhelm you, to perform your work exquisitely well so that your time is filled. You have to allow yourself to open up until you are the exact size of the place you live, no more or else you get restless. No less, or else you drown. There are rules; there are ways of being and not being. — Catherynne M Valente

The day before is what we bring to the day we're actually living through, life is a matter of carrying along all those days-before just as someone might carry stones, and when we can no longer cope with the load, the work is done, the last day is the only one that is not the day before another day. — Jose Saramago

Writing isn't generally a lucrative source of income; only a few, exceptional writers reach the income levels associated with the best-sellers. Rather, most of us write because we can make a modest living, or even supplement our day jobs, doing something about which we feel passionately. Even at the worst of times, when nothing goes right, when the prose is clumsy and the ideas feel stale, at least we're doing something that we genuinely love. There's no other reason to work this hard, except that love. — Melissa Scott

It's not that I have any moral compunctions about work ... but grampa may die to-morrow and he may live for ten years. Meanwhile we're living above our income and all we've got to show for it is a farmer's car and a few clothes. We keep an apartment that we've only lived in three months and a little old house way off in nowhere. We're frequently bored and yet we won't make any effort to know any one except the same crowd who drift around California all summer wearing sport clothes and waiting for their families to die. — F Scott Fitzgerald

If you want money, you must work to earn it. — Lailah Gifty Akita

While prosperity and longevity arrive together, they cannot be treated the same. With greater wealth, people in Asia may not have to work as many hours as they do now. But living longer means they will have to work more years, not fewer. — Sri Mulyani Indrawati

First I was dying to finish high school and start college.
And then I was dying to finish college and start working.
And then I was dying to marry and have children.
And then I was dying for my children to grow old enough for school so I could return to work.
And then I was dying to retire.
And now, I am dying ... and suddenly I realize I forgot to live. — Anonymous

So I will stand more steadfastly for the things I stand up for, like people who work for a living. I'd like to be able to stand that way when I go to Congress. — John Murray

Once I started working, it became better and better. I really felt that I was back into the work. I was glad I was alive. Just being able to draw and paint - even if I can't walk - is worth living for. — John Newman

Many Christians and Christian leaders have been neutralized by the love of money and materialism. The homage paid to affluence becomes a burden that saps our energy as well as our love for God and other people ... Like Jesus and Paul, we can learn to be content with what we have, living modestly in order that we may give liberally to the work of the kingdom and to meet the needs of others. — John Wimber

What worked in war would likewise work in the place of peace. God's principle of power never altered because of circumstances. It takes as much faith to produce a crop of corn as it does to storm and seize an enemy stronghold. One must act in confidence, sure that
God will play His part, whether in a cornfield or on a battlefield. — W. Phillip Keller

Beyond natural history Other biological sciences take up the study at other levels of organization: dissecting the individual into organs and tissues and seeing how these work together, as in physiology; reaching down still further to the level of cells, as in cytology; and reaching the final biological level with the study of living molecules and their interactions, as in biochemistry. No one of these levels can be considered as more important than any other. — Marston Bates

When Mr. William Faraday sat down to write his memoirs after fifty-eight years of blameless inactivity he found the work of inscribing the history of his life almost as tedious as living it had been, and so, possessing a natural invention coupled with a gift for locating the easier path, he began to prevaricate a little upon the second page, working his way up to downright lying on the sixth and subsequent folios. — Margery Allingham

I didn't want to be a sideman. My own style was coming out and I was into my own writing. I wrote a whole album, I arranged it all with pencil and paper. I did eventually do a lot of work with my father, but that was different. I was living at home; I wasn't a starving musician. I wasn't spoiled, but I wasn't going to have some producer come in and tell me what to play. — Shuggie Otis

I like how my body feels when I'm in shape; I love how it feels after I work out each day. Fitting in the clothes I like to wear comfortably and living a healthy lifestyle is important to me. — Colbie Caillat

TEN GUIDEPOSTS FOR WHOLEHEARTED LIVING 1. Cultivating authenticity: letting go of what people think 2. Cultivating self-compassion: letting go of perfectionism 3. Cultivating a resilient spirit: letting go of numbing and powerlessness 4. Cultivating gratitude and joy: letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark 5. Cultivating intuition and trusting faith: letting go of the need for certainty 6. Cultivating creativity: letting go of comparison 7. Cultivating play and rest: letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth 8. Cultivating calm and stillness: letting go of anxiety as a lifestyle 9. Cultivating meaningful work: letting go of self-doubt and "supposed to" 10. Cultivating laughter, song, and dance: letting go of being cool and "always in control — Brene Brown

