Quotes about Work

Susan Vance: He said that David was an old, old friend of his, that he'd been working very, very hard in town and that he was on the point of having a nervous breakdown.
David Huxley: Oh, and I'm a nut from Brazil!

- Cary Grant (as Dr. David Huxley) in Bringing up Baby (1938)

Fred Derry: You know what it'll be, don't you, Peggy? It may take us years to get anywhere. We'll have no money, no decent place to live. We'll have to work, get kicked around.

- Dana Andrews (as Fred Derry) in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Ellsworth Toohey: There's the building that should have been yours. There are buildings going up all over the city which are great chances refused and given to incompetent fools. You're walking the streets while they're doing the work that you love but cannot obtain. This city is closed to you. It is I who have done it! Don't you want to know my motive?
Howard Roark: No!
Ellsworth Toohey: I'm fighting you and shall fight you in every way I can.
Howard Roark: You're free to do what you please!
Ellsworth Toohey: Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me in any words you wish.
Howard Roark: But I don't think of you!
[Roark walks away and Toohey's head slumps down]

- Gary Cooper (as Howard Roark) in The Fountainhead (1949)

Howard Roark: I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build!

- Gary Cooper (as Howard Roark) in The Fountainhead (1949)

Howard Roark: Before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the people! Your own work, not any possible object of your charity. I'll be glad if men who need it find a better method of living in the house I built, but that's not the motive of my work, nor my reason, nor my reward! My reward, my purpose, my life, is the work itself - my work done my way! Nothing else matters to me!

- Gary Cooper (as Howard Roark) in The Fountainhead (1949)

Peter Keating: But it's a humanitarian project. Think of the people who live in slums. If you can give them decent housing, you can perform a noble deed. Would you do it just for their sake?
Howard Roark: No! A man who works for others without payment is a slave! I do no believe that slavery is noble. Not in any form, nor for any purpose, whatsoever!

- Gary Cooper (as Howard Roark) in The Fountainhead (1949)

Jack Favell: I'd like to have your advice on how to live comfortably without hard work.

- George Sanders (as Jack Favell) in Rebecca (1940)

Jim Blandings: That's fine. For the rest of my life, I'll have to get up at 5 in the morning to catch the 6:15 train to get to my office at 8. It doesn't even open until 9, and I never get there until 10!
Muriel Blandings: Well, maybe if you start earlier, you can leave the office earlier.
Jim Blandings: To get home earlier, to get to bed earlier, to get up earlier, I suppose.
Bill Cole: Maybe you can get the railroad to push the train up to 4:15. Then you won't have to go to bed at all.

- Melvyn Douglas (as Bill Cole) in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)

Mr. Melville: There's three times in a man's life when he has a right to yell at the moon: when he marries, when his children come, and... and when he finishes a job he had to be crazy to start.

- Harry Carey (as Mr. Melville) in Red River (1948)

[Dunson plans to take Don Diego's land from him]
Fernandez: Others have thought as you, señor. Others have tried.
Thomas Dunson: And you've always been good enough to stop them?
Fernandez: Amigo, it is my work.
Thomas Dunson: Pretty unhealthy job.

- John Wayne (as Thomas Dunson) in Red River (1948)