Quotes & Sayings About Overworked

Man's own form in space - his body - was a private prison; and that it was because of this imprisoning misery - because he was hungry and overworked and went to a horrid place called home late at night in the rain, and his bones ached and his head was heavy. — Willem De Kooning

When you are overworked and exhausted, there is a sense of kind of delirium and that's why I think architects do all-nighters and they kind of do those deadlines. For four days I remember doing four nights in one row with no sleep. I mean nobody, unless you are crazy, would do that, but you are totally focused on the project. — Zaha Hadid

Money and prices and markets don't give us exact information about how much our suburbs, freeways, and spandex cost. Instead, everything else is giving us accurate information: our beleaguered air and watersheds, our overworked soils, our decimated inner cities. All of these provide information our prices should be giving us but do not. — Paul Hawken

Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid. — Oscar Wilde

I was tired and I had overworked myself and burnt myself out. So I went to Egypt by myself. When I saw what was built there, it made me understand how powerful we are, that we can create anything. And I felt like I needed to create things that were timeless too. — Alicia Keys

It's not easy being human. Especially when you are tired and overworked all the time ... That's when you become inhuman. — Hakan Nesser

As a writer, my mission is to represent the perceptible world in such a way that readers can see the extraordinary that lives all around them. I want to converse on the page. I want to squash the humdrum, the mendacity that arrives due to too many overworked routines and overfed expectations. I want to entertain and awaken. I want to imagine and observe. I want to spin my fiction from an honest, curious place. — Jen Knox

All through the crowd were men in uniform, sailors from the great fleet anchored in the Hudson, soldiers with divisional insignia from Massachusetts to California, wanting fearfully to be noticed, and finding the great city thoroughly fed up with soldiers unless they were nicely massed into pretty formations and uncomfortable under the weight of a pack and rifle. Through this medley Dean and Gordon wandered; the former interested, made alert by the display of humanity at its frothiest and gaudiest; the latter reminded of how often he had been one of the crown, tired, casually fed, overworked, and dissipated. To Dean the struggle was significant, young, cheerful; to Gordon it was dismal, meaningless, endless. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I'm always pretty overworked with commercial illustration or design or animation. — Dave Cooper

Here the phenomenologist has nothing in common with the literary critic who, as has frequently been noted, judges a work that he could not create and, if we are to believe certain facile condemnations, would not want to create. A literary critic is a reader who is necessarily severe. By turning inside out like a glove an overworked complex that has become debased to the point of being part of the vocabulary of statesmen, we might say that the literary critic and the professor of rhetoric, who know-all and judge-all, readily go in for a simplex of superiority. As for me, being an addict of felicitous reading, I only read and re-read what I like, with a bit of reader's pride mixed in with much enthusiasm. — Gaston Bachelard

By nice women ... you probably mean selfish women who have no more thought for the underprivileged, overworked women than a pussycat in a sunny window for the starving kitten in the street. Now in that sense I am not a nice woman, for I do care. — Nellie L. McClung

The one-cylinder ward is one in which the bishop handles all the problems, makes all the decisions, follows through on all the assignments, and faces every challenge. Then, like any other overworked cylinder, he starts to sputter and behave erratically. Eventually, he burns out altogether. — M. Russell Ballard

The majority of people who claim to be overworked work less than they think they do, and many of the ways people work are extraordinarily inefficient. Calling something "work" does not make it important or necessary. — Laura Vanderkam

I sometimes imagine there is a clerk behind a desk situated between the brain and the mouth. It is his job to examine utterances on their way out, and stamp them with approval or send them back for reconsideration. If such a clerk exists, mine must be very harried and overworked; and on occasion he puts his head down on the desk in despair, letting things pass without so much as a second glance. Suhail — Marie Brennan

We live in the age of the overworked and the undereducated. — Oscar Wilde

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

Around me I saw women overworked and underpaid, doing men's work at half men's wages, not because their work was inferior, but because they were women. — Anna Howard Shaw

When we wake up and see reality as it is, a lot of people blame feminism. They twist everything around and claim that the feminist vision creates demands which are too high and contradictory, demands that break overworked women down with stress. They claim that everything was so much easier when women were housewives without the demands of work and career. Motherhood and a clean home were a woman's self-realization. Today most women work two jobs, one outside and one inside the home. Yet if we lived equally and men took just as much responsibility for the children and the home, women would not be broken down by the stress. Perhaps it is only possible to accept the difficulties if you see feminism as a resistance movement, and the only path to possible freedom. Because resistance almost always involves pain. — Maria Sveland

