Famous aphorisms in English

Work and Recreation

 

Altruism and Cynicism | Art and Literature | Food and Drink | Happiness and Misery | Health and Disease | Law and Politics | Life and Death | Love and Hate | Men and Women | Science and Religion | Success and FailureUncategorized | Vice and Virtue | War and Peace | Wealth and Poverty | Wisdom and Ignorance | Work and Recreation


A committee is a thing which takes a week to do what one good man can do in an hour.
Elbert Hubbard

A conference is just an admission that you want somebody to join you in your troubles.
Will Rogers

A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to continue the flow of paper.
Dyer

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
Lao Tzu

A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
Unknown

A large, clumsy umbrella is the best protection against the rain: there will be no rain as long as you're lugging it around.
Peter Wastholm

A life spent making mistakes is not only most honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
Unknown

A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B.
"Fats" Domino

A meeting is an event where minutes are taken and hours wasted.
Unknown

A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood.
George Patton

A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.
Lao Tzu

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
Aristotle

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
Charlie McCarthy

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

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

Committee: A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit to do the unnecessary.
Richard Harkness

Consistency is the final refuge of the unimaginative.
Ray Prince

Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.
Wilson Mizner

Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
Unknown

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt

Don't do whatever you like -- like whatever you do.
Unknown

Don't remember what you can infer.
Harry Tennant

Don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.
George Patton

Efficiency is intelligent laziness.
David Dunham

Even if you aren't making money at your job, but doing something you love to do, you are a true success.
Unknown

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers

Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you just how busy they are?
Unknown

Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work.
Robert Orben

Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.
P. J. O'Rourke

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
Stephen Wright

Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.
Benjamin Franklin

Farming looks easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from a cornfield.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

First Law of Bicycling: No matter where you're going, it's uphill and against the wind.
Unknown

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him, he must regard himself as greater than he is.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.
Mark Twain

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
H. H. Williams

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.
Jane Hopkins

Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
Thomas Alva Edison

Give a man a fish and he'll ask for a lemon. Teach a man to fish and he'll leave work early on Friday.
Unknown

Give a man a fish and he'll ask for a lemon. Teach a man to fish and he'll leave work early on Friday.
Unknown

Give me a museum and I'll fill it.
Pablo Picasso

God gives every bird his worm, but he doesn't throw it into the nest.
Unknown

God gives the nuts, but he doesn't crack them.
Unknown

Grinnell's Law of Labor Laxity: At all times, for any task, you have not got enough done today.
Unknown

Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.
Unknown

He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.
Horace

He that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.
Confucius

He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.
William Blake

He who rocks the boat seldom has time to row it.
Bryan Munro

Hell, there are no rules here -- we're trying to accomplish something.
Thomas Alva Edison

Holt's Law: All jobs are easy to the person who doesn't have to do them.
Unknown

I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.
A. J. Liebling

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.
Thomas Jefferson

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving -- we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it -- but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

I function as a channel from which music emerges from the chaos of noise.
Vangelis

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Douglas Adams

I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now.
Ray Prince

I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back.
Abraham Lincoln

I'm not afraid of work... I can even sleep beside it.
Unknown

If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day weekend.
Doug Larson

If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four tellers?
Unknown

If food were free, why work?
Doug Horton

If God had really intended men to fly, he'd make it easier to get to the airport.
George Winters

If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.
Bertrand Russell

If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.
Unknown

If one has not given everything, one has given nothing.
Georges Guynemer

If only I could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without having to accomplish anything.
Unknown

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Frederick Douglass

If you don't have time to do it right you must have time to do it over.
Unknown

If you love your job, you will never have to work another day in your life.
Unknown

In labouring to be brief, I become obscure.
Horace

Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen, even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind.
Leonardo Da Vinci

It gets late early out there.
Yogi Berra

It is always better to fail in doing something than to excel in doing nothing.
Unknown

It is by will alone that I set my mind in motion.
Frank Herbert

It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, that gives happiness.
Thomas Jefferson

