Quotes & Sayings About Meaningful Work Life

clients, the wider community, and the environment. Said differently, companies are human communities. If we once begin to think of our places of work not as something divorced from the rest of life, but as communities that are a vital dimension of our existence as people, and in fact at the heart of a meaningful life, a fundamentally different idea of how a company should operate enters the picture. — Catherine Bell

I believe that earning your living doing something you enjoy is one of the very best ways to nourish yourself. But even if you are employed at something that is not your ideal work, it is important to find ways to take as much pleasure in it as possible. Living in the present moment can make ordinary activities more interesting and joyful; you may be surprised, if you only look, at what you will find. If you try to stay connected with why you are doing what you are doing, for example, then even the parts of your life that aren't especially interesting can become more meaningful. — Nathaniel Branden

The best defenses against the terrors of existence are the homely comforts of love, work, and family life, which connect us to a world that is independent of our wishes yet responsive to our needs. It is through love and work, as Freud noted in a characteristically pungent remark, that we exchange crippling emotional conflict for ordinary unhappiness. Love and work enable each of us to explore a small corner of the world and to come to accept it on its own terms. But our society tends either to devalue small comforts or else to expect too much of them. Our standards of "creative, meaningful work" are too exalted to survive disappointment. Our ideal of "true romance" puts an impossible burden on personal relationships. We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves. — Christopher Lasch

Simple people with less education, sophistication, social ties, and professional obligations seem in general to have somewhat less difficulty in facing this final crisis than people of affluence who lose a great deal more in terms of material luxuries, comfort, and number of interpersonal relationships. It appears that people who have gone through a life of suffering, hard work, and labor, who have raised their children and been gratified in their work, have shown greater ease in accepting death with peace and dignity compared to those who have been ambitiously controlling their environment, accumulating material goods, and a great number of social relationships but few meaningful interpersonal relationships which would have been available at the end of life. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The important thing is that you find some time every day to "break bread" with those you love most and consistently work at building a richer, more meaningful family life. — Robin S. Sharma

Our ability to detect and measure the passage of time is burdensome. The conception and sensation of time bears down upon all of us. It weighs us down; it compresses our souls. There is a variety of ways to escape the dull passage of time or the fearfulness of our accelerating march towards death. We must choose our mechanisms for dealing with the inexorability of time and our finiteness. We can fill our void with work or pleasure, laughter or pain, and fretfulness or courage. We can seek a sense of purposefulness or acknowledge the meaninglessness of life. We can seek to escape the drudgery and pain of life through alcohol, drugs, or pleasure seeking, or by working to support our families and create artistic testaments to our worldly existence. — Kilroy J. Oldster

For me, the best things in life - meaningful work, meaningful relationships, interesting experiences, good food, sleep, music, ideas, sex, and other basic needs and pleasures - are not, past a certain point, materially improved upon by having a lot of money. — Ray Dalio

If we have any role at all, I think it's the role of optimism, not blind or stupid optimism, but the kind which is meaningful, one that is rather close to that notion of the world which is not perfect, but which can be improved. In other words, we don't just sit and hope that things will work out; we have a role to play to make that come about. — Chinua Achebe

A life without purpose is meaningless — Sunday Adelaja

Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and the author of Man's Search for Meaning, wrote that human beings create meaning in three ways: thought their work, though their relationships, and by how they choose to meet unavoidable suffering. Every life brings hardship and trial, and every life also offers deep possibilities for meaningful work and love ... I've learned that courage and compassion are two sides of the same coin. — Eric Greitens

I have finally figured out the meaning of life: there's no such thing. And that's a beautiful thing, because that means that WE get to choose it ourselves. Life has no meaning besides the meaning you give it. You are indeed the author of your destiny. So why not write a book worth reading? — Dean Bokhari

Make your life a meaningful one — Sunday Adelaja

many gamers have already figured out how to use the immersive power of play to distract themselves from their hunger: a hunger for more satisfying work, for a stronger sense of community, and for a more engaging and meaningful life. — Jane McGonigal

In short, work - and lots of it - is an indispensable component in a meaningful human life. It is a supreme gift from God and one of the main things that gives our lives purpose. But it must play its proper role, subservient to God. It must regularly give way not just to work stoppage for bodily repair but also to joyful reception of the world and of ordinary life. — Timothy Keller

In business, as in life, all that matters is that you do something positive. — Richard Branson

Everything in life that's meaningful takes effort - takes vitality. You have to work at it. And God helps them who help themselves ... help you. — Jack LaLanne

Convert everything around you into meaningful products — Sunday Adelaja

Work isn't meaningful just because you spend your life doing it. — Anthony Marra

A person seeks to quantify their existence. Do we measure a person's life by its longevity or by assessing the warmth of its blaze? Do we measure a person by their brainpower or by the heartiness of his or her spine? Do earthy deeds count for more than intellectual opinions? What is more important, the work that a person produces or the quality of life that effuses from their being? Does it matter how we live and how we die, if we love or hate, are kind or mean, generous or stingy? Does it matter that we struggle to express personal doubts and toil in an effort to obtain redemption for our personal lapses? — Kilroy J. Oldster

