If there is one thing all successful people have in common, it is relentless hard work and motivation.
You don’t need to love your job, but you need to be motivated to always do your best.
This is a curated sub-category. Check out our full collection of inspirational quotes.
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.Steve Jobs
We work to become, not to acquire.Elbert Hubbard
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.Confucius
Trust not what inspires other members of society to choose a career. Trust what inspires you.Ernie J. Zelinski
Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.Booker T. Washington
Your ability to discipline yourself to set clear goals, and then to work toward them every day, will do more to guarantee your success than any other single factor.Brian Tracy
Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.J.M. Barrie
To be successful, the first thing to do is fall in love with your work.Sister Mary Lauretta
Think not of yourself as the architect of your career but as the sculptor. Expect to have to do a lot of hard hammering and chiseling and scraping and polishing.B.C. Forbes
Nothing will work unless you do.Maya Angelou
When you play, play hard; when you work, don’t play at all.Theodore Roosevelt
If there is no wind, row.Latin proverb
The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.Barrack Obama
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.Benjamin Franklin
Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.Napoleon Hill
No man needs sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.Theodore Roosevelt
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.Henry David Thoreau
If you care about what you do and work hard at it, there isn’t anything you can’t do if you want to.Jim Henson
To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.Pearl S. Buck
Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood . . . Make big plans; aim high in hope and work.Daniel Burnham
All happiness depends on courage and work.Honoré de Balzac
Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.David McCollough
This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.Alan Wilson Watts
The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.Elbert Hubbard
Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it.Madeleine L’Engle
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.Gustave Flaubert
Getting fired is nature’s way to telling you that you had the wrong job in the first place.Hal Lancaster
Work without love is slavery.Mother Teresa
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.Peter Drucker
Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.Charles J. Sykes
Never work just for money or for power. They won’t save your soul or help you sleep at night.Marian Wright Edelman
If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.Bruce Lee
You’re blessed if you have the strength to work.Mahalia Jackson
Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.Ralph Waldo Emerson
If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.Martin Luther King Jr.
When he worked, he really worked. But when he played, he really PLAYED.Dr. Seuss
You can’t rest on your laurels. Your own body of work is yet to come.Barrack Obama
We often miss opportunity because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work.Thomas A. Edison
Work is not man’s punishment. It is his reward and his strength and his pleasure.George Sand
Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.Gautama Buddha
I’d rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.George Burns
No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.Martin Luther King Jr.
Work isn’t to make money; you work to justify life.Marc Chagall
Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds.Gordon B. Hinckley
All things are difficult before they are easy.Thomas Fuller
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.Aristotle
It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.Henry Ford
The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.Harry Golden
Earning happiness means doing good and working, not speculating and being lazy. Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction.Anne Frank
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.Richard Bach
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.Mary Oliver
The only way to enjoy anything in this life is to earn it first.Ginger Rogers
Hard work is painful when life is devoid of purpose. But when you live for something greater than yourself and the gratification of your own ego, then hard work becomes a labor of love.Steve Pavlina
We have too many people who live without working, and we have altogether too many people who work without living.Charles Reynold Brown
You should not confuse your career with your life.Dave Barry
Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.Bette Davis
Every noble work is at first impossible.Thomas Carlyle
In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.Lao Tzu
I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true – hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.Ray Bradbury
The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.Émile Zola
Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.Horace
Nobody can think straight who does not work. Idleness warps the mind.Henry Ford
You do your best work if you do a job that makes you happy.Bob Ross
Some people dream of success… while others wake up and work hard at it.Unknown
The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.Vincent Lombardi