It is not the horse that draws the cart, but the oats.
Unknown

It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man.
Scott Elledge

It usually takes a long time to find a shorter way.
Unknown

It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
Mark Twain

It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.
Steven Wright

Leemans' Law: Junk expands to fill the space allotted.
Ron Leemans

Man is only happy as he finds a work worth doing, and does it well.
E. Merrill Root

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.
Oliver Herford

Men have become the tools of their tools.
Henry David Thoreau

Most plans are just inaccurate predictions.
Ben Bayol

Most problems are either unimportant or impossible to solve.
Victor Galaz

My work is a game -- a very serious game.
M. C. Escher

Necessity is the mother of invention.
Plato

Never mistake motion for action.
Ernest Hemingway

Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
Unknown

No vacation goes unpunished.
Karl A. Hakkarainen

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
Albert Camus

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.
Mark Twain

Not to be able to bear poverty is a shameful thing, but not to know how to chase it away by work is a more shameful thing yet.
Pericles

Ogden's Law: The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.
Unknown

One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone.
Unknown

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell

Only Robinson Crusoe had everything done by Friday.
Unknown

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas Alva Edison

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.
Laurence J. Peter

Parkinson's First Law: Work expands to fill the time available.
C. Northcote Parkinson

Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.
C. Northcote Parkinson

People forget how fast you did a job -- but they remember how well you did it.
Howard W. Newton

People who never do any more than they get paid for never get paid for any more than they do.
Elbert Hubbard

People who work sitting down are paid more than people who work standing up.
Ray Prince

Peter's Principle: In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetence.
Laurence J. Peter

Please excuse the length of this letter; I do not have time to be brief.
Unknown

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.
Joan Powers

Sometimes you gotta create what you want to be a part of.
Geri Weitzman

Teamwork is wasting half of one's time explaining to others why they are wrong.
Georges Wolinski

The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the amount of work already completed.
Unknown

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

The beginning is the most important part of the work.
Plato

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Alan Kay

The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get to work.
Robert Frost

The burden is equal to the horse's strength.
Unknown

The early bird catches the worm.
Unknown

The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as we could with both of them.
Joseph Heller

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait until that other is ready.
Henry David Thoreau

The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
Woodrow Wilson

The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
Unknown

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

The only way round is through.
Robert Frost

The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.
Havelock Ellis

The quality of an organization can never exceed the quality of the minds that make it up.
Harold R. McAlindon

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Theft from a single author is plagiarism. Theft from two is comparative study. Theft from three or more is research.
Unknown

There are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. It's better to belong to the first group because there is less competition.
Unknown

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
Henry Kissinger

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
Niccolò Machiavelli

There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly.
Publius Terentius Afer

There's no real need to do housework -- after four years it doesn't get any worse.
Quentin Crisp

Too much credit is given to the end result. The true lesson is in the struggle that takes place between the dream and reality. That struggle is a thing called life!
Garth Brooks

Trouble is only an opportunity in work clothes.
Henry J. Kaiser

Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.
Ashleigh Brilliant

Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.
M. Scott Peck

Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, and paradise is when you have none.
Doug Larson

Wasting time is an important part of living.
Unknown

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have done.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We trained hard, but it seemed that everytime we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.
Petronius Arbiter

We will burn that bridge when we come to it.
Nick Gorski

Well done is better than well said.
Benjamin Franklin

Westheimer's Discovery: A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library.
Unknown

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Samuel Johnson

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
Mahatma Gandhi

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

When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.
Unknown

Work is accomplished by those employees who have not reached their level of incompetence.
Unknown

Work is only work if you'd rather be doing something else.
Ray Prince

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Oscar Wilde

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
Henry Ford

You may only have two of the three choices: (1) Enjoy your job. (2)Work within the law. (3)Make lots of money.
Unknown

You will break the bow if you keep it always stretched.
Phaedrus

Z-man's Law: When the paper is due, the printer will jam.
Jason Zalinger

Back to top