Quotes & Sayings About Happiness At Work

If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people. — Karl Marx

Further, the constitution of our consciousness is the ever present and lasting element in all we do or suffer; our individuality is persistently at work, more or less, at every moment of our life: all other influences are temporal, incidental, fleeting, and subject to every kind of chance and change. This is why Aristotle says: It is not wealth but character that lasts.
And just for the same reason we can more easily bear a misfortune which comes to us entirely from without, than one which we have drawn upon ourselves; for fortune may always change, but not character. Therefore, subjective blessings - a noble nature, a capable head, a joyful temperament, bright spirits, a well-constituted, perfectly sound physique, in a word, mens sana in corpore sano, are the first and most important elements in happiness; so that we should be more intent on promoting and preserving such qualities than on the possession of external wealth and external honor. — Arthur Schopenhauer

ReThink culture, because it is the foundation of all strategic success. — Tony Dovale

On hers . . . a mess, the teacher had said, but she had already heard the other children exclaim over what she could see for herself. Magnificence, glory, all the things they weren't supposed to have. She woke up with tears still wet on her cheeks, and blinked them out of her eyes. Something vividly red swung in and out of view at the window. Dayvine trumpets, in the breeze - the vine on that side of the house must have grown a foot overnight. Barto had insisted on keeping the house free of vines; she lay there and felt a deep happiness work out from her bones at the sight of those flowers dancing in the sunlight. — Elizabeth Moon

Magazines devoted to the religion of success appear as Makers of America. They mean just about that when they preach evolution, progress, prosperity, being constructive, the American way of doing things. It is easy to laugh, but, in fact, they are using a very great pattern of human endeavor. For one thing it adopts an impersonal criterion; for another it adopts an earthly criterion; for a third it is habituating men to think quantitatively. To be sure the idea confuses excellence with size, happiness with speed, and human nature with contraption. Yet the same motives are at work which have ever actuated any moral code, or ever will. The desire fir the biggest, the fastest, the highest, or if you are a maker of wristwatches or microscopes the smallest; the love in short of the superlative and the "peerless," is in essence and possibility a noble passion. — Walter Lippmann

Happiness is a habit, it isn't something that comes with new clothes. It's something you have to work at. So, start smiling and get out and take some exercise — John Crace

At the risk, then, of being shunned by some of my gloomier peers, I venture to tell you that writers work like demons, suffer greatly, and are also happy, in unmistakable ways, some of the time. If we had no knowledge of happiness, our novels wouldn't sufficiently resemble real life. Some of us are even made a little bit happy, on occasion, by the writing process itself. I mean, really, if there wasn't some sort of enjoyment to be derived, would any of us keep doing it? — Michael Cunningham

It is not only my laboratory and my place of work but also my home, so that on the 30th October I was able to share my happiness immediately with my students and collaborators and, at the same time, with my wife and family. — George Porter

People say you make your best work when you're in despair and all that, and at your lowest - but for me, I think happiness makes you positive, and I think that's a good creative place to write from. — Paul Weller

Happiness at work is not about eliminating all the bad stuff from your job. It's about being happy at work even though some of these bad things are present. It's about building your skills and your energy to fix the problems, and to create more and more positive experiences at work. — Alexander Kjerulf

A writer can live by his writing. If not so luxuriously as by other trades, then less luxuriously. The nature of the work he does all day will more affect his happiness than the quality of his dinner at night. Whatever be your calling, and however much it brings you in the year, you could still, you know, get more by cheating. We all suffer ourselves to be too much concerned about a little poverty; but such considerations should not move us in the choice of that which is to be the business and justification of so great a portion of our lives; and like the missionary, the patriot, or the philosopher, we should all choose that poor and brave career in which we can do the most and best for mankind. — Robert Louis Stevenson

In all of my looking at happiness, one thing I noticed right away is that the opposite of happiness isn't unhappiness or even depression, it's anxiety. It is something that can constantly block our happiness, or our chance to reach that sort of meditative state in our work or our home lives. — Ariel Gore

I suspect that the happiest people you know are the ones who work at being kind, helpful and reliable - and happiness sneaks into their lives while they are busy doing those things. It is a by-product, never a primary goal. — Harold S. Kushner