How to earn a viable standard of living while giving vent to their desire to perform creative activities is the quintessential challenge for modern humans. Some people settle for jobs filled with drudgery and in their free time immerse themselves in hobbies that provide them with personal happiness. Other people prefer to find work that makes them happy, even if this occupation requires them to live a more modest standard of living. The greater their impulse is for curiosity and creativity, the less likely that a person will exchange personal happiness for economic security. — Kilroy J. Oldster

To make a living is no longer enough. Work also has to make a life. — Peter Drucker

A body is a living entity. It represents life, freedom, sensuality, and it is a mechanism to carry out our thoughts. A body is always beautiful to me. It depends on the individual work and what I do with it and what kind of idea lies behind it - if age matters or not. But in my group works, the only difference is how far people can go if it rains, snows etc. — Spencer Tunick

Being a witness of His love, by loving my neighbour, by being one with my family, by helping my colleagues at work, is a way of living which I know draws me closer to God. — George Calleja

And without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one's liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living. — Simone De Beauvoir

Day by day, morning by morning, begin your walk with Him in the calm trust that God is at work in everything ... It is your personal business, as a discipline of your heart, to learn to be peaceful and safe in God in every situation ... Remember, friend, where your real living is going on. In your thinking, in your reacting, in your heart of hearts - here is where your walk with God begins and continues. So when you start to move into trusting Him, stay there. Don't wander out again into worry and doubt! — Anne Ortlund

We ought to compliment and not to compete with one another. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I dont want to confront him. I know he's real. I have seen his work. I walked in front of those eyes once. I wont do it again. I wont push my chips forward and stand up and go out to meet him. It aint just bein older. I wish that it was. I cant say that it's even what you are willin to do. Because I always knew that you had to be willin to die to even do this job. That was always true. Not to sound glorious about it or nothin but you do. If you aint they'll know it. They'll see it in a heartbeat. I think it is more like what you are willin to become. And I think a man would have to put his soul at hazard. And I wont do that. — Cormac McCarthy

All of a sudden I was living what is perceived to be the model life. It was just full-on, 24 hours a day. It was work all the time. And there's always a party to go to. — Kate Moss

I was picked up on a London street by a model agent. She took me to her office and then sent me to Paris to work in shows. It was supposed to be two weeks, but I ended up living there with my Zimbabwean boyfriend. I made enough money modeling and acting in French movies to buy a nice flat. — Saffron Burrows

This could be a whole life," she thought. "You work eight hours a day covering wires to earn money to buy food and to pay for a place to sleep so that you can keep living to come back to cover more wires. Some people are born and kept living just to come to this ... — Betty Smith

If a man or a woman puts in an honest day's work, they should to be able to earn a living wage. — Richard J. Codey

I do a lot of work with mental health and wellness, which I also believe has a lot to do with your lifestyle as well - what you're eating, how you're living, what you're thinking. How you live your life can affect your mental state. — Mariel Hemingway

To work for better understanding among people, one does not have to be a former president sitting at a fancy conference room table. Peace can be made in the neighborhoods, the living rooms, the playing fields, and the classrooms of our country. — Jimmy Carter

People, the common people, can genuinely see what I'm doing. Moreover, people know that I have adopted four principles in living my life: simple living, punctuality, hard work and prudence. These are the four principles I adopted at the very beginning and continue to use until now. People see this and give me donations. — Abdul Sattar Edhi

Whoever lives wins. Don't feel guilty about having survived. If you have time to be feeling guilty, work on living a day longer, a minute longer. And once in a while, remember the ones that died before you. That's good enough.
Vol 1 Chap 4 — Atsuko Asano

Another son came along 18 months later, although we waited four years to have the third, because Mitt was still in school and we had no income except the stock we were chipping away at. We were living on the edge, not entertaining. No, I did not work. Mitt thought it was important for me to stay home with the children, and I was delighted. — Ann Romney

It is obvious that the fascist mass pestilence, with its background of thousands of years, cannot be mastered with social measures corresponding to the past three hundred years. The discovery of the natural biological work democracy in international human intercourse is the answer to fascism. This will be no less true even if not one of the living sex-economists, orgone biophysicists or work democrats should live to see its general functioning and its victory over the irrationalism in social life. — Wilhelm Reich

Life in New Orleans is all about making the present--this moment, right now--as pleasant as possible. So New Orleanians, by and large, aren't tortured by the frenzy to achieve, acquire, and manage the unmanageable future. Their days are built around the things that other Americans have pushed out of their lives by incessant work: art, music, elaborate cooking, and--most of all--plenty of relaxed time with family and friends. Their jobs are really just the things they do to earn a little money; they're not the organiing principle of life. While this isn't a worldview particularly conducive to getting things done, getting things done isn't the most important thing in New Orleans. Living life is. Once you've tasted that, and especially if it's how you grew up, life everywhere else feels thin indeed. — Dan Baum

