Work Proverbs

Sayings about Work

t is easier to give orders than to work. ~ Lithuanian Proverb

Not to watch your workmen is to lose your money. ~ Spanish Proverb

He who works as a slave, eats as a king. ~ Indian Proverb

IOne never tires working for oneself. ~ Russian Proverb

Urge people to work, not to eat. ~ Chinese Proverb

When a woman is not singing, she is not working much either. ~ Egyptian Proverb

A bad workman never finds a good tool. ~ French Proverb

A person always breaking off from work never finishes anything. ~ Nigerian Proverb

The work praises the man. ~ Irish Proverb

I have two masters -- God and the devil; I work for the devil until lunch then I follow the Lord. ~ Gypsy Proverb

You must judge a man by the work of his hands. ~ African Proverb

The first one to eat, the last one to work. ~ Spanish Proverb

If the wine bothers you while you work, stop working. ~ French Proverb

Work is our business; it's success is God's. ~ German Proverb

The lazybones must work twice. ~ South American Proverb

Good pay makes happy workers. ~ German Proverb

It is better to work in your own land than to count your money abroad. ~ Croatian Proverb

While the sun is still up, let people work that the earth may live. ~ Hawaiian Proverb

Work is good provided you do not forget to live. ~ Bantu Proverb

Pray as though no work could help, and work as though no prayer could help. ~ German Proverb

A woman who dances too much gets ill from little work. ~ French Proverb

It is no shame at all to work for money. ~ Ghanaian Proverb

If you give orders and leave, the work won't get done. ~ Portuguese Proverb

Work is half of health. ~ Swedish Proverb

Everyone according to their talent and every talent according to its work. ~ French Proverb

Work improves the harvest better than the field itself. ~ Spanish Proverb

The hand suffers at work, but the mouth still must eat. ~ Sudanese Proverb

Your hand is never the worse for doing its own work. ~ Welsh Proverb

Never let a boy do a man's work. ~ Creole Proverb (Southern U.S.)

Many hands make light work. ~ English Proverb

No bees, no honey; no work, no money. ~ Traditional Proverb

A wise man without a book is like a workman with no tools. ~ Moroccan Proverb

Working on the land is better than praying in the desert. ~ German Proverb

Hunger, work, and sweat are the best herbs. ~ Icelandic Proverb

Work and you will be strong; sit and you will smell. ~ Moroccan Proverb

A learned man without work is a cloud without rain. ~ Arabian Proverb

When mosquitoes work, they bite and then they sing. ~ Malian Proverb

In the morning of life, work; in the mid day give council; in the evening, pray. ~ German Proverb

You won't get sick if you have plenty of work. ~ Japanese Proverb

Work paid for in advance has feet of lead. ~ German Proverb

Working and painting are better from a distance. ~ Spanish Proverb

Work is the medicine for poverty. ~ Beninese Proverb

A bad workman always blames his tools. ~ Traditional Proverb

The misery is that you have to ruin your day with work. ~ German Proverb

Voluntary work is better than slavery. ~ Nigerian Proverb

If work were good for you, the rich would leave none for the poor. ~ Haitian Proverb

Over a distance of a thousand miles only humanity works, not power. ~ Chinese Proverb

Ready money works great cures. ~ French Proverb

The work will teach you how to do it. ~ Estonian Proverb

A doctor will take care of the rich man; the poor man is cured with work. ~ Polish Proverb

Work like a slave and eat like a gentleman. ~ Albanian Proverb

The French work to live, but the Swiss live to work. ~ French Proverb

If the hours are long enough and the pay is short enough, someone will say it's women's work. ~ Swahili Proverb

He who works has much; he who saves, still more. ~ Yugoslavian Proverb

A thousand workers, a thousand plans. ~ Chinese Proverb

Much talk, little work. ~ Dutch Proverb

The lazy sweat when they eat and complain of the cold when they work. ~ Finnish Proverb

You don't satisfy your hunger by watching others work. ~ Armenian Proverb

Work is twice done by the man in a hurry. ~ Iranian Proverb

Pay beforehand if you would have your work poorly done. ~ Traditional Proverb

A work ill done must be twice done. ~ Welsh Proverb

Even a clock that does not work is right twice a day. ~ Polish Proverb

The day is short and work lasts a long time. ~ Hebrew Proverb

A good rest is half the work. ~ Yugoslavian Proverb

As long as the white man stutters, the interpreters have a lot of work. ~ African Proverb