The final moment of success is often no more thrilling than taking off a heavy backpack at the end of a long hike. If you went on the hike only to feel that pleasure, you are a fool. Yet people sometimes do just this. They work hard at a task and expect some special euphoria at the end. But when they achieve success and find only moderate and short-lived pleasure, they ask is that all there is? They devalue their accomplishments as a striving after wind. We can call this the progress principle: Pleasure comes more from making progress toward goals than from achieving them. — Jonathan Haidt

The most important trick to be happy is to realize that happiness is a choice that you make and a skill that you develop. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. It's just like building muscles. — Timothy Ferriss

By sealing our work with our blood, we may see at least the bright dawn of universal happiness. — Maximilien Robespierre

Happiness being surrounded by good friends and family at a BBQ. — Richie Norton

We stopped to browse in the cases, and now that William - with his new glasses on his nose - could linger and read the books, at every title he discovered he let out exclamations of happiness, either because he knew the work, or because he had been seeking it for a long time, or finally because he had never heard it mentioned and was highly excited and titillated. In short, for him every book was like a fabulous animal that he was meeting in a strange land. — Umberto Eco

The lovely paradox of willing compliance with what an ancient prophet called "the great plan of happiness," is that conformity to law breeds both freedom and individualism. We may think a leaping child, in the euphoria of his imagination, enjoys unfettered freedom when he tells us he is going to land on the moon. But the rocket scientist hard at work in the laboratory, enmeshed in formulae and equations she has labored to master, and slaving away in perfect conformity with the laws of physics, is the one with true freedom: for she will land on the moon; the boy will not. — Terryl L. Givens

It's about living in the moment and appreciating the smallest things. Surrounding yourself with the things that inspire you and letting go of the obsessions that want to take over your mind. It is a daily struggle sometimes and hard work but happiness begins with your own attitude and how you look at the world. — Gretchen Rubin

In my ninety-plus years, I have learned a secret. I have learned that when good men and good women face challenges with optimism, things will always work out! Truly, things always work out! Despite how difficult circumstances may look at the moment, those who have faith and move forward with a happy spirit will find that things always work out. — Gordon B. Hinckley

Giovanni had awakened an itch, had released a gnaw in me. I realized it one afternoon, when I was taking him to work via the Boulevard Montparnasse. We had bought a kilo of cherries and we were eating them as we walked along. We were both insufferably childish and high-spirited that afternoon and the spectacle we presented, two grown men jostling each other on the wide sidewalk and aiming the cherry pits, as though they were spitballs, into each other's faces, must have been outrageous. And I realized that such childishness was fantastic at my age and the happiness out of which it sprang yet more so; for that moment I really loved Giovanni, who had never seemed more beautiful than he was that afternoon. — James Baldwin

We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm. If we strive to be happy by filling all the silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life's leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth. — Thomas Merton

I'm by no means an expert at giving advice on depression, but I would say that a lot of my show is about making the decision to be happy. We all think that happiness is something that just falls into our lap. But it's something you have to really work on. — Lilly Singh

Get up and move at work today! Don't spend the whole day on your butt. Take a walk. Get some exercise. Play a game. Move! — Alexander Kjerulf

Work does not "give" dignity to our lives through the excellence or happiness it fosters. The dignity of work comes less from its ideal promise than from the way we show, through it, a determination to endure what is difficult for the sake of discharging our responsibilities and contributing to society. It is less the source of our happiness than the illustration that we deserve happiness. Through work we reveal our tough minded commitment in the face of conditions that cannot bend exactly to our will. When this commitment brings a partial triumph over an unaccommodating world, work illuminates something of the dignity that resides in us independent of the character of our work. It expresses a kind of defiance, for we willfully ignore the ultimate resistance of a world we yet try to shape. Thus work reveals, though it cannot produce, the dignity of those who take their condition to be at least partly of their own making. — Russell Muirhead

As Christians, we needn't be at all ashamed of some impatience, longing, opposition to what is unnatural, and our full share of desire for freedom, earthly happiness, and opportunity for effective work. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Rest assured that if you work every day at your art, using the materials nearest at hand, you will gradually discover such beauty in them that they will fill you with happiness. — John F. Carlson