A lot of educated, thoughtful, well-meaning people will spend hours and hundreds of dollars buying their rascally child this year's must-have toy at Christmastime. A lot of overworked, distracted, sort-of-nice husbands will purchase diamond earrings to make things better with the wife they are ignoring. Gadget purchased. Household calm. Jewelry bought. Wife satisfied. We put an impressive amount of faith in the capacity of material things that other people make to repair the troubled circumstances of our own creation. — Dave Bruno

I've said goodbye to the overworked notion that architecture has to save the world. — Peter Zumthor

I feel like football players are overworked and underpaid compared to any other sports. — Terrell Owens

The willing horse is always overworked. — Charles Darwin

Then again, what Cosimo had said was right: he was nothing but an overworked drone in a cube farm, a minor cog in the dreary machinery of a third-rate mortgage mill, overlooked, unloved, a sidelined player in the big game, — Stephen R. Lawhead

Vices are simply overworked virtues, anyway. Economy and frugality are to be commended but follow them on in an increasing ratio and what do we find at the other end? A miser! If we overdo the using of spare moments we may find an invalid at the end, while perhaps if we allowed ourselves more idle time we would conserve our nervous strength and health to more than the value the work we could accomplish by emulating at all times the little busy bee.
I once knew a woman, not very strong, who to the wonder of her friends went through a time of extraordinary hard work without any ill effects.
I asked her for her secret and she told me that she was able to keep her health, under the strain, because she took 20 minutes, of each day in which to absolutely relax both mind and body. She did not even "set and think." She lay at full length, every muscle and nerve relaxed and her mind as quiet as her body. This always relieved the strain and renewed her strength. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

Overworked, as usual. It happens to those who are particularly good at their jobs. She handed Eve a cup of tea in one of the pretty china cups. — J.D. Robb

You may be more talented than me. You might be smarter than me. And you may be better looking than me. But if we get on a treadmill together, you are going to get off first or I am going to die. It's really that simple. I'm not going to be overworked. — Jay Green

As a king can wear a crown, a crown can also weary a king. — Anthony Liccione

Someone said to me that we have to encourage more young women to want top-level editing jobs. I think that will happen naturally as we have more role models, more examples of boss ladies who aren't sad and cruel and overworked and undersexed like in DevilWearsPrada, but who are straight-up owning it and notable not for their gender but for their editorial savvy. — Ann Friedman

Across the board ... Not junkies or freaks, but people who were just as comfortable with drugs like weed, booze, or coke as we are - and we're not weird, are we? Hell no, we're just overworked professionals who need to relax now and then, have a bit of the whoop and the giggle, right? — Hunter S. Thompson

I've always overworked in the weight room. I love working with weights. I knew they'd give me the strength I needed. — Florence Griffith Joyner

I know that anybody who does all this and doesn't have to, everything thinks she's very driven. The truth is, I enjoy it all so! Can't it be that simple? I think it is! I don't feel overworked. I get a constant kick out of being heavily committed. Is that sick or something? God, what would I do sitting still? — Beverly Sills

While being overworked can be overwhelming, research increasingly shows that being underworked can be just as challenging. In essence, boredom is stressful. — Anonymous

How easy it is to work for God when we are filled with His Spirit! His service is so sweet, so delightful; He is not a hard master. People talk about their being overworked and breaking down. It is not so. It is [over-worry] and care that wears people out.
Why do so many workers break down? Not from overwork, but because there has been friction of the machinery; there hasn't been enough of the oil of the Spirit. Great engines have their machinery so arranged that where there is friction there is oil dropping on it all the time. It is a good thing for Christians to have plenty of oil. — Dwight L. Moody

It is a do-it-yourself era: health care, real estate, police investigation. Go online and f*ing figure it out for yourself because everyone's overworked and understaffed. — Gillian Flynn

The overworked man was tired of everything, and he only kept going because he had long since forgotten that life could consist of anything else. — Jonas Jonasson

Jory, most people, when hit men come after them, they get killed. You're lucky, spontaneous, and your guardian angel is overworked and way underpaid"
"I know, right? My angel walks into a bar and the other angels are like, Oh shit, that's the poor sap that's got Jory Harcourt. Look at him, he started drinking again.'" Sam was smiling. "Look at the twitch he's got, poor bastard. — Mary Calmes

