If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less than excellent work.
If you trust in yourself… and believe in your dreams… and follow your star… you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
If you can’t hide what you are going to do, do it so everybody thinks you are a fool.
If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?
If I succeed in putting some warmth and love into the work, then it will find friends. Carrying on working is the thing.[Als ‘t mij lukken mag wat warmte en liefde in ‘t werk te leggen dan zal het zijn vrienden vinden. Doorwerken is de kwestie.]
If a man love the labour of any trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.
I’ve always considered my work one piece and I consider that my work won’t be finished until I am dead and buried and I hope that’s a long, long time.
I will work harder![repeated often in the rest of the book]
I was given the job of milking the cows, finally, and it got me up earlier than anybody. But it was kind of nice, pulling at those cows’ tits.
I think the biggest lesson I have learned is not to get too anxious about your work.
I owe my success to the fact that I never had a clock in my workroom.