Yet even if their advice were to work, what would be the result afterward in the unlikely event that one did turn into a slim, well-loved, powerful millionaire? Usually what happens is that the person finds himself back at square one, with a new list of wishes, just as dissatisfied as before. What would really satisfy people is not getting slim or rich, but feeling good about their lives. In the quest for happiness, partial solutions don't work. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Happiness is not just a state of mind .You have to work at it. — Klaas Kalma

Prescription for Life-long Happiness: Purpose enough for satisfaction; Work enough for sustenance; Sanity enough to know when to play and rest; Wealth enough for basic needs; Affection enough to like many and love a few; Self-respect enough to love yourself; Charity enough to give to others in need; Courage enough to face difficulties; Creativity enough to solve problems; Humor enough to laugh at will; Hope enough to expect an interesting tomorrow; Gratitude enough to appreciate what you have; Health enough to enjoy life for all its worth. — Ernie J Zelinski

When we bring deep awareness to whatever's bothering us, the same things might be happening, but we are able to relate to them differently. — Sharon Salzberg

Just as compassion is the wish that all sentient beings be free of suffering, loving-kindness is the wish that all may enjoy happiness. As with compassion, when cultivating loving-kindness it is important to start by taking a specific individual as a focus of our meditation, and we then extend the scope of our concern further and further, to eventually encompass and embrace all sentient beings. Again, we begin by taking a neutral person, a person who inspires no strong feelings in us, as our object of meditation. We then extend this meditation to individual friends and family members and, ultimately, our particular enemies.
We must use a real individual as the focus of our meditation, and then enhance our compassion and loving-kindness toward that person so that we can really experience compassion and loving-kindness toward others. We work on one person at a time. — Dalai Lama XIV

Welfare was not to be gauged in purely financial terms, or merely by reference to physical comfort. Welfare, happiness, well-being must embrace the philosophical concept of the good life. She listed some relevant ingredients, goals towards which a child might grow. Economic and moral freedom, virtue, compassion and altruism, satisfying work through engagement with demanding tasks, a flourishing network of personal relationships, earning the esteem of others, pursuing larger meanings to one's existence, and having at the center of one's life one or a small number of significant relations defined above all by love. — Ian McEwan

See yourself as the perfect creation that you are, but at the same time, recognize with sincere honesty, the areas of your life that are out of balance and get to work to improve and grow. — Dashama Konah Gordon

There are three fundamentals for human happiness - love and faith, and work which will produce at least a minimum of material security. These things must be made possible for all human beings, men and women alike. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Practice being happy. Work at it. It's a new role, I realize, but you'll get it. The auditions will be coming up very soon. So get on top of it. I'm sure you will get the part. — Frederick Lenz

Your life work is a statement of Who You Are. If it is not, then why are you doing it? Do you imagine that you have to? You don't have to do anything. If "man who supports his family, at all costs, even his own happiness" is Who You Are, then love your work, because it is facilitating your creation of a living statement of Self. If "woman who works at job she hates in order to meet responsibilities as she sees them" is Who You Are, then love, love, love your job, for it totally supports your Self image, your Self concept. Everyone can love everything the moment they understand what they are doing, and why. No one does anything he doesn't want to do. — Neale Donald Walsch

Time creates Let time work at your projects. — Rossana Condoleo

At first happiness might seem like just desserts for biological fitness (more accurately, the states that would have led to fitness in the environment in which we evolved). We are happier when we are healthy, well-fed, comfortable, safe, prosperous, knowledgeable, respected, non-celibate, and loved. Compared to their opposites, these objects of striving are conducive to reproduction. The function of happiness would be to mobilize the mind to seek the keys to Darwinian fitness. When we are unhappy, we work for the things that make us happy; when we are happy, we keep the status quo. The problem is, how much fitness is worth striving for? — Steven Pinker

Most people chase success at work, thinking that will make them happy. The truth is that happiness at work will make you successful. — Alexander Kjerulf

Happiness is not a reward. It's a consequence. You have to work at it every day. — Norah Vincent

You orchestrate happiness, Dolores - you work at it. You don't catch it as it hurls toward you like a football — Wally Lamb

