IF you’re waiting for a windfall, you may go to the grave waiting, because fortune favours the man or woman who plods and puts in hard work every day, and that work should become a joy to us, not a drudgery!
William Feather, publisher and author, said: “In the hundred-yard race the winner doesn’t cross the tape line a dozen strides ahead of the field. He wins by inches. So, we find it in ordinary business life. The big things that come our way are the fruit of seed planted in the daily routine of our work.”
For Sir Theodore Martin, the nineteenth-century Scottish biographer: “Work is the true elixir of life. The busiest man is the happiest man. Excellence in any art or profession is attained only by hard and persistent work. Never believe that you are perfect. When a man imagines, even after years of striving, that he has attained perfection his decline begins.”
In the opinion of Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish essayist and historian: “The glory of a work-man, still more of a master workman, that he does his work well, ought to be his most precious possession; like the honour of a soldier, dearer to him than life.” Henry Ford, the automotive great, believed that “nobody can think straight who does not work. Idleness warps the mind. Thinking without constructive action becomes a disease.”
Author Jacob Korsaren gave this advice: “If you are poor, work. If you are burdened with seemingly unfair responsibilities, work. If you are happy, work. Idleness gives room for doubts and fear. If disappointments come, keep right on working. If sorrow overwhelms you and loved ones seem not true, work. If health is threatened, work. When faith falters and reason fails, just work. When dreams are shattered and hope seems dead, work.
Work as if your life were in peril. It really is. No matter what ails you, work. Work faithfully – work with faith. Work is the greatest remedy available for both mental and physical afflictions.” Psychiatrist W Beran Wolfe put it this way: “If you observe a really happy man, you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that had rolled under the radiator, striving for it as the goal itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of each day.”
Former President Calvin Coolidge was certain that “all growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work. Work is not a curse; it is the prerogative of intelligence, the only means to manhood, and the measure of civilization.” And perhaps the Greek playwright Antiphanes summed it all up when he said: “Everything yields to diligence..!”
