Quotes about work

Duauf Tuauf

c. 20th century BC · ancient Egypt · Telling his son why learning to write is better

I have watched the blacksmith at the door of his furnace. His hands are like crocodiles' hide, and he stinketh worse than fishes' eggs.

"The Teaching of Duauf for His Son Pepi" · in place of the original: the English translation by E. A. Wallis Budge (1914)

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Hesiod Ἡσίοδος

c. 700 BC · Boeotia, ancient Greece · To his brother Perses

Do not put things off till tomorrow and the day after. A man who works carelessly does not fill his barn, nor does one who puts things off. Care is what makes work prosper.

μηδʼ ἀναβάλλεσθαι ἔς τʼ αὔριον ἔς τε ἔνηφιν· οὐ γὰρ ἐτωσιοεργὸς ἀνὴρ πίμπλησι καλιὴν οὐδʼ ἀναβαλλόμενος· μελέτη δὲ τὸ ἔργον ὀφέλλει

Works and Days, lines 410–412

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Ardi-Nana Ardi-Nanâ

7th century BC · Nineveh, Assyria

Concerning the patient who had blood run from his nose, the messenger has told me, saying, “Yesterday, at evening, much blood ran.” Those dressings are not with knowledge. They have been placed upon the breathing passages of the nose and oppress the breathing and come off, because of the bleeding. Let them be placed within the nostrils, they will preserve the breath and the blood will be held back.

A letter to the king · in place of the original: the English translation by C. H. W. Johns (1904)

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Mutta Muttā

c. 5th century BC · ancient India

I am well freed, how well I am freed, freed from three crooked things: the mortar, the pestle, and my crook-backed husband.

Sumuttā sādhumuttāmhi, tīhi khujjehi muttiyā; Udukkhalena musalena, patinā khujjakena ca

Therigatha (Verses of the Elder Nuns) 1.11

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Pliny the Younger Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus

c. AD 111 · Roman Empire · After reporting a great fire at Nicomedia, where people only stood and watched and there was not a pump or a bucket. The craftsmen's guilds served as fire brigades

Consider, my lord, whether you think a guild of craftsmen should be set up, of no more than a hundred and fifty men. I shall see to it that no one but a craftsman is admitted, and that the right once granted is not turned to other uses. It will not be hard to keep watch on so few.

tu, domine, dispice an instituendum putes collegium fabrorum dumtaxat hominum CL. Ego attendam, ne quis nisi faber recipiatur neve iure concesso in aliud utantur; nec erit difficile custodire tam paucos.

Letters 10.33, to the Emperor Trajan

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Trajan Marcus Ulpius Traianus

c. AD 111 · Roman Empire · He refused the guild, and told him to provide equipment so that the owners of houses could fight fires themselves

But let us remember that that province, and those cities above all, have been troubled by factions of this kind. Whatever name we give them, and for whatever reason, men who have been brought together will soon become political clubs.

Sed meminerimus provinciam istam et praecipue eas civitates eius modi factionibus esse vexatas. Quodcumque nomen ex quacumque causa dederimus iis, qui in idem contracti fuerint, hetaeriae eaeque brevi fient.

Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.34, to Pliny

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Marcus Aurelius Μᾶρκος Αὐρήλιος

170s · Roman Empire

At dawn, when you are reluctant to get up, have this thought ready: I am rising to do the work of a human being. Why then do I grumble, if I am going to do what I was born for, what I was brought into the world to do? Or was I made for this, to lie under the blankets and keep myself warm?

Ὄρθρου, ὅταν δυσόκνως ἐξεγείρῃ, πρόχειρον ἔστω ὅτι ἐπὶ ἀνθρώπου ἔργον ἐγείρομαι· τί οὖν δυσκολαίνω, εἰ πορεύομαι ἐπὶ τὸ ποιεῖν ὧν ἕνεκεν γέγονα καὶ ὧν χάριν προῆγμαι εἰς τὸν κόσμον; ἢ ἐπὶ τοῦτο κατεσκεύασμαι, ἵνα κατακείμενος ἐν στρωματίοις ἐμαυτὸν θάλπω

Meditations 5.1

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Zhuge Liang 諸葛亮

AD 227 · Shu Han China

I was once a commoner in plain cloth, ploughing my own fields in Nanyang, trying only to keep myself alive in an age of disorder, and seeking no name among the lords.