Are you happy?"
"I am content."
"What is the difference?"
"Between happiness and contentment? Ah, there you have me. It is not easy to put into words. Contentment is a state of mind and body when the two work in harmony, and there is no friction. The mind is at peace, and the body also. The two are sufficient to themselves. Happiness is elusive
coming perhaps once in a life-time
and approaching ecstasy."
"Not a continuous thing, like contentment?"
"No, not a continuous thing. But there are, after all, degrees of happiness. — Daphne Du Maurier

I was honest with her."
"You gave her your version-or mine?"
She flushed with angry color. How short that truce was! He expected her to play the role of the happy bride when he couldn't keep his insults to himself?
"I gave her facts,not assumptions. And this isn't going to work if you're going to continue to deliberately provoke me at every turn!"
He raked an exasperated hand through his long hair. "I'm sorry,that was unintentional. I will make every effort to guard my tongue in mixed company."
She narrowed her eyes on him, guessing, "But not when we're alone?"
"The pretense is for others, not ourselves. Neither of us is delusional."
"Of course not,far be it for me to think there's any reality in this. But if you think I can portray genuine smiles and bubbly happiness while around others when I'm so furious that I'm plotting your demise,well, think again! — Johanna Lindsey

And I sort of look at us as two of the luckiest guys [Bill Gates the other] on the planet because we found what we loved to do and we were at the right place at the right time and we've gotten to go to work every day with super bright people for 30 years and do what we love doing. — Steve Jobs

His life had seemed horrible when it was measured by its happiness, but now he seemed to gather strength as he realised that it might be measured by something else. Happiness mattered as little as pain. They came in, both of them, as all the other details of his life came in, to the elaboration of the design. He seemed for an instant to stand above the accidents of his existence, and he felt that they could not affect him again as they had done before. Whatever happened to him now would be one more motive to add to the complexity of the pattern, and when the end approached he would rejoice in its completion. It would be a work of art, and it would be none the less beautiful because he alone knew of its existence, and with his death it would at once cease to be.
Philip was happy. — W. Somerset Maugham

You make a difference for every single person you come into contact with at work. Is that difference for the better or worse? — Alexander Kjerulf

We have to work at decolonizing our mentality and achieving happiness within the limits of sacrifice we should be willing to make. We have to recondition our people to accept themselves as they are, to not be ashamed of their real situation, to be satisfied with it, to glory in it, even — Thomas Sankara

You can't be happy at work every day. No matter how much you love your job, there are still going to be bad days. And that's cool - it's always OK to have a bad day at work. — Alexander Kjerulf

Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy - a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind's fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions. — Ayn Rand

Happiness is a mysterious concept. It seems to work best as futurity: at that point I will be happy, et cetera. I feel like I experience small pieces of joy day to day. — Rachel Kushner

Law students are famous for busting their buns to make high grades, sometimes at the expense of health and relationships, thinking, 'Later I'll be happy, because the American dream will be mine,' " said Lawrence S. Krieger, a law professor at Florida State University and an author of the study. "Nice, except it doesn't work." The problem with the more prestigious jobs, said Mr. Krieger, is that they do not provide feelings of competence, autonomy or connection to others - three pillars of self-determination theory, the psychological model of human happiness on which the study was based. Public-service jobs do. — Anonymous

To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net [the matrix]. It is not hard to do so, as the net is full of holes. Look at the net and its many contradictions. You do and undo at every step. You want peace, love and happiness, and work hard to create pain, hatred and war. You want longevity and you overeat. You want friendship and you exploit. See your net as made of such contradictions and remove them - your very seeing them will make them go away. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

We may know that the work we continue to put off doing will be bad. Worse, however, is the work we never do. A work that's finished is at least finished. It may be poor, but it exists, like the miserable plant in the lone flowerpot of my neighbour who's crippled. That plant is her happiness, and sometimes it's even mine. What I write, bad as it is, may provide some hurt or sad soul a few moments of distraction from something worse. That's enough for me, or it isn't enough, but it serves some purpose, and so it is with all of life. — Fernando Pessoa

A big heavy phrase is easier to handle if it comes at the end, when your work assembling the overarching phrase is done and nothing else is on you mind. (It's another version of the advice to prefer right-branching trees over left-branching and center-embedded ones.) Light-before-heavy is one of the oldest principles in linguistics, having been discovered in the fourth century BCE by the Sanskrit grammarian Panini. It often guides the intuitions of writers when they have to choose an order for items in a list, as in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle; and Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! — Steven Pinker

