Menial Quotes & Sayings

If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services. — Henry David Thoreau

It dawned on me I had just ordered the Prince of Teravinea to perform the menial labor of a scullery maid. At first I was ashamed at giving him such an assignment, but when I glanced over at him I noted he was completely engrossed in his chore. I had to turn my face and hide the smile that came to my lips. Only with concentrated effort did I manage to stifle my snicker. — D. Maria Trimble

A guru trains his disciples to become Krishna dasa, a menial servant of Krishna. — Lokanatha Swami

Our jobs are more than just a means to an end - whether that end is selfish enjoyment or service in the church. Our work is more than something we "slog through." However menial, however boring, however unmatched to our interests, our jobs are one of the key ways in which God matures us as Christians and brings glory to himself. God has a purpose for our work. — Sebastian Traeger

If a city has a 30% Negro population, then it is logical to assume that Negroes should have at least 30% of the jobs in any particular company, and jobs in all categories rather than only in menial areas. — Martin Luther King Jr.

After that, Kestrel sought him out. She used the excuse of those lessons he had given her. She said that she wanted more. She acquired a number of menial skills, like how to blacken boots.
Arin was easy to find. Although raids on the countryside continued, he increasingly relied on lieutenants to lead the sorties. He spent more time at home.
"I don't know what he thinks he's doing," Sarsine said.
"He's giving officers under his command the chance to prove their worth," Kestrel said. "He's showing his trust in them and letting them build their confidence. It's sound military strategy."
Sarsine gave her a hard look.
"He's delegating," Kestrel said.
"He's shirking. And for what, I'm sure you know."
This struck a bright match of pleasure within Kestrel. — Marie Rutkoski

If you're co-founder or CEO, you have to do all kinds of tasks you might not want to do ... If you don't do your chores, the company won't succeed ... No task is too menial. — Elon Musk

I did quite a lot of menial jobs. I was a waiter, an inventory clerk touring round properties listing cups and saucers, and a laserquest marshal. — Richard C. Armitage

For those working menial jobs or putting in 100-hour weeks for corporations, the lure of starting your own business can seem like a great way to get more flexibility, upside, and ownership. — Kathryn Minshew

There was no boss-class, no menial-class, no beggars, no prostitutes, no lawyers, no priests, no boot-licking, no cap-touching. — George Orwell

The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them. Even the most tedious chore will become endurable as you parade through each day convinced that every task, no matter how menial or boring, brings you closer to achieving your dreams. — Og Mandino

I think it's all absolute nonsense how people talk about photography as being an art. It's a very menial career that you do if you draw badly. Now they teach it at the Royal College of Art and get grand about it. It's the only course there that I don't understand. — Antony Armstrong-Jones

There were many women in the Soviet scientific community, proportionately more so than in the United States. But they tended to occupy menial middle-level positions, and male Soviet scientists, like their American counterparts, were puzzled about a pretty woman with evident scientific competence who forcefully expressed her views. — Carl Sagan

They know how to eat, shit, drive their cars, do menial work, watch television and produce equally stupid spawns of themselves; what the hell are they doing to help mankind? — Brad McKinniss

What most upset her, was the widespread use of slave labor. ...It is true Republicanism that drives the slaves half fed, and destitute of clothing...to labor...while the owner walks about idle...white men considered idleness a virtue even if they owned only one slave or none. No white man would do work considered too menial for his race. — Lynne Withey

No labor is really menial unless you're not getting adequate wages. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Liberalism's key principle is to redistribute wealth from the haves to the have nots. That takes money from the entities with the greatest potential to improve society (for example, corporations that create jobs, invent life-saving medicines, etc.) and redistributes it to the people, whom on average, will never contribute more to society than to hold a menial job. — Marty Nemko

It is also very important to observe, that menial servants are absolutely necessary to make the resources of the higher and middle classes of society efficient in the demand for material products. — Thomas Malthus

Ah? A small aversion to menial labor?" The doctor cocked an eyebrow. "Understandable, but misplaced. One should treasure those hum-drum tasks that keep the body occupied but leave the mind and heart unfettered. — Tad Williams