臣本布衣，躬耕於南陽，苟全性命於亂世，不求聞達於諸侯。

"Memorial on Sending Out the Army" (Chu shi biao)

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Wei Yingwu 韋應物

784 · Tang China · While prefect of Chuzhou

With so many illnesses I think of the fields of home. With people fleeing my county, I am ashamed to take my salary.

身多疾病思田里，邑有流亡愧俸錢。

"Sent to Li Dan and Yuan Xi," in the Complete Tang Poems

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Li Shen 李紳

late 8th century · Tang China

He hoes the grain under the noonday sun, and his sweat drips on the soil beneath the stalks. Who knows that the food in the dish, every grain of it, is hardship?

鋤禾日當午，汗滴禾下土。 誰知盤中餐，粒粒皆辛苦。

"Old Style," the second poem, usually called "Pity for the Farmers," in the Complete Tang Poems

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Bai Juyi 白居易

c. 807 · Tang China · As a county official, on seeing farmers cutting wheat under the blazing sun and a woman who, having lost her field to taxes, was gleaning the fallen ears

And I, today, by what merit or virtue have I never once worked at farming or silk? My official salary is three hundred bushels, and at the year's end I have grain to spare. When I think of it I am secretly ashamed, and all day long I cannot forget it.

今我何功德，曾不事農桑。 吏祿三百石，歲晏有餘糧。 念此私自媿盡日不能忘。

"Watching the Wheat Harvest"

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Bai Juyi 白居易

early 9th century · Tang China

There is office to be had, and I am too lazy to apply. I have fields, and am too lazy to farm them. The roof leaks, and I am too lazy to mend it. My clothes are torn, and I am too lazy to sew. I have wine, and am too lazy to pour it, which is the same as a jar always empty.

有官慵不選，有田慵不農。 屋穿慵不葺，衣裂慵不縫。 有酒慵不酌，無異尊常空。

"On Laziness," in the Complete Tang Poems

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Luo Yin 羅隱

later 9th century · Tang China

When it has gathered from a hundred flowers and made the honey, for whom was all the toil, for whom the sweetness?

採得百花成蜜後，爲誰辛苦爲誰甜。

"Bees," in the Complete Tang Poems

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Ferdowsi فردوسی

c. 1010 · Tus, Persia · Lamenting that he found no patron while he wrote the epic

For many years I bore much hardship, and I never saw a noble, generous man shining on the throne of kings.

بسی رنج بردم به بسیار سال ندیدم سرافراز بخشنده ای به گاه کیان بر درخشنده ای

Shahnameh (Book of Kings)

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Su Shi 蘇軾

1080 · Song China · Just arrived at his place of exile, after being jailed for his poems

I laugh at myself: all my life I have been kept busy by my mouth, and in old age my affairs have gone from bad to absurd.

自笑平生爲口忙，老來事業轉荒唐。

"First Arrival in Huangzhou," in the Complete Song Poems

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Al-Ghazali الغزالي

1095 (recalled c. 1108) · Persia and Baghdad in Seljuk times · At thirty-eight, a professor at Baghdad's leading school, after six months of hesitation

God locked my tongue so that it was held back from teaching. I would struggle with myself to teach for a single day, to ease the hearts of those who came to me, but my tongue would not utter one word and I could not do it at all. This knot in my tongue left a grief in my heart, and with it went my power to digest and my taste for food and drink.

أقفل الله على لساني حتى اعتقل عن التدريس ، فكنت أجاهد نفسي أن أدرس يوما واحدا تطييبا لقلوب المختلفة إلي ، فكان لا ينطلق لساني بكلمة واحدة ولا أستطيعها البتة ، حتى أورثت هذه العقلة في اللسان حزنا في القلب ، بطلت معه قوة الهضم ومراءة الطعام والشراب

The autobiography Deliverance from Error (al-Munqidh min al-Dalal)

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Fan Chengda 范成大

1186 · Suzhou, Southern Song China

By day they go out to weed the fields, by night they twist hemp. The sons and daughters of the village each do their share. The little grandchildren do not yet know how to plough or weave, but in the shade of the mulberry they too are learning to plant melons.