Ugliness, squalor are breeding grounds for revolution. Beauty is conducive to tranquillity, happiness. Beautifying of homes and places of worship began with the dawn of civilization. Beautifying of workplaces is only in its infancy. Yet, since men normally spend more than half of their waking hours at work, surely it is important that adequate attention be devoted to elevating their working environment, whether office or factory, foundry or machine shop, mine or warehouse. Beautiful surroundings subtly encourage beautiful living. Drab surroundings, bad air, bad light, evoke bad reactions. — B.C. Forbes

Therein lay the root of the problem.
Sharing was not in his nature, but nature would have to adapt. Ali
needed this kid. Finn was a modern day gunslinger. Deep down he
fucking hated it, but his girl needed this one nice and close.
Preferably wrapped around her finger and deeply concerned about
her health and happiness.Every goddamn minute of every goddamn day would be best.
Daniel did not want to share her. Not with the kid, not with anyone,
not even a little. He knew it would work, this insane idea of going
halves, he just didn't want it to. He had only recently found her and
she was his. But he couldn't keep her safe on his own, a fact that bit
deep and hard and hung on as a pit bul would. How the hell to
convince her? What Ali wanted and what would keep her safe and
alive would likely be at odds in this case. She'd accused him of
being pushy a time or two. His girl had no real idea how far he'd go
to protect her. — Kylie Scott

At 83, if I were enjoying life any more I couldn't stand it! My fast-walks, gym work, mountain hiking and interplay long-distance with my family are the basis of my happiness. My writings reflect my work and life experiences, education and research and covers about 75 years. — Jerry Lemonds

We were so busy thinking about protecting ourselves that we didn't think about the happiness of anyone else who might become involved with us. As a result, our rules focused on our own relationship. We thought that if we preserved the relationship between the two of us, the "core relationship," we were doing the right thing. We never considered that rules that worked for us might not work for the other people we would come to love, and we certainly never looked at our relationship from their perspective. — Franklin Veaux

We are lost; waiting tables at Denny's or forgetting ourselves stripping on poles, or working at a coffee shop misplaced in history or slowly dying on the inside as a secretary or landscaping lawns out of desperation working jobs with no futures, like bartending. The next generation of teachers, historians, lawyers, police officers and civil engineers work at this bar because the money can not be passed up, when you're drowning in debt. The world brings us to our knees and we service it because it nourishes us just enough to get by. We are tired and we don't understand why. We, the over educated searching for happiness at the bottom of the bottle. — Matthew Zorich

The biographies of great artists make it abundantly clear that the creative urge is often so imperious that it battens on their humanity and yokes everything to the service of the work, even at the cost of health and ordinary human happiness. The unborn work in the psyche of the artist is a force of nature that achieves its end either with tyrannical might or with the subtle cunning of nature herself, quite regardless of the personal fate of the man who is its vehicle. — Carl Jung

You will spend more of your waking hours at work than anything else. If that time doesn't make you happy it's a huge waste of life. — Alexander Kjerulf

When men and women across the country reported how happy they felt, researchers found that jugglers were happier than others. By and large, the more roles, the greater the happiness. Parents were happier than nonparents, and workers were happier than nonworkers. Married people were much happier than unmarried people. Married people were generally at the top of the emotional totem pole. — Faye J Crosby

Apart from this ultimate hope, the created world would be a dungeon of despair for God's children. But faith animates our lives with an eschatological anticipation of the presence and glory of Christ. We will not find our full and permanent happiness here. Nor will we find Christian joy automatically, like a daily newspaper at the door. God intends for us to find joy kinetically, in action, as we work out our faith with fear and trembling, as we fight the good fight of faith, as we worship, fellowship, and engage in all the various dynamics of the Christian life together.62 But even in this, our hope of eternal joy sobers our expectations for the joy we can expect to experience in this life. — Tony Reinke

