Inspirational Quotes on Work

“A work with the Blessing of God upon it should be our normal work.”

“To inaugurate a work is no small matter. Christians should never initiate anything presumptuously on the basis of need, profit, or merit. These may not indicate God's will in the slightest.”

“To get a man soundly saved it is not enough to put on him a pair of new breeches, to give him regular work, or even to give him a University education. These things are all outside a man, and if the inside remains unchanged you have wasted your labor. You must in some way or other graft upon the man's nature a new nature, which has in it the element of the Divine.”

“In heaven we shall appear, not in armour, but in robes of glory. But here these are to be worn night and day; we must walk, work, and sleep in them, or else we are not true soldiers of Christ.”

“And when God comes to reckon with his workmen, the ploughman and the sower shall have his penny, as well as the harvest-man and the reaper.”

“To choose a career on selfish grounds is probably the greatest single sin that any young person can commit, for it is the deliberate withdrawal from allegiance to God of the greatest part of time and strength.”

“When you take care of your job, God will take care of the paycheck.”

“A lot of people quit looking for work as soon as they find a job.”

“Laborious action is frequently a relic of the preacher's trade in former days.”

“Are you placed where others are sitting down idly, doing nothing? Rise to the work with all your powers; and when the sweat stands upon your brow, and you are tempted to loiter, cry, "No, I cannot stop, for I am Christ's. If I were not purchased by blood, I might be like Issachar, crouching between two burdens; but I am Christ's, and cannot loiter.”

“No legitimate work, undertaken for the glory of God, is menial or meaningless. Hard physical labor wasn’t beneath the dignity of the Son of God. Jesus worked as a carpenter for about seventeen years and only about three years doing itinerant ministry. Carpentry was a lowly, ill-paying profession. Yet Jesus was doing God’s work when pounding a nail just as much as He was doing it when preaching on a hillside–because He was doing what God wanted Him to do when God wanted Him to do it (p. 143).”

“If every work of the day had thus its appointed time, we should be better skilled, both in redeeming time and performing duty (556).”

“The "layman" need never think of his humbler task as being inferior to that of his minister. Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it. The motive is everything. Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act.”

“Il m’est venu un jour l’idée que si l’on voulait écraser complètement, anéantir un être humain, le frapper du châtiment le plus terrible, au point que l’assassin le plus effroyable en aurait eu peur à l’avance il suffirait juste de donner au travail un caractère d’inutilité, d’absurdité totale, complète.”

“...[I]n order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain... Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and... Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”

“Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.”

“Занимая третий год место начальника одного из присутственных мест в Москве, Степан Аркадьич приобрел, кроме любви, и уважение сослуживцев, подчиненных, начальников и всех, кто имел до него дело. Главные качества Степана Аркадьича, заслужившие ему это общее уважение по службе, состояли, во-первых, в чрезвычайной снисходительности к людям, основанной в нем на сознании своих недостатков; во-вторых, в совершенной либеральности, не той, про которую он вычитал в газетах, но той, что у него была в крови и с которою он совершенно равно и одинаково относился ко всем людям, какого бы состояния и звания они ни были, и, в-третьих, -- главное -- в совершенном равнодушии к тому делу, которым он занимался, вследствие чего он никогда не увлекался и не делал ошибок.”

“Lewin sprach nur aus, was er in dieser letzten Zeit wirklich gedacht hat. Er sah überall nur den Tod oder spürte seine Nähe. Aber sein begonnenes Werk beschäftigte ihn deswegen nur um so mehr. Irgendwie musste man sein Leben fristen, bis der Tod kam. Alles schien ihm in Dunkel gehüllt, aber gerade dieses Dunkel ließ ihn empfinden, dass der einzige leitende Faden sein Werk war, und er klammerte sich mit seiner letzten Kraft an diesen Faden und hielt sich fest.”

“I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore – yes, I do well.”

“You, my fellow Americans, have forced the spring. Now, we must do the work the season demands.”