Menial Quotes

"I drove a truck for a while for a meat packing plant. I shoveled manure at the Clarmont Riding Academy in New York. Mopped floors for a while. I uploaded railroad cars and trailers at a warehouse. I wasn`t really qualified for anything else." - On his menial jobs before acting.

I did a million things. I worked in an office supply store, I drove a school bus, I painted houses, I worked for a Mexican landscape gardening company, picking out weeds. And generally when I was doing something it somehow took my interest. In fact, it must be a kind of shallowness. When I did office supplies mostly I thought about office supplies, and then when I got on the train I`d think about theatre, and then I would do theatre. But the next morning I would go in and, you know, reorganize the paper clips. - On menial jobs he held before becoming a successful actor.

`I knew I was in trouble when I couldn`t make it offstage quick enough to get whatever variety of shit I was tipping down me. I thought to myself: There are people working in gas stations, and all these menial jobs, to put money aside to see the Ozzfest, and I`m more interested in going back to the hotel, and doing a bag of white powder, or whatever shit it is I`m on.`

If you want to completely tear yourself away from your home, your family and all you`ve ever known; if you want to endure months and years of a Spartan lifestyle and a harsh disciplinary regime; and if you don`t mind carrying out the most menial tasks with only the bare minimum of material, then by all means join the French Foreign Legion.

Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived is no cause for celebration. You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine. No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow!

The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them. Even the most tedious chore will become endurable as you parade through each day convinced that every task, no matter how menial or boring, brings you closer to fulfilling your dreams.

I come from a generation where the dreams and aspirations of a whole lot of young men were sacrificed at the altar of getting some kind of menial job.

There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes.

Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most - that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least.

Many have master`s and doctorate degrees, but because of their illness, they are out of the workforce, ... Now with new medications, many are capable of controlling the illness to the point of being able to function very well and contribute in varied positions that do contribute to the community and are not menial in nature.

`Progress never defines its ultimate objective but thrusts its victims at once into an infinite series,` Mr. (John Crowe) Ransom said` `Industrialism,` he declared, `is rightfully a menial, of almost miraculous cunning, but no intelligence; it needs to be strongly governed, or it will destroy the economy of the household. Only a community of tough conservative habit can master it.