When sleep enters the body like smoke
and man journeys into the abyss
like an extinguished star that is lighted elsewhere,
then all quarrel ceases,
overworked nag that has tossed the nightmare grip
of its rider. — Nelly Sachs

At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver colored section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night ... I wished I were a Denver Mexican, or even a poor overworked Jap, anything but what I was so drearily, a "white man" disillusioned. All my life I'd had white ambitions; that was why I'd abandoned a good woman like Terry in the San Joaquin Valley I passed the dark porches of Mexican and Negro homes. — Jack Kerouac

Three invalids. - Sufferings of George and Harris. - A victim to one hundred and seven fatal maladies. - Useful prescriptions. - Cure for liver complaint in children. - We agree that we are overworked, and need rest. - A week on the rolling deep? - George suggests the River. - Montmorency lodges an objection. - Original motion carried by majority of three to one. — Jerome K. Jerome

In the Great Depression; when the overworked millions, who took to the street of Europe and the United States to demand reduction of hours of labor, were replaced by millions of unemployed workers in every advanced country, who no longer demand freedom from work but were forced to beg for work - any work, even in the defense industries where the means for their own destruction were built. — Anonymous

To be "overworked" or "overcommitted," in this sense, is a sign of value and a bid for status (and perhaps a preemptive strike to fend off requests to do further work). — John Trimbur

You're lucky, spontaneous, and your guardian angel is overworked and way underpaid." "I know, right? My angel walks into a bar and the other angels are like, 'Oh shit, that's the poor sap that's got Jory Harcourt. Look at him, he started drinking again. — Mary Calmes

Work-life balance. This is another touchstone of supposedly "enlightened" management practices that can be insulting to smart, dedicated employees. The phrase itself is part of the problem: For many people, work is an important part of life, not something to be separated. The best cultures invite and enable people to be overworked in a good way, with too many interesting things to do both at work and at home. — Eric Schmidt

Sometimes, life gets overwhelming. You feel pestered, overworked and unappreciated. Your vision becomes blurred and your dreams suddenly feel too far from reach. You feel wasted, even though you know you've come a long way. At that point, ALL YOU NEED TO DO is calm down, close your eyes and remember why you started out in the first place. You really just need to look within yourself to find your purpose again. — King Samuel Benson

The working classes may be injuriously degraded and oppressed in three ways:1st - When they are neglected in infancy2nd - When they are overworked by their employer, and are thus rendered incompetent from ignorance to make a good use of high wages when they can procure them.3rd - When they are paid low wages for their labour — Robert Owen

For the next nine months, Sylvia would report on campus trends, politics, tastes, style. It was an honor, but it was grueling. Sylvia was overworked. She had boyfriend problems. She longed for Europe. She broke her leg in a skiing accident. Her best friend, Marcia Brown, had gotten engaged and moved off campus - other girls were away on their junior year abroad. The whole campus seemed mired in some bleak haze- there were suicide attempts, abortions, disappearances, and hasty marriages. Sylvia coped with shopping binges in downtown Northhampton- sheer blouses, French pumps, red cashmere sweaters, white skirts, and tight black pullovers - clothes more suited to voguish amusements than studying. Everyone wanted to be one of Mademoiselle's guest editors, but Sylvia needed it - some shot of glamour to pull her out of the mud. — Elizabeth Winder

When sleep leaves the body like smoke and man, sated with secrets, drives the overworked nag of quarrel out of its stall, then the fire-breathing union begins anew ... — Nelly Sachs

Socialism did not have anything particularly new to teach me; however, it provided me with the theory to verify what I already knew emotionally from my own past. I was poor then; I am poor now. Because of this I have been overworked, mistreated, tormented, oppressed, deprived of my freedom, exploited, and ruled by people with money. I had always harbored a deep antagonism toward people with that kind of power and a deep sympathy for people from backgrounds like mine. — Kaneko Fumiko

The sanatorium itself was charming, a group of cabins in the woods, a place for overworked urbanites to feel pleasantly melancholic. A slackertorium. — Keith Gessen

For animals that are overworked, underfed, and cruelly treated; for all wistful creatures in captivity that beat their wings against bars; for any that are hunted or lost or deserted or frightened or hungry; for all that must be put to death ... and for those who deal with them we ask a heart of compassion and gentle hands and kindly words. — Albert Schweitzer

To keep an organization young and fit, don't hire anyone until everybody's so overworked they'll be glad to see the newcomer no matter where he sits. — Robert Townsend