I found that when women were able to act in line with their natural inclinations and ambitions
whether to work or stay at home
they were generally happy, and generally felt that their children were happy too. Whereas those whose natural inclinations and ambitions had been thwarted
whether they were working or stay-at-home moms
were sure that they and their kids would be better off if they changed course, and either went to work or went home. The morality of the situation
whether they felt it was good or bad for their chidlren
derived, not from some external sense of the morality of their "choices," but from the amount of happiness generated by any given arrangement. — Judith Warner

And besides, we're not really all that different. Although I think I'm a little more ... "
"What?"
"Optimistic." She nudged him with her shoulder. "You're Eeyore."
He blinked. "You think I'm Eeyore?"
"You tell me. I take my empty glass and try to fill it up with what happiness I can find. Friends, family, my work ... And then there's you."
He raised a brow. "Me."
She nudged him again, looking playful and damn sexy while she was at it. It was the short shorts with the boots, he decided. Or everything. It was everything.
"You take that empty glass," she said, happily analyzing him. "And you wonder what the heck to do with it. You don't need the glass, you don't have time for the glass. Hell, you'll just drink from a spigot if you get thirsty. And in any case, there's probably another one up the road if that one runs out, so - — Jill Shalvis

Contentment is a state of mind and body when the two work in harmony, and there is no friction. The mind is at peace, and the body also. The two are sufficient to themselves. Happiness is elusive
coming perhaps once in a life-time
and approaching ectasy. — Daphne Du Maurier

However powerful our technology and complex our corporations, the most remarkable feature of the modern working world may in the end be internal, consisting in an aspect of our mentalities: in the widely held belief that our work should make us happy. All societies have had work at their centre; ours is the first to suggest that it could be something more than a punishment or a penance. Ours is the first to imply that we should seek to work even in the absence of a financial imperative. — Alain De Botton

Everyone is tied down in some way. Work, family, medical problems. It's what you make of it. That's why it's so important to surround yourself with the things that make you happy. If you have a bad day at work but get to come home to a woman you love or your favorite hobby, the rest doesn't matter as much. — Nichole Chase

Remember: Research shows that emotions are contagious. How will you infect others at work today? — Alexander Kjerulf

Last year, [Pope Francis] was asked about his secret to happiness. He said slow down. Take time off. Live and let live. Don't proselytize. Work for peace. Work at a job that offers basic human dignity. Don't hold on to negative feelings. Move calmly through life. Enjoy art, books and playfulness. — Timothy Egan

When people feel that the work environment is safe, optimistic, and yes, joyful, they are more likely to contribute their best. Quite simply it feels good when you're doing your best work. As it turns out, joy isn't just about finding happiness, but also about playing; play at work is useful when creativity and innovation are needed. The usefulness of creativity and innovation to the workplace is linked to increasing employees' knowledge and skills.21 — Shawn Murphy

If we are to create a decent society, a just society, a wise and prosperous society, a society where children can learn for the love of learning and people can work for the love of work, then that ids what we must believe. We don't have to love our neighbors as ourselves, but we need to love our neighbor's children as our own. We have tried aristocracy. We have tried meritocracy. Now it's time to try democracy."

"It comes to this: the elite have purchased self-perpetuation at the price of their children's happiness. Th e more hoops kids have to jump through, the more it costs to get them through them and the fewer families can do it. But the more they have to jump through, the more miserable they are. — William Deresiewicz

You know how when you step on court your coach is like "go go go!"? And all throughout you just keep telling yourself to hit harder and harder and keep at it? You know how much you treasure those five-minute timeouts? You know how good you feel at the end of a session? You know how you're glad you're tired? No pills, no shots, just plain energy. I want to work like that. Whether I have to write ten thousand words or send five hundred emails, brainstorm for hours at a time, I want to have that energy. To keep fighting. To know it's all worth it.
Oh, yeah. That's my perfect day. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

Often we imagine that we will work hard until we arrive at some distant goal, and then we will be happy. This is a delusion. Happiness is the result of a life lived with purpose. Happiness is not an objective. It is the movement of life itself, a process, and an activity. It arises from curiosity and discovery. Seek pleasure and you will quickly discover the shortest path to suffering. Other people, friends, brothers, sisters, neighbors, spouses, even your mother and I are not responsible for your happiness. Your life is your responsibility, and you always have the choice to do your best. Doing your best will bring happiness. Do not be overconcerned with avoiding pain or seeking pleasure. If you are concentrating on the results of your actions, you are not dedicated to your task. — Ethan Hawke

