Worth Doing Quotes

Americans think anything you do not get paid for is not worth doing. As a consequence, the things that don't get done are often the most worthwhile. ~ Laurence Overmire

I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I have never started a novel - I mean except the first, when I was starting a novel just to start a novel - I've never written one without rereading Victory. It opens up the possibilities of a novel. It makes it seem worth doing. ~ Joan Didion

If you take responsibility for anything in your life, know that you'll feel fear. That fear will manifest itself in many ways: fear of embarrassment, fear of failure, fear of hurt. Such fears are entirely natural and healthy, and you should recognize them as proof that you've chosen work worth doing. Every worthy challenge will inspire some fear. A ~ Eric Greitens

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr

We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us complacent, and for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going. Who can answer questions, but don't know how to ask them. Who can fulfill goals, but don't know how to set them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they're worth doing in the first place. What we have now are the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen, people who have been trained to be incredibly good at one specific thing, but who have no interest in anything beyond their area of exper­tise. What we don't have are leaders. What we don't have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the Army - a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People, in other words, with vision. ~ William Deresiewicz

But listen here, there ain't anything worth doing a man can do and keep his dignity. ~ Robert Penn Warren

Few things are worth doing perfectly. ~ Mason Cooley

There are only two things truly worth doing; making love and raising children. How convenient that the first causes the second. How tragic that the second prevents the first. ~ Elliot MacDonald

You're very passionate about your unhappiness aren't you, Chris?' I responded with, If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well. ~ Laura Buzo

The only theology worth doing is that which inspires and transforms lives, that which empowers us to participate in creating, liberating, and blessing the world. ~ Carter Heyward

Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Are you overdone yet? ~ Charlotte Henley Babb

Only some things are worth doing well. Most things that are worth doing are only worth doing sloppily. Many things aren't worth doing at all. Anything not worth doing at all is certainly not worth doing well. ~ Carol Deppe

If something is worth doing right, it is worth doing right now. ~ Wes Fesler

Once we are willing to accept that anything worth doing might even be worth doing badly, our options widen. ~ Julia Cameron

The thing most worth doing in this modern world [is to] create jobs that men can work at, and be proud of, and make money by their work. ~ Nevil Shute

My greatest urge in life is to do nothing. It's not even an absence of motivation, a lack, for I do have a strong urge: to do nothing. To down tools, to stop. Except I know that if I do that I will fall into despair, and I know that it is worth doing anything in one's power to avoid depression because from there, from being depressed, it is only an imperceptible step to despair: the last refuge of the ego. ~ Geoff Dyer

No mission is so dangerous it isn't worth doing in style. ~ Cassandra Clare

I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

There's no evidence that registering guns reduces the level of gun violence. It's not that I don't think it's something worth doing, (but) it's something you do much later. ~ Kim Campbell

What we most need in our lives, though, is something worth doing, worth it because we care. ~ Seth Godin

If a thing's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. (Lazarus Long) ~ Robert A. Heinlein

I'm 47, You learn life is short and it's not worth doing something if you don't enjoy it. ~ Trisha Yearwood

One of the causes of unhappiness among intellectuals in the present day is that so many of them, especially those whose skill is literary, find no opportunity for the independent exercise of their talents, but have to hire themselves out to rich corporations directed by Philistines, who insist upon their producing what they themselves regard as pernicious nonsense. If you were to inquire among journalists in either England or America whether they believed in the policy of the newspaper for which they worked, you would find, I believe, that only a small minority do so; the rest, for the sake of a livelihood, prostitute their skill to purposes which they believe to be harmful. Such work cannot bring any real satisfaction, and in the course of reconciling himself to the doing of it, a man has to make himself so cynical that he can no longer derive whole-hearted satisfaction from anything whatever. I cannot condemn men who undertake work of this sort, since starvation is too serious an alternative, but I think that where it is possible to do work that is satisfactory to man's constructive impulses without entirely starving, he will be well advised from the point of view of his own happiness if he chooses it in preference to work much more highly paid but not seeming to him worth doing on its own account. Without self-respect genuine happiness is scarcely possible. And the man who is ashamed of his work can hardly achieve self-respect. ~ Bertrand Russell