晝出耘田夜績麻，村莊兒女各當家。 童孫未解供耕織，也傍桑陰學種瓜。

"Miscellaneous Pleasures of the Fields in the Four Seasons," summer

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Jeong Dojeon 鄭道傳

1398 · Goryeo and Joseon Korea · Said to have been written just before he was killed in the strife among the princes

At holding fast and looking within I laboured, both together, and did not betray the sages in their yellowed books. Thirty years of hard, painstaking work: one bout of drinking at the pine pavilion, and it has all come to nothing.

操存省察兩加功 不負聖賢黃卷中 三十年來勤苦業 松亭一醉竟成空

Sambong jip, book 2, "Laughing at Myself"

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Zeami 世阿弥

c. 1400 · Muromachi Japan · On the praise a young actor wins for a passing freshness

The mind that takes the flower of the moment for the true flower is the mind that carries you still further from the true flower.

時分の花をまことの花と知る心が、真実の花になほ遠ざかる心なり。

Fushikaden (The Flowering Spirit), training by age, "Twenty-four or twenty-five"

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Heo Nanseolheon 許蘭雪軒

1580s · Joseon Korea

I hold the golden scissors in my hand, and in the cold of night my ten fingers stiffen. I make a wedding dress for someone else, and year after year I sleep alone.

手把金翦刀 夜寒十指直 爲人作嫁衣 年年還獨宿

Nanseolheon sijip, "Song of a Poor Girl"

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Bak Inro 朴仁老

summer 1605 · Joseon Korea · Seven years after the Imjin War ended, sent at forty-five to guard the sea off Busan again

They send this old, sick body to the navy, and in the summer of the year eulsa I come down to the eastern garrison. On ground so vital to the frontier, shall I sit idle because my sickness is deep? A long sword slung at my side, I make myself board the warship

늘고 병(病)든 몸을 주사(舟師)로 보ᄂᆡ실ᄉᆡ 을사 삼하(乙巳三夏)애 진동영(鎭東營) ᄂᆞ려오니 관방 중지(關防重地)예 병(病)이 깁다 안자실랴 일장검(一長劍) 비기 ᄎᆞ고 병선(兵船)에 구테 올나

"Seonsangtan" (Lament Aboard Ship), the opening, in Nogye jip

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Voltaire

1759 · Paris, France · Ferney · The words of an old man who farms a small plot with his children

Work keeps three great evils away from us: boredom, vice and want.

le travail éloigne de nous trois grands maux, l'ennui, le vice, et le besoin.

Candide, chapter 30

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Florence Nightingale

1859 · London, England

Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion. Remember, he is face to face with his enemy all the time, internally wrestling with him, having long imaginary conversations with him.

Notes on Nursing

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Charles Darwin

1876 · England · Confessing that after thirty he lost his power to enjoy poetry and music

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts

Autobiography, in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. 1

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Olive Schreiner

1883 · Cape Colony, South Africa · The words of a hunter dying after a lifetime of cutting steps up a mountain of rock

By the steps that I have cut they will climb; by the stairs that I have built they will mount. They will never know the name of the man who made them. At the clumsy work they will laugh; when the stones roll they will curse me. But they will mount, and on my work; they will climb, and by my stair!

The hunter's tale in The Story of an African Farm

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Anton Chekhov Антон Чехов

September 1888 · Russia

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other.

Letter to Suvorin · in place of the original: the English translation by Constance Garnett (1920)

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Banjo Paterson A. B. Paterson

1889 · New South Wales, Australia

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall

"Clancy of the Overflow"

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Sarojini Naidu

1905 · Hyderabad, India

Lightly, O lightly we bear her along, She sways like a flower in the wind of our song; She skims like a bird on the foam of a stream, She floats like a laugh from the lips of a dream.

"Palanquin Bearers," in The Golden Threshold

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Ishikawa Takuboku 石川啄木

c. 1911 · Meiji Japan

I slept late and had no time to read the paper, and today again I feel it like a debt.

朝寝して新聞読む間なかりしを 負債のごとく 今日も感ずる。

Tanka collection Sad Toys (Kanashiki gangu)

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Kahlil Gibran

1923 · Bsharri, Lebanon · New York, USA

Work is love made visible.

The Prophet, "On Work"

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