The path to happiness at work starts with a simple decision: You must want to be happy. If you don't commit to being happy at work, you won't be. You won't make the choices that make you happy. You won't take the actions needed to get there. You won't change the things that need to change. — Alexander Kjerulf

Happy we were then, for we had a good house, and good food, and good work. There was nothing to do outside at night, except chapel, or choir, or penny-readings, sometimes. But even so, we always found plenty to do until bedtime, for if we were not studying or reading, then we were making something out back, or over the mountain singing somewhere. I can remember no time when there was not plenty to be done.
I wonder what has happened in fifty years to change it all ... But when people stop being friends with their mother and fathers, and itching to be out of the house, and going mad for other things to do, I cannot think. It is like an asthma, that comes on a man quickly. He has no notion how he had it, but there it is, and nothing can cure it. — Richard Llewellyn

When you have two people who love each other, are happy and gay and really good work is being done by one or both of them, people are drawn to them as surely as migrating birds are drawn at night to a powerful beacon. If the two people were as solidly constructed as the beacon there would be little damage except to the birds. Those who attract people by their happiness and their performance are usually inexperienced. They do not know how not to be overrun and how to go away. They do not always learn about the good, the attractive, the charming, the soon-beloved, the generous, the understanding rich who have no bad qualities and who give each day the quality of a festival and who, when they have passed and taken the nourishment they needed, leave everything deader than the roots of any grass Attila's horses' hooves have ever scoured. — Ernest Hemingway,

The secret to happiness is to be working at your passion. If you want to be miserable, lead a desperate life like everybody else where they drag their asses to work everyday because they hate their job. — Yvon Chouinard

If people are like plants, what are the conditions we need to flourish? In the happiness formula from chapter 5, H(appiness) = S(etpoint) + C(onditions) + V(oluntary activities), what exactly is C? The biggest part of C, as I said in chapter 6, is love. No man, woman, or child is an island. We are ultrasocial creatures, and we can't be happy without having friends and secure attachments to other people. The second most important part of C is having and pursuing the right goals, in order to create states of flow and engagement. In the modern world, people can find goals and flow in many settings, but most people find most of their flow at work. — Jonathan Haidt

Study then, but study first that which will most help you to help others. Work patiently at your studies, not that men may think you wise, not even that you may have the happiness of being wise, but because only the wise man can be wisely helpful. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you slave away every day at a job you hate and come home drained and frustrated, what is that teaching your kids? — Alexander Kjerulf

In the broader sense, work is the means to achieve happiness, prosperity. and salvation. When work and duty and joy are commingled, then man is at his best. — J. Richard Clarke

Some people might think that the smartest way to guarantee their own well-being is to isolate themselves from others and to work hard at their own happiness, without consideration for what other people are experiencing. They probably assume that if everybody did that, we'd all be happy. But the result would be exactly the opposite: instead of being happy, they would be torn between hope and fear, make their own lives miserable, and ruin the lives of the people around them too. — Matthieu Ricard

The love of truth, virtue, and the happiness of mankind are specious pretexts, but not the inward principles that set divines at work; else why should they affect to abuse human reason, to disparage natural religion, to traduce the philosophers as they universally do? — George Berkeley

There comes to everyone a turning point in their lives, M. Poirot. They stand at the crossroads and have to decide. My profession interests me enormously; it is a sorrow - a very great sorrow - to abandon it. But there are other claims. There is, M. Poirot, the happiness of a human being. — Agatha Christie

[ ... ] Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not last; even if, by some miracle, it were to last a whole lifetime, it would still be incomplete. Perhaps, in this insatiable need for perpetuation, we should better understand human suffering, if we knew that it was eternal. It appears that great minds are, sometimes, less horrified by suffering than by the fact that it does not endure. In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do not even have that consolation, and our worst agonies come to an end one day. One morning, after many dark nights of despair, an irrepressible longing to live will announce to us the fact that all is finished and that suffering has no more meaning than happiness. — Albert Camus