There is a way of living that has a certain grace and beauty. It is not a constant race for what is next, rather, an appreciation of that which has come before. There is a depth and quality of experience that is lived and felt, a recognition of what is truly meaningful. These are the feelings I would like my work to inspire. This is the quality of life that I believe in. — Ralph Lauren

But mostly what we think of as the 'meaning' of life concerns the style of the private autobiography we each write and which records how we 'see' ourselves. Whether this autobiography reads as a narrative of progress in which difficulties are transcended, or is chaotic, is the test of whether one's life seems to be meaningful or not. Meaning is something we find, or fail to find, as we follow through this project. We can see how love figures here: love is a major theme, but how we see our experience of love depends upon our general thinking. If, for example, we work with extremely high expectations of love we impose a tragic style upon our self-perceptions: for our experience of love will always be seen under an aspect of failure - failure focused upon ourselves or others. Hence the more subtle our thinking about love, the more intelligently we discriminate ideals from reality, the more interesting our autobiography becomes. — John Armstrong

How do I define success? Let me tell you, money's pretty nice. But having a lot of money does not automatically make you a successful person. What you want is money and meaning. You want your work to be meaningful, because meaning is what brings the real richness to your life. — Oprah Winfrey

Life is good when you live from your roots. Your values are a critical source of energy, enthusiasm, and direction. Work is meaningful and fun when it's an expression of your true core. — Shoshana Zuboff

There may be no single thing more important in our efforts to achieve meaningful work and fulfilling relationships than to learn to practice the art of communication. — Max De Pree

The best stuff in life isn't stuff at all ... relationships, experiences & meaningful work are the staples of a happy life. — Graham Hill

We have to design policies that have meaningful impacts on the quality of life of women and families. And that's something that I know I can speak passionately about because whether I'm in the White House as First Lady, as long as I have kids and I'm trying to have a life, I'm gonna be trying to make this balance work. — Michelle Obama

It is paradoxical but nonetheless true that the nearer man comes to his goal to make his life easy and abundant, the more he undermines the foundations of a meaningful existence. — Franz Alexander

Working smarter is learning to prioritize, plan, and focus our energies with meaningful intent. — Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

When [what you are deeply passionate about, what you can be best in the world at and what drives your economic engine] come together, not only does your work move toward greatness, but so does your life. For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work. Perhaps, then, you might gain that rare tranquility that comes from knowing that you've had a hand in creating something of intrinsic excellence that makes a contribution. Indeed, you might even gain that deepest of all satisfactions: knowing that your short time here on this earth has been well spent, and that it mattered. — James C. Collins

Play hard, work hard, love hard ... The bottom line for me is to live life to the fullest in the here-and-now instead of a hoped-for hereafter, and make every day count in some meaningful way and do something-no matter how small it is-to make the world a better place. — Michael Shermer

What was meaningful? What was meaningless? What did it mean, to amount to something? What type of life, was worth living? Was it better, to make a ton of money, and have a fucking goddamn Mercedes, or whatever the fuck kind of car it was, to be a lawyer with a 'serious' job, and to have 'amounted to something,' or was it better to just be a waiter, and work the evening shift, and have your days free to goof off with your roommates, your friends, to go to meditation, to take some time to reflect, and enjoy life, and to not always be in such a big goddamn rush to get somewhere? — T. Scott McLeod

For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work. — James C. Collins

Of all human activities, only labor, and neither action nor work, is unending, progressing automatically in accordance with life itself and outside the range of willful decisions or humanly meaningful purposes. — Hannah Arendt

For most people, life would be boring without meaningful work. — Timothy Ferriss

And we're losing something of great value, a way of thinking and moving through time that can be summed up in a single word: depth. Depth of thought and feeling, depth in our relationships, our work and everything we do. Since depth is what makes life fulfilling and meaningful, it's astounding that we're allowing this to happen. — William Powers

The elements of trial and error, similar to earth and sky, and fire and water, delineates the constituent modules of our lives. Living robustly includes more failures than successes. We achieve adeptness to living by exhibiting a willingness to make good faith mistakes and learn from each misadventure. Every effort that fails to achieve our expected result is understandably frustrating. The fact is that without ideas and dreams and devoid of occasional crash landings, a person can never hope to achieve any worthy acts to temper resounding personal disappointment. Meaningful success is ultimately defined when a person dies, when an entire life's work devoted to performing passionate and compassionate enterprises can be judge as a whole unit. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Cats can be a very affectionate type of animal, but it's an affection you have to win. Pretty much the way you earn the affection of your friends and your lovers and your wives and your girlfriends and anybody else that's meaningful in your life,' says Des philosophically. 'There's a period of time where you don't know your positioning, and you work for it. And then all of a sudden, the relationship is established and it's yours, it belongs to you, it's something tangible. You can feel it, you can touch it. — Denise Flaim

If work is just going in every day and getting a check, it's an ugly life. When you can make work a meaningful purpose, you've hit the jackpot for people. — Jack Welch

