Christmas crackers: twelve thoughts about work to enjoy over the holidays

When Sigmund Freud was asked how we can achieve happiness he said two things were necessary: the ability to love and the ability to work.

According to the internet this quotation appears nowhere in Freud’s published work but, even if he did not say it, it is close to things that he did say and, in any case, it is very true. Here are some more thoughts I like on the subject of work.


I don't like work no man does but I like what is in the work the chance to find yourself. Your own reality for yourself not for others what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.

Joseph Conrad


They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.

Socrates 

Work hard, do the best you can, don't ever lose faith in yourself and take no notice of what other people say about you.

Noel Coward

Choose a job that you love, and you will never work a day in your life.

Confucius

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

William James

Things can be done. The people in life who get them done are the ones who know that, and the ones who don't are the rest.

Tony Hawks

A clumsy right hand cannot be trained into a skillful right hand by taking thought, by wishing it were less clumsy, or even by avoiding clumsiness. It can become skillful only by exercise in practical achievements, and the incentive to the achievement must be more deeply felt than the discouragement at the hitherto existent clumsiness.

Alfred Adler

There is no such thing as talent. There is pressure.

Alfred Adler


All happiness depends on courage and work.

Honoré de Balzac


Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know that it is money.

Gerald Brenan


I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

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