Quotes and sayings about work (great people, statuses)

May 1 is Labor Day, which is celebrated in many countries. Every person's life is spent in work. Going to work, taking care of the house, raising children - all this is human labor. The topic of labor has always been and will be relevant, as evidenced by the statements of great people about labor in different centuries. Their philosophical sayings say that labor is the basis of human life, it brings benefits and improves benefits.

Plunging into work, a person forgets about his problems, focusing on his work. Thus, work is the best medicine for mental wounds. Our selection contains not only philosophical statements about work, but also cool statuses that will undoubtedly cheer you up.

Although the May Day holidays are dedicated to work, these days, as a rule, are declared holidays at the state level, and on these days it is customary to rest rather than work. This is a small paradox, although on the other hand, if you work all the time, then at some point you need to rest.

Labor can be mental or physical. It is not so important what a person does in life, the main thing is that the work is to his liking and brings benefits.

Quotes and aphorisms

Work and labor will grind everything down.

Success does not come immediately.

Labor is often the father of pleasure. (Voltaire)

Real pleasure is contemplating the results of labor.

Labor in our time is a great right and a great duty. (V. Hugo)

This is how it has always been and will always be.

Labor is a healing balm, it is a source of virtue. (Herder)

A person finds himself in work.

Everyone worthy of being called a human must have the desire and ability to work. (Smiles)

The desire to work is a sign of a noble person, while laziness is his enemy.

Work makes you insensitive to grief. (Cicero)

While working, a person concentrates his thoughts on action, and not on problems.

The true treasure for people is the ability to work. (Aesop)

Rather not a skill, but a desire. If you have the desire, you can learn anything.

Work dulls grief. (Cicero)

The best doctor is work, it heals from the most severe wounds - from mental ones.

Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today. (Franklin Benjamin)

And if you can also accomplish today what you planned for tomorrow, don’t wait for tomorrow...

Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and want. (Voltaire)

At that time, work gives joy and prosperity.

You need to love what you do, and then work - even the roughest - rises to creativity. (Maksim Gorky)

There is nothing better when work is also a hobby.

Everyone worthy of being called a human must have the desire and ability to work. (Smiles)

Moreover, first you need to have the desire, and then the ability; without desire, no ability will help.

Obvious and unobvious benefits of physical labor

Have you ever wondered why physical labor is often opposed to education, a happy and fulfilling life, and is not respected and honored? For me, this state of affairs was taken for granted for a long time. But, as often happens in my life, it is time for this question to be questioned and analyzed.

The Lifehacker Telegram channel contains only the best texts about technology, relationships, sports, cinema and much more. Subscribe!

Our Pinterest contains only the best texts about relationships, sports, cinema, health and much more. Subscribe!

Starting from the last grades of school, I was no longer satisfied with answers like “Everyone lives like this,” “Everyone thinks like this,” “Everyone does this.” So today I will try to show you that in matters of physical labor the majority is wrong, that without it we will not be able to develop harmoniously, achieve success, live happily and fully.

Possible reasons for the wrong attitude

First, let's look at the reasons for the wrong attitude. The first reason - laziness - is as old as human nature itself. I don’t want to say that laziness is not a hindrance to intellectual work. Sometimes it’s even the opposite: I start doing hard physical labor just to avoid writing an article.

But if a person is offered a choice of any profession, then, most likely, his choice will be more related to intellectual work than to physical work. And what a person does not like, he often tries to present to himself and others as of little use or even unnecessary. Plato's ideas come to the rescue .

Plato taught that man has an immortal soul - a thinking and feeling entity associated with higher information and spiritual matters. The body for the soul is just a temporary shelter associated with everything low, earthly and unclean. This is where the excessive exaltation of intellectualism over physical labor begins.

By the time Christianity becomes the state religion of the Roman Empire, Plato’s ideas are already firmly included in it, despite the fact that the main book of Christians - the Bible - says nothing about the immortal soul in Plato’s understanding and denies the afterlife itself.

This attitude permeates all levels of society and the entire culture of Europe. In addition, to combat the Reformation, the Jesuit Order creates schools and universities throughout Europe, the system and philosophy of education of which have become the foundation in almost all educational institutions of the modern world.

Thus, in addition to natural laziness, a person from childhood receives the idea that intellectual work is associated with something sublime, spiritual and worthy of honor, and physical work is the lot of the plebeians.

And the third reason follows from the second and, in turn, strengthens it even more strongly in our consciousness. This happens in the following way: a child is lazy to work intellectually and does poorly at school (or he is discouraged from studying), as a result he grows up as a person incapable of intellectual work, self-learning and self-development. Low level of intelligence, small vocabulary, low culture - the only prospect remains unskilled or low-skilled physical labor.

Looking at such a person, people usually confuse cause and effect and become convinced that physical labor does not contribute to mental and moral development and, in general, to the growth of a person as an individual. Below we will see that in fact, with the right approach, everything is just the opposite.

General benefits of physical activity

Today, scientists are increasingly saying that playing sports helps us become smarter.

In his book “Brain Rules,” John Medina provides a lot of interesting facts about the beneficial effects of physical activity on the brain and its functioning:

…exercise over a lifetime produces dramatic improvements in cognitive performance, in contrast to a sedentary lifestyle. Adherents of physical education outperformed lazy people and couch potatoes in terms of long-term memory, logic, attention, problem-solving ability, and even the so-called fluid intelligence. Such tests determine the speed of thinking and the ability to think abstractly, to reproduce previously acquired knowledge to solve a new problem.