Still, the frequent absence of happiness is what keeps us pursuing it, and thus makes us productive."10 This is a curious notion of productivity - at once overtly political and yet presented innocently enough, as if there were only one possible meaning of "productivity." This perspective on life incorporates the Protestant work ethic (that "productivity" is what makes an animal "effective") and echoes the Old Testament notion that life must be endured, not enjoyed. These assumptions are embedded throughout the literature of evolutionary psychology. Ethologist/primatologist Frans de Waal, one of the more open-minded philosophers of human nature, calls this Calvinist sociobiology. — Christopher Ryan

See, happiness at work is an emotion. It comes from inside of you, and like all other emotions it is difficult to define, but inescapable once it's present. Or not present. Can you define love? Poets have tried for thousands of years and aren't getting much closer. But when you're feeling love, you're acutely aware of it, even though you have no formal definition. — Alexander Kjerulf

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. — Robert F. Kennedy

As one woman told me, "When I decided to come in to work happy, everybody around me became happy." This woman had decided to quit a job she hated, and on the last day of her two weeks' notice, she woke up happy. At the end of the day, she noticed that everybody around her was happy, too- so she didn't quit after all. She decided to come to work happy instead. Two years later, she's still on the job, radiating happiness and love. — Bernie Siegel

Sometime, Mrs. Truitt, we work very hard at something, we exhaust ourselves to accomplish something which seems vital to us." He chose his words with care. "Our best hope for happiness. And sometimes we find that thing, only to find it has simply not been worth the effort. — Robert Goolrick

As a general rule, man strives to avoid labor. Love for work is not at all an inborn characteristic: it is created by economic pressure and social education. One may even say that man is a fairly lazy animal. It is on this quality, in reality, that is founded to a considerable extent all human progress; because if man did not strive to expend his energy economically, did not seek to receive the largest possible quantity of products in return for a small quantity of energy, there would have been no technical development or social culture. — Leon Trotsky

even when women can imagine changes that might increase their productivity at work, their happiness at home, or their overall contentment with their lives, their suppressed sense of entitlement creates real barriers to their asking. Because they're not dissatisfied with what they have and not sure they deserve more, women often settle for less. — Linda Babcock

Lie Test: Do you want to check if your present role is a dream job? The following thought should answer your dilemma - "If you are truly involved in your tasks at work, eight hours can make you feel few minutes; otherwise one would feel few minutes as eight hours" Your mind can never lie! What did your test telling you? — Santosh Avvannavar

Life is messy though, you know? Sometimes it's worth it to jump in and get your hands dirty. Happiness and contentment don't come along very often, so when they do, you need to hold on with everything you've got. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, but at least you can say you tried. — Cate Ashwood

The sense of a small courageous community barely existing above the desert of trees, hemmed in by a sun too fierce to work under and a darkness filled with evil spirits - love was an arm round the neck, a cramped embrace in the smoke, wealth a little pile of palm-nuts, old age sores and leprosy, religion a few stones in the centre of the village where the dead chiefs lay, a grove of trees where the rice birds, like yellow and green canaries, built their nests, a man in a mask with raffia skirts dancing at burials. This never varied, only their kindness to strangers, the extent of their poverty and the immediacy of their terrors. Their laughter and their happiness seemed the most courageous things in nature — Graham Greene

Human perfection and technical perfection are incompatible. If we strive for one, we must sacrifice the other: there is, in any case, a parting of the ways. Whoever realises this will do cleaner work one way or the other.
Technical perfection strives towards the calculable, human perfection towards the incalculable. Perfect mechanisms - around which, therefore, stands an uncanny but fascinating halo of brilliance - evoke both fear and Titanic pride which will be humbled not by insight but only by catastrophe.
The fear and enthusiasm we experience at the sight of perfect mechanisms are in exact contrast to the happiness we feel at the sight of a perfect work of art. We sense an attack on our integrity, on our wholeness. That arms and legs are lost or harmed is not yet the greatest danger. — Ernst Junger

That pretty much describes the life of a foreign man living in Bangkok. Except instead of pressing a lever, he's digging into his wallet for a few more baht. The same principle is at work, though. The same mindless obedience to their pleasure centers. Yet if pleasure were the path to happiness then the farang, the foreigner, in Thailand would achieve bliss, and so would the Canadian rats. Yet neither has. Happiness is more than animal pleasure. — Eric Weiner