Quotes
Quotes about Work
What more felicitie can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with libertie,
And to be lord of all the workes of Nature,
To raine in th' aire from earth to highest skie,
To feed on flowres and weeds of glorious feature.
Each natural agent works but to this end,--
To render that it works on like itself.
O, how full of briers is this working-day world!
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work.
This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
My nature is subdu'd
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.
They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works.
With crosses, relics, crucifixes,
Beads, pictures, rosaries, and pixes,--
The tools of working our salvation
By mere mechanic operation.
Thus with the year
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me; from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of Nature's works, to me expung'd and raz'd,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
These are thy glorious works, Parent of good!
The work under our labour grows,
Luxurious by restraint.
Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat,
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe
That all was lost.
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pygmy-body to decay,
And o'er-inform'd the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleas'd with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storms.
Better to hunt in fields for health unbought
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.
The wise for cure on exercise depend;
God never made his work for man to mend.
Now, by St. Paul, the work goes bravely on.
In books, or work, or healthful play.
It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature's God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word.
A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod;
An honest man's the noblest work of God.
Most authors steal their works, or buy;
Garth did not write his own Dispensary.
Destroy his fib or sophistry--in vain!
The creature's at his dirty work again.
Are these the choice dishes the Doctor has sent us?
Is this the great poet whose works so content us?
This Goldsmith's fine feast, who has written fine books?
Heaven sends us good meat, but the Devil sends cooks?
One writer, for instance, excels at a plan or a title-page, another works away the body of the book, and a third is a dab at an index.
Reading what they never wrote,
Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work,
And with a well-bred whisper close the scene.
There was a jolly miller once,
Lived on the river Dee;
He worked and sung from morn till night:
No lark more blithe than he.
