Elbert Hubbard Quotes on Work

13 quotes

  1. Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds-the man who, against great odds, has directed the efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there's nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes. I have carried a dinner pail and worked for day's wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and all employers are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous. My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the 'boss' is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets 'laid off' nor has to go on a strike for higher wages.

  2. Life without absorbing occupation is hell-joy consists in forgetting life.

  3. The way to learn to earn a living is to go at it and earn a living.

  4. To remain on earth you must be useful, otherwise Nature regards you as old metal, and is only watching for a chance to melt you over.

  5. I believe that the best way to prepare fore for a Future Life is to be kind, live one day at a time, and do the work you can do best, doing it as well as you can.

  6. I believe in the firm for whom I work.

  7. I believe in my colleagues and helpers.

  8. I believe in producers, creaters, manufacturers, distributors, and in all industrial workers of the world who have a job, and hold it down.

  9. I believe in hands that work, brains that think, and hearts that love. Amen, and Amen.

  10. Get happiness out of your work or you may never know what happiness is.

  11. No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.

  12. One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary person.

  13. We work to become, not to acquire.

All Elbert Hubbard quotes