The fatal flaw of most utopian visions is that they're fundamentally static, and that's not a comfortable place for humans to live. Fourier was very good at imagining a utopia that is constantly changing and very busy, but a vision of paradise that would have been most tantalizing to an underfed overworked factory worker in 1840 doesn't have much appeal in fiction because it's not a story. — Christine Jennings

To express want is to own the desire, to stand in your own reality. The easier alternative is the language of impairment: "I can't come because I'm run down, overworked, under the gun, tired, sick, or not up to it." The underlying message is, "I cannot attend because I am impaired," rather than the more honest and self-respecting response: "I choose to not attend because I prefer the other option. — Laurie A. Helgoe

Unfortunately our children today seem to spend less and less time with their overworked parents, and so they draw more information about the world from the images on movie and TV screens. The true power of the media is the ability to redefine reality, to alter our expectations about what constitutes normal life. TV and the movies have abused that power by advancing the notion that wholesome, ordinary happiness is impossible. — Michael Medved

I made the out of town trip once, walked a mile, and endured product placement rather than putting an item where it made sense. There were plastic smiles of overworked, underpaid employees who not only didn't want to help you, they didn't want to be there. Crowds, lots of crowds, because everything was always on sale. And after I'd wandered aimlessly for a couple of hours, running from one side of the store to the next caught in some perverse scavenger hunt, I stood in the line. Then there was the one open line in a row of fifty closed ones trying to check out a store full of tired suburbanites, their screaming kids, and clueless teenagers. — Adrienne Wilder

Where people work longest and with least leisure, they buy the fewest goods. No towns were so poor as those of England where the people, from children up, worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day. They were poor because these overworked people soon wore out
they became less and less valuable as workers. Therefore, they earned less and less and could buy less and less. — Henry Ford

But her angry feminism had set as hard as concrete during years of living alongside the tough, hardworking, dirt-poor women of London's East End. Men often told a fairy tale in which there was a division of labor in families, the man going out to earn money, the woman looking after home and children. Reality was different. Most of the women Ethel knew worked twelve hours a day and looked after home and children as well. Underfed, overworked, living in hovels, and dressed in rags, they could still sing songs and laugh and love their children. In Ethel's view one of those women had more right to vote than any ten men. — Ken Follett

I know firsthand that educators are the most overworked and underpaid people around. It influenced me in that it was always about family first, and education was right next to that. There was never any question about whether I was going to college. — Wendy Williams

If we abuse our go-to person and overtask them, we have to be willing to accept attrition because an overworked employee will end up leaving. — Nicholas Ripplinger

The problem is that those of us who are lucky enough to do work that we love are sometimes cursed with too damn much of it. — Terry Gross

They may have used alien technology in these things," she said. "But the software they installed to run it all was clearly created by humans - overworked, underpaid programmers like me who take all kinds of shortcuts. The security protocols on the file-sharing system are a total joke. It only took me about five minutes to jailbreak this thing. — Ernest Cline

Tightly focused attention gets fatigued - much like an overworked muscle - when we push to the point of cognitive exhaustion. The signs of mental fatigue, such as a drop in effectiveness and a rise in distractedness and irritability, signify that the mental effort needed to sustain focus has depleted the glucose that feeds neural energy. — Daniel Goleman

Everything was changing, that was obvious. The world was so full of music, it seemed we could never run out. 'Twas bliss in that dawn to be alive, but to be young and overworked and underexposed and stuck in a nowhere town was very heaven. It was our time, the first one we had to ourselves. It was a smashing time, and then it ended, because that's what times do. — Rob Sheffield

No small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself. — John Ruskin

When it comes to making an album I take that very seriously. I am meticulous, overworked. That's my time to put everything under the microscope. — Dave Grohl

I was overworked, underpaid, and socially retarded. But — J.A. Konrath

Next to our big room was the only bath in the hotel, so that by law we could not keep it to ourselves. A bath cost about ten cents, I remember. The few people who used it evidently felt that this price included full maid service, but the two overworked slaveys in the hotel did not, so that I usually cleaned the tub in self-protection. I decided then that many people are latently swinish and that I would rather work anywhere than in a hotel. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

