Motivation For Work quotes

Lectures on Art, Lecture IV, Project Gutenberg #19164. The sentence belongs to Ruskin’s own theory of artistic quality.

Discourses of Epictetus, Book II, Chapter XVIII, “How we should struggle against appearances,” George Long translation; 1877 George Bell & Sons witness on Wikisource, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #10661. Epictetus explains that habits and faculties are maintained by corresponding actions: “If you would be a good reader, read; if a writer, write.”

Character Building, “Growth,” Project Gutenberg #60484. The line is part of an exhortation to Tuskegee students at the beginning of a new period of study.

Optimism: An Essay (1903), Project Gutenberg #31622. The field and harvest are metaphors for putting an optimistic creed into practice.

Poor Richard’s Almanack.

Ecclesiastes 7:8 in the King James Version; the verse contrasts patient spirit with pride and values the completed end of a matter over the excitement of its beginning.

Speech “The Strenuous Life,” April 10, 1899.

Lectures on Art, Lecture III, Project Gutenberg #19164. The comparison is part of Ruskin’s discussion of practiced precision in master painters.

Lectures on Art, Lecture III, Project Gutenberg #19164. Ruskin is discussing how practice changes the viewer’s ability to recognize workmanship in art.

As a Man Thinketh, “Achievement”; this is the middle clause of Allen’s three-part conclusion.

Up from Slavery, Chapter II, “Boyhood Days,” Project Gutenberg #2376. Washington reflects on the obstacles facing Black youth after slavery and measures success by difficulty overcome rather than by final social position; the historical racial context is kept explicit.

Cato on Old Age, in Cicero’s answer to the complaint that age reduces physical strength.

The Master-Word in Medicine, 1903. “It” refers to the master-word Work in the immediately preceding passage; the source page preserves that antecedent so the excerpt is not detached from its meaning.

Aurora Leigh, Book III, printed page 95 / Wikisource scan leaf 104, scan-backed Chapman and Hall third edition (London, 1857), cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #56621. Aurora describes three years of literary work in Kensington and says, “Get work, get work; Be sure ’tis better than what you work to get.” The passage remains first-person verse-novel narration about vocation and work rather than a universal instruction to overwork or neglect health and rest.

Self-Made Men lecture, commonly dated to 1872 in edited versions. Library of Congress preserves undated manuscript, typescript and printed-copy materials, including a later Carlisle version; Douglass delivered and revised the lecture across his speaking career. The lecture also stresses social interdependence, so this line should not be reduced to a simplistic bootstrap claim.

Architects of Fate; Project Gutenberg #21622, in Marden’s discussion of definite purpose and concentrated effort.

On The Art of Reading, Lecture V, Project Gutenberg #16579; “crests” refers to exceptional moments of successful writing described immediately before.

Poor Richard’s Almanack; the maxim connects disciplined use of working time with the ability to gain leisure.

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. The sentence follows Smiles’s claim that useful and beautiful thoughts arise from sustained intellectual work and uses poetry as one example of painstaking creative labour.

As a Man Thinketh, chapter “The Thought-Factor in Achievement.”

Up from Slavery, Chapter XIV, “The Atlanta Exposition Address,” Project Gutenberg #2376. The sentence occurs inside Washington’s reproduced 1895 Atlanta Exposition address, where he argues for the dignity of common labour and beginning economic development from practical foundations.

Up from Slavery, Chapter XVI, “Europe,” Project Gutenberg #2376. During his account of Europe, Washington returns to the idea of indispensable usefulness and calls sustained contribution to a community’s material, intellectual and moral well-being a great human law of reward.

The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture on Work; Project Gutenberg #26716. This is explicitly Christian moral rhetoric in Ruskin’s text and is not secularized into a universal economic proposition.

Rasselas, Chapter XVIII; Imlac encourages the prince after acknowledging that strong restraints may still exist.

Information to Those Who Would Remove to America, before March 1784; Founders Online. The lowercase opening is retained because this is a clause from Franklin’s longer sentence about strangers, law, liberty and industry.

Character Building, “What Is To Be Our Future?”, Project Gutenberg #60484. This sentence completes Washington’s model declaration about conscientious study and work.