Performance is done for the sight and approval of others. Service is done knowing that God is watching and approving whether or not anyone else is. Performance causes us to be enslaved to others' opinions, unable to say no, and prone to being overworked. Service frees us to do what God wants, thereby saying no as needed. Performance presses us toward perfectionism, where we seek to do everything just right so others will praise us. Service allows us to do our best, knowing that God's appreciation of us is secure regardless of our performance. Performance causes us to focus on the "big" things and only do what is highly visible or significant. Service allows us to do simple, humble, and menial tasks - the "little things" - knowing that the peasant Jewish carpenter we worship equally appreciates them both. — Mark Driscoll

Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most - that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least. — Eugene V. Debs

POTTERS were not the very highest grade of workers, but "the king" needed potters, and therefore they were in royal service, although the material upon which they worked was nothing but clay. We, too, may be engaged in the most menial part of the Lord's work, but it is a great privilege to do anything for "the king; — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes. — William J. Bennett

Every morning I offer my body, my mind and any ability that I posses, to be used by Thee, O infinite creator, in whatever way Thou dost choose to express Thyself through me. I know that all work is Thy work, and that no task is too difficult or too menial when offered to Thee in loving service. — Paramahansa Yogananda

I'd much rather you assumed for yourself a higher rank than mere menial labourer for the duration of this great adventure.'
He paused. 'You wish me to strike heroic poses against the sunset, Lady Envy?'
'Indeed! — Steven Erikson

Database Management System [Origin: Data + Latin basus "low, mean, vile, menial, degrading, ounterfeit."] A complex set of interrelational data structures allowing data to be lost in many convenient sequences while retaining a complete record of the logical relations between the missing items.
From The Devil's DP Dictionary — Stan Kelly-Bootle

In our Army every soldier must care about his job. Often- if the duty seems menial or hum-drum- it is hard to cultivate this attitude. But it must be done. What you do in your job each day, you do for the Army. — William O. Wooldridge

Doesn't matter how menial may be the job that you're doing today. If you have dreams, that will turn into something positive in the future. — Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa

It's a tough job being somebody's personal assistant. You have to anwser their phone, manage their correspondence, run their errands, pay their bills, arrange their schedule, and basically do whatever tasks, menial to major, they are too busy or self absorbed or distranted or pampered or disinterested to do themselves. — Lee Goldberg

Both my mother and my father grew up in Asia, in a time of political instability. They'd earned college degrees before setting foot in the States but had to work menial jobs early on in order to make ends meet. — Gene Luen Yang

If there's nothing for me to do as an actress, then that's frustrating. I'd rather go work at a menial labour job, where I can actually get my hands dirty. — Robin Wright

Thus the labour of a manufacture adds, generally, to the value of the materials which he works upon, that of his own maintenance, and of his masters profits. The labour of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of nothing. — Adam Smith

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. — James Henry Hammond

In fact the English nurses had spent much of their time stuffing mattresses, stirring gruel, and standing at washtubs, but Lib didn't want the nun to mistake her for an ignorant menial. That was what nobody understood: saving lives often came down to getting a latrine pipe unplugged. — Emma Donoghue

The employment of the poor in roads and public works, and a tendency among landlords and persons of property to build, to improve and beautify their grounds, and to employ workmen and menial servants, are the means most within our power and most directly calculated to remedy the evils arising from that disturbance in the balance of produce and consumption. — Thomas Malthus

By exempting your child from all chores, as many affluent American families now do, you are sending the message, "Your time is too valuable to be spent on menial tasks," which easily morphs into the unintended message "You are too important to do menial tasks." And that unintended message puffs up the bloated self-esteem that now characterizes many American kids. — Leonard Sax

Mrs Islam is what you call a respectable type." Nazneen tried a snore.
"Razia, on the other hand, I would not call a respectable type. I'm not saying anything against her. But what is her background? Her husband does some menial sort of job. He is uneducated. He is probably illiterate. Perhaps he can write his name. If he can't write his name, he will put a cross. Razia cuts her hair like a tramp. Perhaps she calls it fashion. I don't know. Her son is roaming around the estate like a vagabond, throwing stones and what have you. When I spoke to him he put his fingers in his nose, like this, and made a face like this. — Rohinton Mistry

A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the one and only difference between the poet and everybody else. — Mark Forsyth

A man who is holding down a menial job and thereby supporting a wife and children is doing something authentically important with his life. He should take deep satisfaction from that, and be praised by his community for doing so. If that same man lives under a system that says the children of the woman he sleeps with will be taken care of whether or not he contributes, then that status goes away. I am not describing a theoretical outcome, but American neighborhoods where, once working at a menial job to provide for his family made a man proud and gave him status in his community, and where now it doesn't. Taking the trouble out of life strips people in major ways which human beings look back on their lives and say, 'I made a difference. — Charles Murray

