Famous aphorisms in English
Work and Recreation
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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