When the head does not work, the legs suffer. ~ Romanian Proverb

Work relieves us from three great evils, boredom, vice, and want. ~ French Proverb

It is better to work and be free than to be fed in captivity. ~ Gabonese Proverb

Better than the ignorant are those who read books; better still are those who retain what they read; even better are those who understand it; the best of all are those who go to work. ~ Indian Proverb

Paid workmen have no arms. ~ Spanish Proverb

Two thirds of the work is the semblance. ~ Irish Proverb

Work makes you into a hunchback and then rich. ~ Russian Proverb

A man dies when he stops working. ~ Hebrew Proverb

God is a busy worker but loves to be helped. ~ Basque Proverb

Work is the source of all good. ~ Thai Proverb

Borrowed money shortens time; working for others lengthens it. ~ Chinese Proverb

A bad workman quarrels with his tools. ~ Romanian Proverb

A stupid act entails doing the work twice over. ~ Burmese Proverb

Quotations about Work

We work for praise, and dawdle once we have it. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

Work is the world's easiest escape from boredom and the only sure fire road to success. ~ Marabel Morgan

A work well begun is half ended. ~ Plato

The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do better work. ~ Elbert Hubbard

You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play. ~ Warren Beatty

The better work men do is always done under stress and at great personal cost. ~ William Carlos Williams

Work is the price which is paid for reputation. ~ Baltasar Gracian

The more powerful the work, the more powerless the worker. ~ Karl Marx

Most people show up for work being physically accoutered but mentally disheveled. ~ Eric Butterworth

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. ~ Aristotle

You never will be saved by works; but let us tell you most solemnly that you never will be saved without works. ~ Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

A person who has not done one half his day's work by ten o'clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone. ~ Emily Jane Brontë

Work is the inevitable condition of human life, the true source of human welfare. ~ Leo Tolstoy

To each man is reserved a work which he alone can do. ~ Susan Blow

Many a man works himself to death by burying himself in his work. ~ Evan Esar

We enjoy ourselves only in our work, our doing; and our best doing is our best enjoyment. ~ Hermann Jacobi

The man who chooses his work because it fulfills a purpose he approves is the only one who grows in stature by working. He alone can properly say, at the end of it, "It is finished!" ~ Fulton John Sheen

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

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work. ~ George Bernard Shaw

We have too many people who live without working, and we have altogether too many who work without living. ~ Charles R. Brown

There is dignity in work only when it is work freely accepted. ~ Albert Camus

Unless a man works he cannot find out what he is able to do. ~ Philip Gilbert Hamerton

I don't like work -- no man does -- but I like what is in work -- the chance to find yourself. ~ Joseph Conrad

Our salvation is in work, but let us also take delight in that work. ~ Maxim Gorky

Work is the greatest thing in the world, so we should always save some of it for tomorrow. ~ Don Herold

Beauty is also to be found in a day's work. ~ Mamie Sypert Burns

All work is an act of philosophy. ~ Ayn Rand

If you love your work, if you enjoy it, you're already a success. ~ Jack Canfield

No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt. ~ Max Beerbohm

Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction. ~ Anne Frank

Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor's done. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The real essence of work is concentrated energy. ~ Walter Bagehot

Love and work have the virtues of making a man pretty indifferent to anything else. ~ Honore de Balzac

To do great work, a man must be very idle as well as very industrious. ~ Samuel Butler

The more one works, the better one works, and the more one wants to work. The more one produces, the more fertile one grows. ~ Charles Bauelaire

It is our actual work which determines our value. ~ George Bancroft

Work is much more fun than fun. ~ Noel Coward

Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other. ~ Henry David Thoreau

After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life. ~ Joseph Brodsky

If you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work. ~ Ogden Nash

A great work demands a great sacrifice, and who is not capable of a great sacrifice is not capable of a great work. ~ Muriel Strode

Everyone should find something they love doing. Then work isn't work. It's a part of themselves. Of who they are. ~ Paul McAuley

Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else. ~ J. M. Barrie

If a man does not go about his work with enthusiasm, it means that he has not yet found a work that he likes. ~ George Ade

Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Blessed be the man whose work drives him. Something must drive men; and if it is wholesome industry, they have no time for a thousand torments and temptations. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

I believe that good things come to those who work. ~ Wilt Chamberlain

The man who has the largest capacity for work and thought is the man who is bound to succeed. ~ Henry Ford

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. ~ Elbert Hubbard

I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely. ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

You reach a point where you don't work for money. ~ Walt Disney

The phrase "work-life balance" tells us that people think that work is the opposite of life. We should be talking about life-life balance. ~ Patrick Dixon

Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit. ~ George Carlin

It is not work that kills; but no work and overwork. ~ Aldo Manuzio

Work is the best thing to make us love life. ~ Ernest Renan

We work to eat to get the strength to work to eat to get the strength to work. ~ John Dos Passos

Work without love is slavery. ~ Mother Teresa

Every man is the son of his own works. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart. ~ Jerome Klapka Jerome

You work that you may keep peace with the earth and the soul of the earth. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Find something you love to do and you'll never have to work a day in your life. ~ Harvey MacKay

It is far better to give work which is above the men than to educate the men to be above their work. ~ John Ruskin

Few of us get anything without working for it. ~ William Feather

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided. ~ Mark Twain

We work not only to produce but to give value to time. ~ Eugene Delacroix

The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity. ~ George Carlin

None but those who work are entitled to eat. ~ Aesop

A man perfects himself by working. ~ Thomas Carlyle

If you don't find a way to do something as work that is fulfilling and enjoyable, then your life is going to be really sad. ~ Rudolph Giuliani

Work is not a curse, but drudgery is! ~ Henry Ward Beecher

People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up. ~ Ogden Nash

Do all the work you can; that is the whole philosophy of the good way of life. ~ Eugene Delacroix

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work. ~ Emile Zola

It isn't the hours you put in your work that count, it's the work you put in the hours. ~ Evan Esar

Get work. Be sure it is better than what you work to get. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Work is the weapon of honor; he who lacks the weapon will never triumph.~ D.G. Mitchell

A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose, and due leisure, whether he be a painter or ploughman. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Work is the Rent we pay for our time on Earth. ~ Tubby Clayton

The work praises the workman. ~ Roger Payne

Some men are so eager for success that they are even willing to work for it. ~ Evam Esar

Work is the curse of the drinking class. ~ Oscar Wilde

Every man is better for a period of work under the open sky. ~ Henry Ford

Work is alone noble. ~ Thomas Carlyle

He must put his whole life into his work, who would do it well, and make it potential to influence other lives. ~ Christian Nestell Bovee

Work banishes those three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty. ~ Voltaire

Work seemed something fundamental for man, something which enabled him to endure the aimless flight of time. ~ Kobo Abe

It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe. ~ Thomas Carlyle

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun. ~ Thomas Carlyle

My work is a game, a very serious game. ~ M.C. Escher

We live not to ourselves, our work is life. ~ Philip James Bailey

Work is the activity undertaken with our hands which gives objectivity to the world. ~ Keith Grint

It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself. ~ Charles Baudelaire

Work is the means of living, but it is not living. ~ Josiah Gilbert Holland

Immediate work, even poor, is worth more than dreams. ~ Charles Baudelaire

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing. ~ Robert Benchley

The Devil often finds work for them who find none for themselves. ~ Benjamin Whichcote

You must work; we must all work to make the world worthy of its children. ~ Pablo Casals

When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of Creation is completed inside us, the doors of our souls fly open and love steps forth to heal everything in sight. ~ Michael Bridge

Loyal and efficient work in a great cause, even though it may not be immediately recognized, ultimately bears fruit. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

No matter how humble your work may seem, do it in the spirit of an artist, of a master. In this way you lift it out of commonness and rob it of what would otherwise be drudgery. ~ Orison Swett Marden

A man who looks for easy work goes to bed tired. ~ Ken Alstad

Much good work is lost for the lack of a little more. ~ Edward H. Harriman

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you. ~ Leo Tolstoy

No man ever did or can do a great work alone. ~ Elbert Hubbard

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day. ~ Robert Lee Frost

Keep doing some kind of work, that the devil may always find you employed. ~ Saint Jerome

Work first, and then rest. ~ John Ruskin

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. ~ C. Northcote Parkinson

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. ~ Samuel Butler

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey. ~ Thomas Edison

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work. ~ Richard Bach

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many hands make light work. ~ John Heywood

Remember, work, well done, does good to the man who does it. It makes him a better man. ~ George Samuel Clason

The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them. ~ Robert Frost

Nothing will work unless you do. ~ Maya Angelou

The chances of a man's succeeding who does not love his work are very small. For all success costs labor. ~ Frank Chapman Sharp

If one man has a dollar he didn't work for, some other man worked for a dollar he didn't get. ~ Bill Haywood

A man is seen in his works. ~ Clement Metezeau

Work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts will inevitably bring about right results. ~ James Allen

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today. ~ Elbert Hubbard