Though my work may be menial, though my contribution may be small, I can perform it with dignity and offer it with unselfishness. My talents may not be great, but I can use them to bless the lives of others ... The goodness of the world in which we live is the accumulated goodness of many small and seemingly inconsequential acts. — Gordon B. Hinckley

You can be very successful but still struggling financially, and it looked like I'd have to take a year or two off and find whatever menial labouring work you can get as a middle-aged, unskilled bald man. — Richard Flanagan

Coming in from the factory or warehouse, tired enough, there seemed little use for the night except to eat, sleep and then return to the menial job. But there was the typewriter waiting for me in those many old rooms with torn shades and worn rugs, the tub and toilet down the hall, and the feeling in the air of all the losers who had proceeded me. Sometimes the typewriter was there when the job wasn't and the food wasn't and the rent wasn't. Sometimes the typer was in hock. Sometimes there was only the park bench. But at the best of times there was the small room and the machine and the bottle. The sound of the keys, on and on, and shouts: 'HEY! KNOCK THAT OFF, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE! WE'RE WORKING PEOPLE HERE AND WE'VE GOT TO GET UP IN THE MORNING!' With broom sticks knocking on the floor, pounding coming from the ceiling, I would work in a last few lines ... — Charles Bukowski

For my own part, I had rather suffer any inconvenience from having to work occasionally in chambers and kitchen ... than witness the subservience in which the menial class is held in Europe. — Harriet Martineau

A menial task which must be mine, that shall I glorify and make an art of it. — Walter Russell

If Quint - on your remonstrance at the time you speak of - was a base menial, one of the things Miles said to you, I find myself guessing, was that you were another. — Henry James

You need to work even if it is a menial or dirty job, because every job is participating in the process of creation. — Sunday Adelaja

Drudgery is one of the finest tests to determine the genuineness of our character. Drudgery is work that is far removed from anything we think of as ideal work. It is the utterly hard, menial, tiresome, and dirty work. And when we experience it, our spirituality is instantly tested and we will know whether or not we are spiritually genuine. Read John 13. In this chapter, we see the Incarnate God performing the greatest example of drudgery - washing fishermen's feet. He then says to them, "If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet" (John 13:14). — Oswald Chambers

I took my menial life for granted until it became clear, why my early years resulted in a lack of adoption.- J.D. Stroube (Rival: Prelude to the Mirage Chronicles.) — J.D. Stroube

People with menial jobs conjure up what Nietzsche calls a background world, forcing themselves to believe in an earthly or heavenly paradise. Their mental Eden is as seductive as their job is repugnant. — Amelie Nothomb

Somewhere, on the long road that wound through those four years, the girl with her sachet & dancing slippers had slipped away & there was left a woman with sharp green eyes, who counted pennies & turned her hands to many menial tasks, a woman to whom nothing was left from the wreckage except the indestructible red earth on which she stood. — Margaret Mitchell

Joy is always an integral part of loving. There is joy in every act of life, no matter how menial or repetitive. To work in love is to work in joy. To live in love is to live in joy ... Why not choose joy? ... Why not live in joy? — Leo Buscaglia

Ah, what a sweetner of toil is love - love to a dear earthly parent, and still more love to Christ. There is no drudgery in the most menial employment where that is the motive power. — Martha Finley

base menial?" "As — Henry James

For Southerners, a white skin was the distinguishing badge of mind and intellect. Black skin was the sign that a given people had been providentially designed to serve as menial laborers, as what Hammond called the "mudsill" class necessary to support every society. — David Brion Davis

Jesus specialized in menial tasks that everyone else tried to avoid: washing feet, helping children, fixing breakfast, and serving lepers. Nothing was beneath him, because he came to serve. It wasn't in spite of his greatness that he did these things, but because of it, and he expects us to follow his example. — Rick Warren

Often sweeps Death. The houses of living, A menial task, That brings into her fair, dark eyes. A sparkle of joy. At the little things she finds there. — Greg Keyes

Hard-earned achievement brings a sense of self-worth. Work builds and refines character, creates beauty, and is the instrument of our service to one another and to God. A consecrated life is filled with work, sometimes repetitive, sometimes menial, sometimes unappreciated but always work that improves, orders, sustains, lifts, ministers, aspires. — D. Todd Christofferson

