17 Inspiring Quotes About Loving Your Work

“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.”

Steve Jobs

“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.”

Maya Angelou

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bounds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”

Patanjali

“There comes a time when you ought to start doing what you want. Take a job that you love. You will jump out of bed in the morning. I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don’t like because you think it will look good on your resume. Isn’t that a little like saving up sex for your old age?”

Warren Buffet

“The secret of joy in work is contained in one word – excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.”

Pearl S. Buck

“I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

Steve Jobs

“Yes, I’ve made a great deal of dough from my fiction, but I never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it … I have written because it fulfilled me. Maybe it paid off the mortgage on the house and got the kids through college, but those things were on the side—I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for the joy, you can do it forever.”

Stephen King

“Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.”

Ella Fitzgerald

“Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.”

Rumi

“If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures. Sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I think the foremost quality – there’s no success without it – is really loving what you do. If you love it, you do it well, and there’s no success if you don’t do well what you’re working at.”

Malcolm Forbes

“Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.”

Kahlil Gibran

“I think people who are creative are the luckiest people on earth. I know that there are no shortcuts, but you must keep your faith in something Greater than You, and keep doing what you love. Do what you love, and you will find the way to get it out to the world.”

Judy Collins

“Paul and I, we never thought that we would make much money out of the thing. We just loved writing software.”

Bill Gates

“The law of work seems unfair, but nothing can change it; the more enjoyment you get out of your work, the more money you will make.”

Mark Twain

“The people who make it to the top – whether they’re musicians, or great chefs, or corporate honchos – are addicted to their calling … [they] are the ones who’d be doing whatever it is they love, even if they weren’t being paid.”

Quincy Jones

“Never continue in a job you don’t enjoy. If you’re happy in what you’re doing, you’ll like yourself, you’ll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined.”

Johnny Carson

There are 51 brilliant comments

  1. very inspiring, so helpful, and timely..thank you so much michael. hope you can inspire and motivate more people

  2. Will use this to motivate my customer service staff, employed in Local Government where they have the best rate of pay and conditions, but portray to other staff they are hard done by within the organisation.

  3. Thanks for this compliation of inspiring quotes on doing what you love. It was a pleasure reading it!

  4. We must decide what is wisdom, we are all human, we all have a life of ups and downs, there is no such thing as a ‘master’, only people who may help each other. This is what ive learned from my life, maybe it will strike a chord with someone

  5. Thanks! I came across this as I was visiting my family for a week. Talk about taking baby steps! Since January I have been taking small steps to the goal of starting my own Life Purpose Coaching® business. While working on my website content, my family said to put that ‘work’ away. I thought of the quote about not working a day in your life if you love what you are doing. I believe this will be my first blog post for my new website! Thanks for the inspiration and passion you exude…even over the WWW (world wide web). Blessings to ya!

      1. Hello! I received my coaching certificate from Life Purpose Coaching Centers International with Dr. Katie Brazelton. It has been an amazing journey with God since January. My website is still under contraction but my blog is published about my journey at http://www.steepedinpurpose.com if you are interested. Blessings on your journey and purpose! Thanks for the encouragement!

  6. Beautiful, thanks for sharing!

    As you seem to have some good advise arsenal… What are your thoughts on discovering what is it that one would love doing? Or rather, how to find the energy to pursue whatever it is you love doing.

    I enjoy doing several things, but when I think about really trying to make a living out of them, it all seems so big and scary and hard that it shuts me down… So I just do it as a hobby and have a boring job I really don’t like. Just curious to read your opinion. Thanks 🙂

  7. Thanks for this compilation Michael, but how do you start doing what you want to do when you have no other option but to have that same job, that you are left without an option. 🙁

    1. Thanks for the feedback Michael, and the question. Without knowing more about your specific situation, it’s difficult to offer any targeted suggestions. What I can offer, in general, are a few big questions to ponder and use to inspire further action …

      1. Whatever it is you want to do, what’s your “why” for wanting to do it – why is it important to you, and how does it tie into your long-term, life vision and your core values?

      2. Assuming it is important to you, what are you willing to give up to pursue it?

      3. What’s one action you could take today – and every day after – to begin moving toward doing the work you want to do?

      One other thing … I say this with the utmost respect, and again, I have no idea what your situation is … Still, I have a hard time believing you have no other options. I believe we always have options. They may not be ideal options, or they may be hidden behind a wall of fear and apprehension. But if you live in the modern world, and have access to a computer and internet, you have options.

      Wishing you well.

  8. Hi Michael. When was this published? I’m using the Steve jobs quote in a paper I’m writing and it has to be in MLA format. 2009?? Help?!

  9. Loving your job means loving yourself too. For your work reflects unto everything you do. Thanks for the thoughts!

  10. great article sir…..we learn most when we find enjoyment in our work and time passes unnoticed….

  11. Thanks for the Inspiring Quotes, i really do admire steve jobs.
    i still follow his ways till date.

  12. If you love your job, then it’s not just a job, it becomes a passion, a passion that becomes more satisfying because you get paid for simply doing what you like.

  13. If we choose to grow old with our job, we must know everything about it to survive. This empower us to accomplish everything for the satisfaction of the result. If we are happy with what we do then we are happy with our life.

  14. Bill gates loves to write softwares and i love to doing merchandising… i still dont earn more than $3000 a year… 🙁 but i still love what i am doing…. 😀

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