The real wages of potters are in the daily silent appreciations of each of their customers as they pour the morning tea from their teapot, or drink coffee from their mug, or eat dinner off their plate. To be this involved in the daily lives of people who appreciate and admire your work enough to buy it must bring deep reassurance. It is a kind of immortality you can enjoy while still living.
The same goes for the woodworker. You are part of the community. — Roger Deakin

For almost anyone who chooses to be a writer, since so very few writers are able to learn a living from their work that is equivalent to the living earned by the average dentist or accountant. — Russell Banks

Yes, there was racism, but there was also classism. You're a high-powered corporate attorney. You've spent most of your life reviewing contracts, brokering deals, talking on the phone. That's what you're good at, that's what made you rich and what allowed you to hire a plumber to fix your toilet, which allowed you to keep talking on the phone. The more work you do, the more money you make, the more peons you hire to free you up to make more money. That's the way the world works. But one day it doesn't. No one needs a contract reviewed or a deal brokered. What it does need is toilets fixed. And suddenly that peon is your teacher, maybe even your boss. For some, this was scarier than the living dead. — Max Brooks

Cooking is work that is traditionally done by working-class people. The work itself is not glamorous. It's repetitive, and it's a lot closer to factory work than art, whatever level you're doing it at. Certainly chefs are used to living like rock 'n' rollers to some extent, inasmuch as we get a lot of those fringe benefits without having to learn how to play guitar. — Anthony Bourdain

The secret to success: Don't stop to admire yourself too often. I only stopped to admire my work after I wrote eight books, before that, I never once admired myself for accomplishing anything in my profession. Don't stop to admire yourself too much, instead, admire people who have achieved more than you have, because that gives you something to keep on looking forward to. But when the time comes that you should take a look at the greatness you have done, make sure you take a really long and hard good look at it! Make sure you know your own greatness. — C. JoyBell C.

Because there is no challenge, there is no reason to work hard. And with no reason to work hard, we all have become lazy. Lazy people are like cancer. They spread. Before you know it, the entire country is destroyed. — Tahir Shah

I'm not bothered about what people say behind my back. I don't need to know about it. I believe in living my life and doing my work. God will give you success. And even if He doesn't, there's a lesson to be learnt. — Rani Mukerji

There is something living deep within us all that welcomes, even relishes, the role of victimhood for ourselves. There is no cause in the world more righteously embraced than our own when we feel someone has wronged us. Perhaps it is a psychological leftover from early childhood, when we felt the primeval terror of the world around us and yearned for the intervention of a mother/protector to keep us safe. Perhaps it makes it easier to explain away our personal failures when the work of an enemy can be blamed. Perhaps we just get tired of long explanations and like the cleanliness of an easy solution. It is for wiser people than me to say. Whatever its allure, this primitive ideology of Hutu Power swept through Rwanda in 1993 and early 1994 with the speed of flame through dry grass. — Paul Rusesabagina

This is the ministry and its work
not to drill hearts and minds and consciences into right forms of thought and mental postures, but to guide to the living God who speaks. — Frederick William Robertson

She surrounded herself with books at work and at home. Her living space was a testament to her first and abiding love with shelves jammed with books tables crowded with them. She saw them not only as knowledge entertainment comfort even sanity but as a kind of artful decoration. — Nora Roberts

The immigrant artist shares with all other artists the desire to interpret and possibly remake his or her own world. So though we may not be creating as dangerously as our forebears - though we are not risking torture, beatings, execution, though exile does not threaten us into perpetual silence - still, while we are at work bodies are littering the streets somewhere. People are buried under rubble somewhere. Mass graves are being dug somewhere. Survivors are living in makeshift tent cities and refugee camps somewhere, shielding their heads from the rain, closing their eyes, covering their ears, to shut out the sounds of military "aid" helicopters. And still, many are reading, and writing, quietly, quietly. — Edwidge Danticat

I think that no matter what you do, whether you rodeo, whether you work in an office, you work in the oilfield or you play music for a living, eventually if you do enough of it, the devil in the back of your head tries to turn it into work. You have to find new ways to make it new and make it exciting to keep that drive there. — Cody Johnson

In the 1890's horses, carrying people to work, dropped 4.5 million tons of manure on the streets of Manhattan, every year. That was the big environmental problem of the day. "NYC will be buried in horse manure by 1950!" screamed the headlines. It doesn't matter what your opinion about this was. None of the people living in NY solved the problem despite the 1000s of opinions. People with passion for mechanics in Detroit made something called a car. Problem solved. — James Altucher