The big guys who ran things didn't want you thinking or feeling. It slowed down production. They wanted you scared and working so you wouldn't bump up against the truth
life could be fun. Yup, they wanted you scared. They wanted you grim. They wanted you madly cranking out Barbie dolls or Post Toasties or Xerox, or they wanted you overworked and underpaid at teaching so you could at least feel smart, and they wanted you to keep having kids so you'd have to keep working at whatever job you were stuck in and not have time to think or feel or, if you did, you certainly wouldn't have time to do anything about it, or even get close to the big fun, the fun that belonged only to them. And then they wanted your kids to hop on the same treadmill. — Bill Ripley

I was a bit shut down by a lot of the snarkiness and biliousness in some of the poetry blogs. I was tired of aesthetic wars that weren't productive and were becoming mean-spirited. I was probably overworked as well, so I stopped reading and writing for about a year. — Simone Muench

There has come a time when we can no longer remain silent but must speak up for our country which is being sold, abused, mined, depleted, drained, overworked, over-loved, its plants and animals becoming endangered and exterminated faster than we can renew them. Our country is silent, so we must speak and act to save it. — Di Morrissey

Entrepreneurs are perennially short on cash, so they tend to hire less expensive and less experienced team members. Yet most founders are overworked, so they have no time and budget for coaching and training. Team members not confident in their roles lose motivation quickly. — Martin Zwilling

Americans are suffering from a busyness epidemic. We're addicted to busy. So many of us try to find fulfillment and self-worth in piling our plates too high. The busier we are, the more important we feel. This is why our culture, by and large, is exhausted, overworked, and overwhelmed. — Crystal Paine

Stale beer sticks to wobbling tables. The cigarette machine flashes in the corner, mocking smokers who never have any change on them. There's no natural light in this pub, so it's dark and gloomy. The pain on the face of the staff tells its own story: overworked, underpaid, exploited and treated as expendable. I feel at home with them. They're so scared they will be fired from their terrible jobs, every time I order a beer they ask me if I want any peanuts or crisps, in case between drinks I've turned into the dreaded mystery shopper. The air is chewy and weighs heavy on the skin. The fruit machines in the corners don't make a sound, aware this is the last stop saloon for the drunk few who can't afford to gamble properly. Everyone here is down to their last pint and pound. — Craig Stone

We have not wondered enough at the delights God has given us to appreciate them, and be good stewards. We have overworked the land, poured pollutants into river and stream, fouled the air we breathe with gas fumes and chemical smoke spiraling up from industrial chimneys. We have sown the wind. We are reaping the whirlwind. — Madeleine L'Engle

I love museums more than any other institution the human race has invented. Museum people are always overworked and underpaid, and they all deserve sainthood, every one. — Robert T. Bakker

Between the disillusionment that people feel about politics-as-usual, assaults on the right to vote, and the constant feelings of pressure that Americans suffer in our overworked, overstressed economy, too many people have checked out of the political process. — Annie Leonard

Teachers are expendable, overworked, underpaid, and many times disrespected by students, parents and higher-ups. Nonetheless, these teachers still show up because there are some who are teachers indeed. — Monica Johnson

I didn't want to get back into the whole industry. I left overworked, overwhelmed, and not having any control over my life. I was bulimic and needed to heal. — Cheryl James

I'm far from perfect. I'm still learning. I overworked myself, and I paid the price. I consider the breakdown a breakthrough. I needed to hit rock bottom. I needed to understand the cost of pushing so hard; fighting so hard against the system.. — Mariah Carey

You must consider that the librarian (if not overworked or neurotic) is happy when he can demonstrate two things: the quality of his memory and erudition and the richness of his library, especially if it is small. The more isolated and disregarded the library, the more the librarian is consumed with sorrow for its underestimation. A person who asks for help makes the librarian happy. — Umberto Eco

Some of the best things are done by those with nowhere to turn, by those who don't have time, by those who truly understand the word helpless. they dispense no thought with the calculation of risk and profit, they take no thought for the future, they're forced to spearpoint into the present tense. Thrown over a precipice, you fall or else you fly; you clutch at any hope, however unlikely; however - if I may use such an overworked word - miraculous. What we mean by that is, Against all odds. — Margaret Atwood

Overworked managers are doing things they shouldn't be doing. — Tom DeMarco

In addition, we have those who, while recognizing the Bible as a revelation from God, blunt its message by applying it to a time other than our own. This may take the form of an eschatologically overworked imagination, which pushes the significance of the Bible into the future. On this approach, the Bible is seen as a source book for end-times prophecies rather than a message that speaks to us in our everyday life. — Iain M. Duguid