Past and Present, Book III, Chapter XII, “Reward,” printed page 250 in Thomas Carlyle’s Collected Works, Library Edition, Vol. XIII (London: Chapman and Hall), Project Gutenberg #26159. “Work, and therein have well-being” opens Carlyle’s enduring “Gospel” of work inside explicitly Christian Victorian social criticism. This collection preserves that historical moral-religious setting and does not present the sentence as a modern health, wellness or employment guarantee.

The Art of Money Getting, section headed “Whatever You Do, Do It With All Your Might.”

Life Without Principle, first published posthumously in The Atlantic Monthly in October 1863; represented Wikisource text. It derives from Thoreau’s lecture “What Shall It Profit?” and is social criticism, not hiring research.

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. The sentence immediately follows the poetry example and presents substantial work as the product of repeated effort and failure; the absolute wording is Smiles’s rhetorical generalization.

Architects of Fate, chapter discussion of will and purpose; Project Gutenberg #21622. The wording reflects nineteenth-century success literature.

Adam Bede; Adam speaks to Arthur late in the novel after the central tragedy, so the line is grounded in grief, work, and responsibility rather than generic productivity advice.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part III; Smith asks what rewards ordinarily encourage industry, prudence, truth, justice, and humanity.

Optimism: An Essay (1903), Project Gutenberg #31622. The sentence follows Keller’s discussion of Carlyle’s historical “gospel of work.”

Character Building, “The Virtue of Simplicity,” Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington uses mortar-mixing as a concrete example of progressive workmanship.

Lectures on Art, Lecture VI, Project Gutenberg #19164. The passage discusses disciplined line, colour and illumination practice.

Lectures on Art, inaugural lecture, Project Gutenberg #19164. The excerpt addresses Oxford students beginning practical art study.

Hopes and Fears for Art, lecture “Making the Best of It”; Project Gutenberg #3773. The sentence addresses artistic workmanship rather than claiming every form of labor is art.

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Immediately after linking greatness in art, literature and science with labour, Smiles rhetorically defines genius as a capacity for intense and sustained effort; it is not treated as a modern psychological finding.

Thrift, Chapter XIV, “Riches and Charity,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles argues that money alone cannot reform conduct and says change from intemperance, improvidence and irreligion requires earnest purpose, self-devotion and hard work; that nineteenth-century reform context is preserved.

The Prophet, “On Work,” Project Gutenberg #58585. Almustafa answers a ploughman’s request to speak of work; after linking work, knowledge and love, he says “Work is love made visible” and develops the statement through craft, bread, wine and song imagery. This remains framed poetic-spiritual discourse, not an empirical workplace or productivity rule.

Poor Richard’s Almanack; a compact maxim about managing work before accumulated demands begin managing you.

The Master-Word in Medicine, address delivered October 1, 1903 at the opening of the new buildings of the University of Toronto Medical Faculty; reviewed against the represented 1903 John Murphy pamphlet, Internet Archive identifier b28060805. ‘The master-word is Work’ is Osler’s organizing refrain and is followed by his appeal to write the word on the heart and forehead. This remains historical professional rhetoric rather than an endorsement of unsafe working hours or workaholism.

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles broadens his defence of labour from material production to art, literature, science and knowledge; the universal wording is his historical moral claim, not an empirical rule that effort alone guarantees greatness.

What Is Man?, Old Man concluding the Shakespeare/Gobelin comparison; “Gobelins” refers to elaborate tapestry and functions as the contrast with an ordinary sewing-machine.

Past and Present, Book III, Chapter XII, “Reward,” printed page 251 in Thomas Carlyle’s Collected Works, Library Edition, Vol. XIII (London: Chapman and Hall), Project Gutenberg #26159. “All true Work is sacred” begins Carlyle’s theological claim that true labour contains “something of divineness”; it remains Victorian religious and social-polemical rhetoric rather than an empirical claim about every form of employment.

Poem “The Ladder of St. Augustine.”

Lectures on Art, Lecture VI, Project Gutenberg #19164. Ruskin is describing the cumulative value of the drawing method he has just prescribed.

Essay “El Dorado.”

Character Building, “The Virtue of Simplicity,” Project Gutenberg #60484. The sentence refers specifically to students doing building work at Tuskegee.