I work every day to live my life in such a way that when I take my last breath, I will be satisfied I made a difference and I was an inspiration; that I left something behind that will be meaningful to society; I did not shame my family, disappoint my friends or ruin my good name. — Carlos Wallace

Barth observes that the seventh day does not come at the end of a week of toil and labor for human beings as though its primary purpose is to offer a measure of respite after days of toil. Rather, since "God's seventh day was man's first,"54 the seventh day sets life's priority for human beings in the most tangible way. Better yet - and much closer to the point - the seventh day brings to view God's priorities. Seeing that human time "begins with a day of rest and not a day of work,"55 the spiritual pursuit, living life in a relationship with the Creator that is mutually meaningful, stands out as the primary meaning in life. — Sigve K. Tonstad

We don't want to be uncomfortable. We want a quick and dirty "how-to" list for happiness. I don't fit that bill. Never have. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to skip over the hard stuff, but it just doesn't work. We don't change, we don't grow, and we don't move forward without the work. If we really want to live a joyful, connected, and meaningful life, we must talk about things that get in the way. — Brene Brown

Without meaningful work you might as well be dead. — Joanna Russ

We were created for meaningful work, and one of life's greatest pleasures is the satisfaction of a job well done. — John C. Maxwell

You and I want our lives to matter. We want our lives to make a real difference - to be of genuine consequence in the world. We know that there is no satisfaction in merely going through the motions, even if those motions make us successful, or even if we have arranged to make those motions pleasant. We want to know we have made some impact on the world. In fact, you and I want to contribute to the quality of life. We want to make the world work. — Werner Erhard

Part of me says that no life will work if I can't make this one right. — Blythe Danner

Work/life benefits allow companies meaningful ways for responding to their employees' needs; they can be a powerful tool for transforming a workforce and driving a business' success. — Anne M. Mulcahy

Be the kind of person that others admire, can count on, trust and enjoy spending time with. After you have developed that reputation, people will start to ask you what you do, and will want to work with you on the things that matter. When you focus on leading a passionate, meaningful and faithful life, you are also inadvertently creating a spectacular ripple effect of inspiration in the lives around you. When one person is making a difference and being a positive role model, everyone nearby feels their passionate energy. Before too long, they too, are leading by example and simultaneously inspiring others. — John Geiger

If you want a meaningful life for yourself don't ask "What can the world offer to me?" but "What can I offer to the world? — Bangambiki Habyarimana

Meanwhile, I continued my academic work in religious studies, delving back into the Bible not as an unquestioning believer but as an inquisitive scholar. No longer chained to the assumption that the stories I read were literally true, I became aware of a more meaningful truth in the text, a truth intentionally detached from the exigencies of history. Ironically, the more I learned about the life of the historical Jesus, the turbulent world in which he lived, and the brutality of the Roman occupation that he defied, the more I was drawn to him. Indeed, the Jewish peasant and revolutionary who challenged the rule of the most powerful empire the world had ever known and lost became so much more real to me than the detached, unearthly being I had been introduced to in church. Today, I can confidently say — Reza Aslan

When we work creatively and productively with others, our experience of meaning can be profound. When we work directly for the good of others, meaning deepens in ways that reward us beyond measure. Whenever we go beyond satisfying our own personal needs, we enter the realm of what Frankl called "ultimate meaning." some call it connection to a higher self, to God, to our own spirit, to universal consciousness, to love, to the collective good. No matter what it's called, it is deep meaning and it transforms our lives. — Alex Pattakos

I remember an insight that taught me much about life. One day I felt that I had everything that I really wanted in life. I had a creative and meaningful work as a therapist and course leader, I had a relationship with a beautiful woman, who I loved and who loved me, I had friend that I trusted and I had money to do what I wanted.
But in spite of all this, I still had a feeling that there was something missing in my life. I was not satisfied. The thirst and longing in my heart was still searching for something more. It made me realize that the deepest pain in my heart was that I was still separated from the Whole and that no outer things or relationships could ease this pain. — Swami Dhyan Giten

With pure nature, money isn't necessary but meaningful to every one, including me, but i don't make it a principle rule because I can live without it. — Auliq Ice

When the peasants and their song had vanished from his sight and hearing, a heavy feeling of anguish at his loneliness, his bodily idleness, his hostility to this world, came over him ... It was all drowned in the sea of cheerful common labor. God had given the day, God had given the strength. Both day and strength had been devoted to labour and in that lay the reward ... Levin had often admired this life, had often experienced a feeling of envy for the people who lived this life, but that day for the first time ... the thought came clearly to Levin that it was up to him to change that so burdensome, idle, artificial and individual life he lived into this laborious, pure and common, lovely life. — Leo Tolstoy

Work is not all there is to life. You will not have a meaningful life without work, but you cannot say that your work is the meaning of your life. If you make any work the purpose of your life - even if that work is church ministry - you create an idol that rivals God. Your relationship with God is the most important foundation for your life, and indeed it keeps all the other factors - work, friendships and family, leisure and pleasure - from becoming so important to you that they become addicting and distorted. — Timothy J. Keller