Mark Twain Work Quotations

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

I can't do literary work for the rest of this year because I'm meditating another lawsuit and looking around for a defendant

Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does all the work

If He Tom Sawyer had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

I do not like work even when someone else does it.

I can't do no literary work for the rest of this year because I'm meditating another lawsuit and looking around for a defendant.

The law of work does seem utterly unfair-but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash, too.

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

He charged nothing for his preaching and it was worth it too.

The bane of Americans is overwork-and the ruin of any work is a divided interest. Concentrate-concentrate. One thing at a time.

Intellectual ''work'' is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward.

In America, we hurry-which is well; but when the day's work is done, we go on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry our business cares to bed with us...we burn up our energies with these excitements, and either die early or drop into a lean and mean old age at a time of life which they call a man's prime in Europe...What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occasionally and renew our edges!

Two days overdue, THE WORLD'S WORK has not reached me. Pray make a note of this. I would rather not have to resort to violence.

Let us be grateful to Adam: he cut us out of the blessing of idleness and won for us the curse of labor.

Never learn to do anything: if you don't learn, you'll always find someone else to do it for you.

I do not like work even when someone else is doing it.