Men impose deception on women and punish them for being deceived, force them down to the lowest level and punish them for falling so low, bind them in marriage and then chastise them with menial service for life, or insults, or blows. — Nawal El Saadawi

This entailed switching around by hand ENIAC's rat's nest of cables and resetting its switches. At first the programming seemed to be a routine, perhaps even menial task, which may have been why it was relegated to women, who back then were not encouraged to become engineers. But what the women of ENIAC soon showed, and the men later came to understand, was that the programming of a computer could be just as significant as the design of its hardware. — Walter Isaacson

Do not call any work menial until you have watched a proud person do it. — Robert Breault

It is a bad thing to perform menial duties even for the sake of freedom; to fight with pinpricks, instead of with clubs. I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing and scraping, dodging, and hair-splitting over words. Consequently, the government has given me back my freedom. — Karl Marx

Actually, the inability of any society to resist immigration, the inability to find other solutions to the problem of employment at the lower, more physical, and menial levels of the economic process, is a serious weakness, and possibly even a fatal one, in any national society. The fully healthy society would find ways to meet those needs out of its own resources. — George F. Kennan

Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived is no cause for celebration. You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine. No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow! — Og Mandino

Your attitude of serving the Lord can transform even the most menial of tasks into a magnificent sacrifice of love. — Elizabeth George

A game at which the liberals have become masters is that of deliberate evasiveness. The question often comes up 'what can you do?'. If you ask him to do something like stopping to use segregated facilities or dropping out of varsity to work at menial jobs like all blacks or defying and denouncing all provisions that make him privileged, you always get the answer - 'but that's unrealistic!' While this may be true, it only serves to illustrate the fact that mo matter what a white man does, the colour of his skin - his passport to privilege- will always put him miles ahead of the black men. Thus in the ultimate analysis, no white person can escape being part of the oppressor camp. — Steve Biko

I bargained with Life for a penny, and Life would pay no more. However I begged at the evening when I counted my scanty store. For Life is a just employer, he gives you what you ask. But once you have set the wages, why, you must bear the task. I worked for a menial's hire, only to learn, dismayed, that any wage I had asked of Life, Life would have willingly paid. — Jessie Belle Rittenhouse

God took Eve from the side of Adam, not from his foot to be his menial or slave or servant, not from his head to be his mental superior, and did take him from that which is nearest his heart, that he might love her, and that which is under his arm, that he might protect her. — Matthew Henry

It is certainly true that most men need some kind of a God. A few, and they are the men of genius, do not bow to an alien law. The rest try to justify their doings and misdoings, their thinking and existence (at least the menial side of it), to some one else, whether it be the personal God of the Jews, or a beloved, respected, and revered human being. It is only in this way that they can bring their lives under the social law ... — Otto Weininger

My aunt made me an offer I had to refuse," said Jared. He looked forbidding.
Kami knew that expression, and remembered the feeling that used to go with it: he was unhappy. "So you ran away from home," she said. "To become a tavern wench."
"I'm not a tavern wench," said Jared. "That's not a job." His voice was slightly less stern than before, as if he was taken aback.
"It sounds like you're a tavern wench," Kami told him. "Fleeing persecution, you have to take up a menial occupation to keep your body and soul together. But at least its honest work, though as you labor, many predatory customers make advances and offer indignities."
"One can only hope," Jared responded. — Sarah Rees Brennan

The old marchioness had him tracing down bed hangings and carpets for her. Send that. Be here. To her, all the world was a menial. If she wanted a lobster or a sturgeon, she ordered it up, and if she wanted good taste she ordered it in the same way. The marchioness would run her hand over Florentine silks, making little squeaks of pleasure. "You bought it, Master Cromwell," she would say. "And very beautiful it is. Your next task is to work out how we pay for it. — Hilary Mantel

Spirituality means, among other things, taking ourselves seriously. It means going against the cultural stream in which we are incessantly trivialized to the menial status of producers and performers, constantly depersonalized behind the labels of our degrees or our salaries. — Eugene H. Peterson

Never allow anyone to rain on your parade and thus cast a pall of gloom and defeat on the entire day. Remember that no talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character, are required to set up in the fault-finding business. Nothing external can have any power over you unless you permit it. Your time is too precious to be sacrificed in wasted days combating the menial forces of hate, jealously, and envy. — Og Mandino

