There is no easy way out. I've never heard knocking on my door at 5am: "Jack, this is Jesus. I'll work out for you today." --Jack La Lanne (in Jack La Lanne, Fit for Life)

I do not want to talk about what you understand about this world. I want to know what you will do about it. I do not want to know what you hope. I want to know what you will work for. I do not want your sympathy for the needs of humanity. I want your muscle. --Robert Fulghum (in Just say Yes!)

If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. --Lila Watson, Aboriginal Australian (in Work Together)

If I am never asked the question by Oprah herself, I would like to say there is only one thing I know for sure: God does work in mysterious ways. --Terrie Maier (in Embracing a Miracle)

Work is love made visible. --Kahlil Gibran (in Love blooms in NYC cab)

I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible, loving, human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of pride. --William James (in Invisible Forces)

The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our work and find in it our pleasure. --Francoise de Motteville (in Wonder Welders)

Frodo: I wish none of this had happened. Gandalf: So do all who see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world than the will of evil. --J. R. R. Tolkien - Lord of the Rings (in Untitled)

Look at each day as a chance to invest life into life. Each day is a chance to work miracles in the lives of others. --Jim Rohn (in Invest in Life)

If you have a dream and don't work at it, what good is the dream? --Rita Simo (in Music for the People)

If you are coming to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you are coming because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. --Lilla Watson (in Work Together)

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. --Walt Whitman (in Living Machines)

In every community there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart there is the power to do it. --Marianne Williamson (in Community Healing)

Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war. --Maria Montessori (in Peace)

When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (in Reading A Blade of Grass)

Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. --Samuel Butler (in What Your Musical Taste Says About You)

I have one life and one chance to make it count for something . . . I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference. --Jimmy Carter (in Faith)

Meaning has to do with human relationships and our contribution to progressive purpose and growth in understanding and responsibility. Helping make the world a better place for us all through our work brings meaning to it. --Dave Smith (in To Be of Use)

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it. --Michael Jordan (in 20 Teens Who Will Change The World)

Problems are only opportunities dressed in work clothes. --Henry Kaiser (in World's Largest Love Letter)

Believe in the impossible. We have the power to make this an amazing society ... if we work together. Be a part of it. Make waves. --Robert Egger (in Begging For Change)

Ideas won't work unless you do. --Author Unknown (in 49,000 Grandmothers of Nepal)

I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible, loving, human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of pride. --William James (in Sons of Lwala)

Never take a path that has no heart in it. You can't lose if your heart is in your work, but you can't win if your heart is not in it. -- Carlos Casteneda (in Mother Teresa's Personal Surgeon)

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work. --Mother Teresa (in Singing To The Dying)

As we respond with caring and vision to all work, we develop our capacity to respond fully to all of life. Every action generates positive energy which can be shared with others. These qualities of caring and responsiveness are the greatest gift we can offer. --Tarthang Tulku (in Smashing a Law of Physics?)

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up. --Anne Lamott (in Theater For The Disabled)

I envision a future where more of us will call ourselves artists and work together to make an art concerned with the primary issues of life. I envision a future where art is once again honored for its power to inspire, teach, transform and heal. I envision a future where all people dance together, where the circle is open enough for both children and grandparents. --Anna Halprin (in Dancing to Heal)

When we come together to play and be we are truly ourselves. When we are truly ourselves it is wonderful and when we act collectively in that wonder we do transformative work for our community and our world. --Brad Colby (in Soccer as a Tool for AIDS Prevention)

Work like you don't need the money, love like your heart has never been broken, and dance like no one is watching. --Aurora Greenway (in Dancing Classrooms)

It is not enough for the teacher to love the child. She must first love and understand the universe. She must prepare herself, and truly work at it. ... The real preparation for education is the study of one's self. --Maria Montessori (in 100 Years of Montessori)

Most people don't recognize opportunity when it comes, because it's usually dressed in overalls and looks a lot like work. --Thomas Edison (in Teen Grocer Revives Community)

To be the agent whose touch changes nature from a wild force to a work of art is inspiration of the highest order. --Bob Rodale (in A 17-year-old's Life-saving Breakthrough)

Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can't get there by bus, only by hard work, risking, and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful: yourself. --Alan Alda (in Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind)

To live more simply is to unburden our lives -- to live more lightly, cleanly, aerodynamically. It is to establish a more direct, unpretentious and unencumbered relationship with all aspects of our lives: the things that we consume, the work that we do, our relationships with others, our connections with nature and the cosmos, and more. --Duane Elgin (in A Dollar A Year CEO)

How do you go from where you are to where you want to be? I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal, and you have to be willing to work for it. --Jim Valvano (in Running A Marathon On Crutches)

Many people are afraid to forgive because they feel they must remember the wrong or they will not learn from it. The opposite is true. Through forgiveness, the wrong is released from its emotional stranglehold on us so that we can learn from it. Through the power and intelligence of the heart, the release of forgiveness brings expanded intelligence to work with the situation more effectively. --David & Bruce McArthur (in The Healthy Art of Forgiving)

Being healthy means a wholeness in the living of one's life -- a dynamic and constantly changing balance that acknowledges the soundness of our physical state, the wholesomeness of lifestyle, the values that define our behavior, our intimate and collective relationships, the meaning and purpose of our work in the world, and the spiritual dimension of our existence. --William B. Stewart (in Seven Simple Health Habits)

In every community, there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart, there is the power to do it. --Marianne Williamson (in A Story of Healing)

Pausing to listen to an airplane in the sky, stooping to watch a ladybug on a plant, sitting on a rock to watch the waves crash over the quayside –- children have their own agendas and timescales. As they find out more about their world and their place in it; they work hard not to let adults hurry them. We need to hear their voices. --Cathy Nutbrown (in So That All May Play)

The work I do to let go of my suffering diminishes the suffering of the whole universe. When I have room for my own pain, I have room for the pain of others. Only then can I be transformed into joy. As I heal, the Earth heals. --Christiane Northrup (in World's Largest Floating Hospital)

You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however. --Richard Bach (in The Boy Who Built Windmills)

Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that - one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery. --Oliver Wendell Holmes (in Sewing For Hope In The Favela)

I want to work for a company that contributes to and is part of the community. I want something not just to invest in. I want something to believe in. --Anita Roddick (in Anita Roddick: The Queen of Green)

When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at a college -- that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous, and said, "You mean they forget?" --Howard Ikemoto (in Born Free Art School)

To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living. --Henri Amiel (in Secrets of the Very Very Old)

The object behind every true work of art is the attainment of a state of being. --Robert Henri (in Art as Attention to Living)

When you graduate from college, no one is going to care where you went to college. If they do care, you don’t want to work for that boss. --David Smokler (in Less Homework, More Yoga At Needham High)

Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife which may, at any moment, become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself: What else is the world interested in? What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships? --Dorothy Day (in A Common Word Between Us & You)

Giving time doesn't necessarily take more "time"; rather it requires a shift in one's mindset. The simplest thing everyone can give is the gift of a commitment to a value -- practice meditation daily, work out three times a week, donate money to a charity every month, whatever it is. --Nipun Mehta (in Seven Questions on Giving Time)