John Medina

Medina also reports that physical activity reduces the risk of dementia by half, and in the case of Alzheimer's disease the result is even 60%! The risk of one of the main causes of age-related brain diseases - an attack of angina pectoris - is reduced by 57%. Exercise also helps regulate the release of norepinephrine, dopamine and serotonin, which are directly related to brain health and function.

Unfortunately, today a sedentary lifestyle is a problem not only for adults working in the office, but also for children chained to the TV, computer and tablets with smartphones. This negatively affects not only physical, but also mental health:

…physical activity improves children. Children in good physical condition recognize visual stimuli faster than their sedentary peers and concentrate better. Research on mental performance has shown that physically active children and adolescents use more cognitive resources to complete tasks.

John Medina

Physical labor can provide no less useful and varied exercise to our body than sports exercises, having the same beneficial effect on it as, for example, running. But with all this, physical labor can provide additional stress for our brain, which it cannot get anywhere else.

Practical mind

Even while cleaning the apartment, our brain solves many more practical problems than when solving complex mathematical equations. Therefore, properly organized physical labor contributes to the formation of practical thinking. In this case, a person learns to see a cause-and-effect relationship and gains the skill of predicting the consequences and results of not only his actions, but also his words and thoughts.

But due to the fact that physical labor is considered a curse or punishment, most perform their work thoughtlessly, according to practice and without creativity. Of course, this situation does not in any way contribute to practical thinking, which is so necessary for achieving success and fulfillment in life.

Children raised on video games and films, where cause-and-effect relationships are often completely absent or have little to do with reality, when they grow up, often simply cannot understand what is happening to their lives, and begin to scold the stars, world conspiracies, the government, foreigners, neighbors... And they also learn with unpleasant surprise that life sometimes turns out to be a difficult and complex thing and their knowledge, skills, and character are completely unprepared for it.

It’s not for nothing that in Silicon Valley there is a school where children learn (without computers and tablets) to sculpt, draw, carve, and generally work with their hands. And famous people of the Hi-Tech society send their children to this school. Many of them, like Steve Jobs once upon a time, limit their children’s exposure to gadgets to varying degrees.

Character Education

Physical labor can also be an excellent assistant in character development. More precisely, in the development of character qualities: determination, perseverance, hard work, accuracy, thoroughness - which are critically important for success, development, growth and overcoming difficulties.

Whether the child wants it or not, by completing the task assigned to him or redoing something poorly done, he cultivates all these qualities in himself. And I think there is no need to explain that without them it is impossible to achieve anything meaningful. Children who share some of the household responsibilities with other family members grow up to be more independent, more prepared for life and its unpleasant surprises.

Preparedness for life's vicissitudes

No one knows how circumstances will turn out for us in the future, but a person accustomed to physical labor has an advantage in this situation. The acquired skills will help you find temporary work or even open your own business, and a tempered character will help you not give up and not sink to theft or begging.

And if we take extreme cases - a desert island, natural disasters and other “ends of the world” - then the skills of a blogger or programmer are unlikely to help if there is no electricity. Completely different skills will be useful in such a situation.

Useful practical result

And, by the way, about usefulness. Practical results that can benefit you personally and others are another benefit of physical labor.

If the result of sports exercises is a healthy body and mind, then the results of physical labor can be supplemented by vegetables and fruits from your own plot, a cozy and beautiful home environment or even a balcony.

Solution: fall in love with physical labor

What to do now? Quit intellectual work and sports exercises? Of course not. To begin with, you can simply take advantage of every opportunity to physically work: from simply digging a ditch to creating masterpiece furniture from strong oak.

Well, and most importantly: if you work without a good attitude, without a creative approach, then it will be impossible to squeeze out all the bonuses. Is it possible to love physical work? I know from personal experience that it is possible, although it will not be quick and it will not be easy. Think about the benefits it provides, and for free. Usually people pay a lot of money for various trainings, but here we get training for muscles, for the brain, for character, and even with a useful external result. Whatever you want, I rushed off to cultivate the vineyard.

Sayings of great people

Work, as it were, creates a kind of calloused barrier against pain. (Cicero)

When a person is busy with something, he does not have time to think about mental or physical pain.

Work hard! The world will not be a paradise for those who want to live as lazy people. (Sax Hans)

If you want to live and enjoy benefits, work and increase your wealth.

The main advantage of work is that it should be both an end and a means in itself, so that the pleasure lies in it, and not in its results. (Reyhani Amin)

Whatever one may say, the results of labor bring no less pleasure than the work itself.

Physical labor is something that serves virtue. (Xunzi)

While mental work serves the purpose of improvement.

A person must work, work hard, no matter who he is, and in this alone lies the meaning and purpose of his life, his happiness, his delight. (A.P. Chekhov)

Life without work is just existence.

The labor process, if it is free, ends in creativity. (M. Prishvin)

The relaxed labor process is creativity.

When work is pleasure, life is good! When work is a duty, life is slavery! (Maksim Gorky)

To live and enjoy life, you need to do what brings you pleasure.

Constant work is the law of both art and life. (O. de Balzac)

But even the most pleasant work needs to be alternated with rest at least sometimes.

Without work there cannot be a pure and joyful life. (A.P. Chekhov)

Life without work is a lie, self-interest and seeking benefits from others.

B

The barometer in agriculture can be replaced with great benefit by diligent servants suffering from deliberate rheumatism

The 135th aphorism of the book “The Fruits of Meditation. Thoughts and aphorisms" (1884) by Kozma Prutkov.

It’s a disaster when a shoemaker starts baking pies, and a pie maker starts making boots.

Quote from the fable “The Pike and the Cat” (1813) by the Russian fabulist Ivan Andreevich Krylov (1769 – 1844). This is the first phrase of the fable.