Taking a long time to do something not worth doing, that is, doing it inefficiently, seems even more useless. ~ John Perry

If what you are doing is worth doing, hang in there until it is done. ~ Nido R. Qubein

No one ever did anything worth doing unless they were prepared to go on with it long after it became something of a bore. ~ Douglas V. Steere

It won't be as easy, but lots of things that are worth doing aren't easy. It just takes commitment, discipline, and, most important, faith that it's all going to work out. ~ Jason Fried

I love jazz and funk, because it's hard. If it's not hard, it's not worth doing. ~ Chris Carter

Nice? It's the ONLY thing, said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing ... he went on dreamily: messing about ... in ... boats; messing.. ~ Kenneth Grahame

If it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing. ~ Steven Tyler

Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing -to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everything worth doing involves risk. ~ Linda Lael Miller

The psychology of fashion is interesting because we're selling people something they don't really need. We're just selling them something that makes them feel good. Besides, there is nothing really new in fashion. Everything worth doing has been done before. ~ Leon Max

Every activity worth doing has a learning curve. ~ Seth Godin

If a role isn't different, it's not worth doing. ~ Louis Gossett Jr.

A life worth living, and work worth doing - that is what I want for children (and all people), not just, or not even, something called 'a better education. ~ John Holt

Live Life with No Regrets. If it's still on your mind, it is worth doing it. ~ Leanne Bermuda

I'm very determined. If I decide that something is worth doing, then I'll put my heart and soul to it. The whole ground can be against me, but if I know it is right, I'll do it. ~ Lee Kuan Yew

Clark liked to say that human beings, when they took risks, fell into one of two types, pigs or chickens. "The difference between these two kinds of people," he'd say, "is the difference between the pig and the chicken in the ham-and-eggs breakfast. The chicken is interested, the pig is committed. If you are going to do anything worth doing, you need a lot of pigs." The ~ Michael Lewis

Anything that gets your blood racing is probably worth doing. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

An idiot will do anything, no matter how stupid, because he is afraid of what everybody will think of him if he does nothing. A genius, on the other hand, is content to do nothing, no matter what people think, if he can't find anything worth doing. ~ Tom Upton

You must master the vices. You know that if a thing is worth doing it's worth doing well. If, however, a thing is not worth doing then it's worth doing fabulously, amazingly, with grace, style and panache. ~ Isla Dewar

A man who sets out to justify his existence and his activities has to distinguish two different questions. The first is whether the work which he does is worth doing; and the second is why he does it (whatever its value may be). ~ G.H. Hardy

I'm scared of horses, and I don't know how to shoot them, but that's what excites me. After 40 years old, if you don't do some things that really terrify you, I don't think they're worth doing. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

The kinds of jobs a fifteen-and-a-half-year-old can get are not worth doing. They pay shit and suck. ~ A.D. Aliwat

To do anything truly worth doing, I must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in with gusto and scramble through as well as I can. ~ Og Mandino

Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth. ~ Max Beerbohm

The difference between and amateur and a professional.. a professional believes if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well. An amateur believes if a job is worth doing, it very well may be worth doing badly. ~ Robert Littell

I think it rather fine, this necessity for the tense bracing of the will before anything worth doing can be done. I rather like it myself. I feel it is to be the chief thing that differentiates me from the cat by the fire. ~ Arnold Bennett

And when the war's over, someday, some year, the books can be written again, the people will be called in, one by one, to recite what they know and we'll set it up in type until another Dark Age, when we might have to do the whole damn thing over again. But that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth doing. ~ Ray Bradbury

I don't need a date to set a goal, if its worth doing then its worth starting that minute. Just saying.
"I'll start on this date" is an excuse, and excuses are the vises of the weak. ~ Ronin

Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing ... Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all. ~ Mark Kingwell

Unless we are able to commit to a permanent growing settlement [on Mars], then I don't think just going there with humans and coming back is worth doing. The expense of planning to come back is like the people who left Europe to come to America and then to turn around and go back to Europe, it really doesn't make any sense at all. ~ Buzz Aldrin

Just because you worked hard on something didn't make it worth doing. ~ Laura Lippman

Don't let the low standards and expectations of the world and others cause you to aim beneath your nobility and ability-dream big! What I know and have learned is that anything worth doing is not easy and that we can do anything that is not easy if we believe. ~ Elaine S. Dalton

I do nothing, with as little shame as satisfaction. It is the state that suits me best. I write the odd poem when it is there, that is the only thing worth doing. There is an ecstasy of accidia - will-less in a grey tumult of idées obscures. There is an end to the temptation of light, its polite scorchings & consolations. It is good for children & insects. There is an end of making up one's mind, like a pound of tea, an end of patting the butter of consciousness into opinions. The real consciousness is the chaos, a grey commotion of mind, with no premises or conclusions or problems or solutions or cases or judgments. ~ Samuel Beckett

At length she gently pushed me away, and with the words, "Go, my son, and do something worth doing," turned back, and, entering the cottage, closed the door behind her. I felt very desolate as I went. CHAPTER ~ George MacDonald

Trust me when I tell you, Eaton boy, that resisting is worth doing. ~ Veronica Roth

The only way to become a doer is to find something worth doing. ~ Oscar Auliq-Ice

Whatever worth doing at all is worth doing well. ~ Pillip D.Stanhope

The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all. ~ Gore Vidal

Standards of better or worse are not illusory or unnecessary. If you hadn't decided that what you are doing right now was better than the alternatives, you wouldn't be doing it. The idea of a value-free choice is a contradiction in terms. Value judgements are a precondition for action. Furthermore, every activity, once chosen, comes with its own internal standards of accomplishment. If something can be done at all, it can be done better or worse. To do anything at all is therefore to play a game with a defined and valued end, which can always be reached more or less efficiently and elegantly. Ever game comes with its chance of success or failure. Differentials in quality are omnipresent, Furthermore, if there was no better or worse, nothing would be worth doing. There would be no value and, therefore, no meaning. ~ Jordan B. Peterson

But at some point it becomes obvious that, ultimately, the adventure of faith is the most sensible thing to do, and in fact the only thing worth doing. As Sam says toward the end of The Two Towers, no one remembers the tales in which the characters give up and turn back. Great and heroic deeds remain undone if no one leaps into the dark to do them. That's true when it comes to faith, too. You can't play a meaningful role in the great story by playing it safe. Once you hit the road, there is no going back to life as it was before. When Jesus asks His disciples if they will leave him to, Peter says, "Lord to whom will we go?" (verse 68). It's either walk with Jesus, unsafe as it seems sometimes, or go home. ~ Sarah Arthur

If you're not intimidated or maybe a little weary of taking on a role, then it may not be challenging enough and it may not be worth doing. ~ Matt Lauria

It was getting the results that made science worth doing; the accolades were a thin, secondary pleasure. ~ Gregory Benford

Nothing simple is worth doing easily. ~ Keith D. Jones

If anything is worth doing, then it's worth doing extremely well. ~ JME

I know this isn't easy for anyone - nothing worth doing is every easy" Brenda to Maisie Dobbs ~ Jacqueline Winspear

Of course not," said Sturmhond. "Anything worth doing always starts as a bad idea. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Things not worth doing are not worth doing well. ~ Ken Blanchard

She would never blame him for being the ineffectual idler so long as he did it sincerely, from the attitude that nothing much was worth doing ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Anything that can't be done in bed isn't worth doing at all. ~ Groucho Marx

[T]he most comic things of all are exactly the things most worth doing
such as making love. ~ G.K. Chesterton

