Work Thankless Quotes & Sayings

I have some friends who are actors. I've watched them work. And I would say that of all the arts, acting is the most grueling, thankless. Never apologize for your work. — Kristen Stewart

The coverlet warmed her legs. The firelight wobbled over the pages. Maelyn sank into the world the words wrapped around her, hushing everything that hurt, and seeping tranquility right down to her toes. She was home. — Anita Valle

We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy ... But our temporal progeny are often thankless. We toil and sweat to give them just what we think they will like, and they quit their jobs, grow their hair, move to or from San Francisco, and wonder how we could ever have been stupid enough to think they'd like that. We fail to achieve the accolades and rewards that we consider crucial to their well-being, and they end up thanking God that things didn't work out according to our shortsighted, misguided plan. — Daniel M. Gilbert

I'm no Lance Armstrong, but I do use a bike to get from place to place in Manhattan, a little bit of Brooklyn. — David Byrne

People are unjust to anger - it can be enlivening and a lot of fun. — Philip Roth

I had resigned my temporary lectureship - thankless, dreary work, from which I would be suddenly distracted by the slightest song, the slightest sound coming from the country outside; in every passing cry I heard an invitation. How often I have leapt from my reading and run to the window to see - nothing pass by! How often I have hurried out of doors ... The only attention I found possible was that of my five senses. — Andre Gide

I'm very insecure. — Christina Ricci

I would be content with any job, however thankless, in any quarter, however remote, if I had the chance of making a corner of the desert blossom and a solitary place glad. — John Buchan

Hated France when I first got over here. Got on the train at Le Havre, and looked out of the window and thought it looked so exactly like America, I wanted to cry. The scenery flying past, the hills and barns and cows, were just the sort of things you keep coming across through a train window in the States. The Untrained Eye, I told myself, training it enough to see that all the signs were written in French, at the same time letting the untrained nose get its first exotic whiff of garlic from my traveling companions, and the untrained stomach its first attack of French dysentery. But still, these were the only differences. I asked myself finally what exactly did I expect France to look like? No answer. — Elaine Dundy

Positive thinking must be followed by positive doing. — John C. Maxwell

I used words without precautions. I wanted to disappear into them, I fled into the bovaryism of the writer trying to create an effect. — Storm Jameson

I'd heard once in school that if a single bird were to transport all the sand, grain by grain, from the eastern seabord to the west coast of Africa, it would take ... I didn't catch the number of years, preferring to concentrate on the single bird chosen to perform this thankless task. It hardly seemed fair, because, unlike a horse or a Seeing Eye dog, the whole glory of being a bird is that nobody would ever put you to work. Birds search for grubs and build their nests, but their leisure time is theirs to spend as they see fit. I pictured this bird looking down from the branches to say, "You want me to do what?" before flying off, laughing at the at the foolish story he now had to tell his friends. — David Sedaris

Istanbul ... the constant beating of the wave of the East against the rock of the West ... — Susan Moody

I've written virtually as long as I've acted, it wasn't a sudden transition. I acted in my first play when I was 16 and I wrote my first play when I was 17. — Lennie James

... Shannon's fingers itched to smash the man in the face. Inside his head he kept telling himself,
Keep cool, baby, absolutely cool. — Frederick Forsyth

Sometimes, I have a dared dream to myself that one day, history may even say that my voice--which disturbed the white man's smugness, and his arrogance, and his complacency--that my voice helped to save America from a grave, possibly even a fatal catastrophe. — Malcolm X

Oh, misanthropy and sourness. Gary wanted to enjoy being a man of wealth and leisure, but the country was making it none too easy. All around him, millions of newly minted American millionaires were engaged in the identical pursuit of feeling extraordinary - of buying the perfect Victorian, of skiing the virgin slope, of knowing the chef personally, of locating the beach that had no footprints. There were further tens of millions of young Americans who didn't have money but were nonetheless chasing the Perfect Cool. And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary? Who would perform the thankless work of being comparatively uncool? — Jonathan Franzen

We are surrounded every day by people who do thankless but important work. — Brian Kilmeade

This is our life now: slaving away in thankless, monotonous jobs and spending half our salaries on fattening food. — Katrina Ramos Atienza

I have a true aversion to teaching. The perennial business of a professor of mathematics is only to teach the ABC of his science; most of the few pupils who go a step further, and usually to keep the metaphor, remain in the process of gathering information, become only Halbwisser [one who has superficial knowledge of the subject], for the rarer talents do not want to have themselves educated by lecture courses, but train themselves. And with this thankless work the professor loses his precious time. — Carl Friedrich Gauss

I didn't need more fame or money. I needed more heart. — Kenny Chesney

Meddling with another man's folly is always thankless work. — Rudyard Kipling

Life isn't about waiting for the showers to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain." - Vivian Greene — Mary C. Neal

The month behind her had gone, leaving nothing but the blank of dead time. It had gone into the planless, thankless work of racing from emergency to emergency, of delaying the collapse of a railroad - a month like a waste pile of disconnected days, each given to averting the disaster of the moment. It had not been a sum of achievements brought into existence, but only a sum of zeros, — Ayn Rand

9/11/01
Gina:
Especially today, with the enormity of current events, I want to convey to you again, how much you mean to me and how proud I am to be your husband. The hard work that you are engaged in right now is exhausting, invisible and largely thankless in the short term.
But honey, please know that buried at the core of this tedium is the most noble and important work in the world- God's work; the fruits of which you and I will be lucky enough to enjoy as we grow old together. Watching these little guys grow into men is a privilege that I am proud to share with you, and the perfect fulfillment of our marriage bonds.
You are a great mom.
You are a great wife.
You are my best friend.
You are very pretty.
Happy Birthday.

-Matt — Michael Spehn

There is no better feeling than doing well while you are doing good. If you really want to meet the nicest, most caring people in your field, get involved with charity work. The thankless hours that go into planning charity dinners, running a carnival, and gathering donations for silent auctions are noticed and appreciated. — Jay Samit