Women's work, married or unmarried, is menial and low paid. Women's right to possess property is curtailed, more if they are married. How can marriage provide security? In any case a husband is a possession which can be lost or stolen and the abandoned wife of thirty odd with a couple of children is far more desolate and insecure in her responsibility than an unmarried woman with or without children ever could be. — Germaine Greer

Marvin: Look, look, no, just think. They left me - an ordinary, menial robot - to stop you - a gigantic, heavy-duty battle machine - whilst they ran off to save themselves ... What do you think they would leave me with?
Frogstar Robot: Well, er, something pretty damn devastating I would expect.
Marvin: Expect? Oh yes, expect. I'll tell you what they gave me to protect myself with, shall I?
Frogstar Robot: Yes all right.
Marvin: Nothing.
Frogstar Robot: What?
Marvin: Nothing at all. Not an electronic sausage.
Frogstar Robot: Well, doesn't that just take the biscuit! — Douglas Adams

Every task you are given, no matter how menial, offers opportunities to observe this world at work. No detail about the people within it is too trivial. Everything you see or hear is a sign for you to decode. Over time, you will begin to see and understand more of the reality that eluded you at first. For instance, a person whom you initially thought had great power ended up being someone with more bark than bite. Slowly, you begin to see behind the appearances. As you amass more information about the rules and power dynamics of your new environment, you can begin to analyze why they exist, and how they relate to larger trends in the field. You move from observation to analysis, honing your reasoning skills, but only after months of careful attention. — Robert Greene

One of the advantages of real worth is that menial tasks can always be left to someone else. — Jeffrey Archer

Freedom from menial work should be a rallying cry, not a cudgel to be used against the Left. How much liberty is there in having to do something you hate in order to survive? — Alex Pareene

To support my brothers and me, my mother got a job so menial that we never discussed it. — Eric Braeden

Progress never defines its ultimate objective but thrusts its victims at once into an infinite series,' Mr. [John Crowe] Ransom said' 'Industrialism,' he declared, 'is rightfully a menial, of almost miraculous cunning, but no intelligence; it needs to be strongly governed, or it will destroy the economy of the household. Only a community of tough conservative habit can master it. — Richard M. Weaver

It is not serving, but servility, that is menial. — Hortense Odlum

This is a common refrain you hear in Silicon Valley: the CEO who picks up the stack of newspapers outside the front door, the founder who wipes the counters. With these actions, the leaders demonstrate their egalitarian natures - we're all in this together and none of us are above the menial tasks that need to get done. — Eric Schmidt

Since God has descended to us in swaddling clothes and in hanging on a cross, we should not consider any calling menial or unimportant. When Christ - the God of the universe - wrapped a towel around his waist to wash his disciples' feet, Calvin observes, he dignified the humblest callings. No one and no service is "beneath us" if it benefits others. — Michael S. Horton

I've had menial jobs, and 'professional writer' isn't one of them. — Darin Strauss

One less happy practice Vanbrugh introduced with Carlisle at Castle Howard was that of razing estate villages and moving the occupants elsewhere if they were deemed to be insufficiently picturesque or intrusive. At Castle Howard, Vanbrugh cleared away not only an existing village but also a church and the ruined castle from which the new house took its name. Soon villages up and down the country were being leveled to make way for more extensive houses and unimpeded views. It was almost as if a rich person couldn't begin work on a grand house until he had thoroughly disrupted at least a few dozen menial lives. Oliver — Bill Bryson

The author meets an African-American who observes that his fellows who begin with aspirations to a good education, solid career, and the raising of a family slowly lose that incentive. Even those who have a college education, he observes, need to take menial jobs and begin to look for excitement in less productive places. — John Howard Griffin

I am the menial, at the beck and squawk of any feathered worthy who wants service. — Flannery O'Connor

Nothing is menial where there is love. — Pearl S. Buck

Some saints cannot do menial work while maintaining a saintly attitude because they feel such service is beneath their dignity. — Oswald Chambers

I grew up in northwest London on a council estate. My parents are Irish immigrants who came over here when they were very young and worked in menial jobs all their lives, and I'm one of many siblings. — Amanda Hale

We were stumbling sluts married to mud. When the war was over, nobody bothered to tell us. Our tragedy was permanent. No records were kept of us anywhere. We shuffled through ruined villages aimlessly. Anyone who had a menial, pointless job to do had only to wave us down and we would do it ... On and on Helga spun her yarn, weaving a biography on the crazy loom of modern history. — Kurt Vonnegut