If something is too hard to do, then it's not worth doing. You just stick that guitar in the closet next to your shortwave radio, your karate outfit and your unicycle and we'll go inside and watch TV. ~ Matt Groening

Any work that's worth doing has its challenges as well as its opportunities. That's true if you're running a business, it's true if you're trying to help on a campaign. ~ Carly Fiorina

Just about anything worth doing is worth doing better. ~ Seth Godin

What's worth doing is worth doing for money. ~ Stanley Weiser

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Dad simply would not settle for second best. He always insisted on several basic rules of personal behavior. "Anything worthwhile costs an effort," or "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well," or "Opportunities only come to those prepared to grasp them," or "Do the thing you fear and so overcome. ~ W. Phillip Keller

Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well." ~Lord Chesterfield, Letter to His God Son ~ Dawn Flowers

But we got through it. Together. It didn't happen overnight and it wasn't easy.
Nothing worth doing ever is.
And love is worth everything ~ Madeline Sheehan

Everything worth doing starts with being scared. ~ Art Garfunkel

He said anything worth doing should scare you a little, and that some of the greatest stories began with a journey. ~ Mindy Mejia

If you have an idea that seems worth doing, don't wait to hire other people and get funding and all those things. Just start doing it, wait to see what happens, and then iterate on that. ~ Salman Khan

It's gotta be fun, if it's not fun it's not worth doing. Music is about having a good time feeling your soul, whether it makes you laugh or it makes you cry, just so long as you feel as much as you can. That's the mission of Pono. ~ Neil Young

Excellence isn't about working extra hard to do what you're told. It's about taking the initiative to do work you decide is worth doing. ~ Seth Godin

Consider the trivial but revealing hallmarks of urban hipsterdom: faux vintage photography, the handlebar mustache, and vinyl record players all hark back to an earlier time when people were still optimistic about the future. If everything worth doing has already been done, you may as well feign an allergy to achievement and become a barista. ~ Peter Thiel

If you want to create something that's worth doing you have to self-edit from the get-go. You really must be careful and selective with whom you work, you must constantly ask yourself the hard questions about your art, and you must set a nearly unattainable standard for yourself. ~ John Dyer Baizley

Henry James proposed asking of art three modest and appropriate questions: What is the artist trying to do? Does he do it? Was it worth doing? ~ Robert Adams

They say ol' man Beach is crazy. And maybe he is. But he goes ahead anyways. He's the sort of man who knows the only things worth doing are the things might break your heart. ~ Colum McCann

Only the impossible is worth doing. ~ Akong Rinpoche

Work hard at work worth doing. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

If anything is ever really worth doing, it's going to be difficult to start with. ~ Miranda Stork

There's only one thing more important ... and that is, after you've done what you set out to do, to feel that it's been worth doing. ~ James Hilton

I have to do this, Merrit. I trust you to take care with my life, but if I lose it in the attempt, then I will have died trying to save all life and I don't want you to blame yourself. This is worth doing. I'd rather die trying to preserve the value of life than watch it all end because I failed to do what only I can. - Magda Searus ~ Terry Goodkind

For all his frustrations and his chronic sense of being overburdened. He was proud of that; he'd always felt that it was worth doing a task properly if it was worth doing at all. That was part of his problem, of course; that was why he ended up with so much to do. It was also the source of his own particular pride: he knew
and he was certain they knew that there was no one else who could handle details such as these as well as he. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Our father taught us such a work ethic that if there's something worth doing, it's worth doing well. ~ Donny Osmond

WHATEVER YOU DO, DO IT WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT Work at it, if necessary, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now. The old proverb is full of truth and meaning, "Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well." Many a man acquires a fortune by doing his business thoroughly, while his neighbor remains poor for life, because he only half does it. Ambition, energy, industry, perseverance, are indispensable requisites for success in business. Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself. ~ P.T. Barnum

I always say it's worth doing what you want to do, not letting people manipulate you. It's worth holding out. It's worth having pride. ~ Geraldine Page