50 Happy Work Quotes for 9-to-5 Bliss

Reignite the joy in your career with these quotes about being happy in your work!

The average American spends more than 2,000 hours per year at work.

When you take away nights, weekends, and holidays, that’s nearly a quarter of your year!

A 2022 Gallup poll of workers discovered that 60% felt emotionally disengaged from their work, 19% described their jobs as miserable, and only 33% felt engaged at their jobs.

We spend too much time working to be so miserable at work.

But the good news is, it doesn’t need to be that way!

Happiness in your work is possible, passion is essential, and satisfaction is attainable.

Read on for 50 happy work quotes about loving your work to help you rediscover your passion for your work or find the inspiration to chase a new, more fulfilling career!

Quotes to Motivate You to Find Happiness at Work

These quotes encourage us to do the work that makes us happy!

1. “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” — Aristotle

2. “To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.” — Pearl S. Buck

3. “Whatever you decide to do, make sure it makes you happy.” — Paulo Coelho

4. “True happiness involves the full use of one’s power and talents.” — John W. Gardner

5. “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” — Confucius

6. “Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.” — Katherine Whitehorn

7. “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

8. “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

9. “Desire! That’s the one secret of every man’s career. Not education. Not being born with hidden talents. Desire.” — Johnny Carson

10. “Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Happy Work Quotes for Your Success

These quotes encourage us to define success in our work not by productivity but by how it makes us feel.

11. “If you love your work, if you enjoy it, you’re already a success.” — Jack Canfield

12. “To be successful, the first thing to do is fall in love with your work.” — Mary Lauretta

13. “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” — Maya Angelou

14. “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill

15. “Success is doing what you love and being able to give it back to others.” — Whitney Wolfe Herd

16. “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” — Albert Schweitzer

17. “Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice, and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.” — Pelé

18. “The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.” — Vince Lombardi

19. “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

20. “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

What is a Quote About Happiness at Work

Read on for illuminating quotes about the roles of gratitude and satisfaction in our work.

21. “When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.” — Tony Robbins

22. “Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.” — Wayne Dyer

23. “Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment; full effort is full victory.” — Mahatma Gandhi

24. “The secret to a happy and fulfilling life is to find purpose in your work and passion in your heart.” — Debasish Mridha

25. “True motivation comes from achievement, personal development, job satisfaction, and recognition.” — Fredrick Herzberg

26. “Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.” — Simon Sinek

27. “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.” — Steve Jobs

28. “Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities in blessings.” — William Arthur Ward

29. “Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.” — Theodore Isaac Rubin

30. “When you have balance in your life, work becomes an entirely different experience. There is a passion that moves you to a whole new level of fulfillment and gratitude, and that’s when you can do your best… for yourself and for others.” — Cara Delevingne

What is a Positive Quote for Work

These quotes recognize the importance of passion in the work that you do.

31. “It is only when I am doing my work that I feel truly alive.” — Federico Fellini

32. “No person who is enthusiastic about his work has anything to fear from life.” — Samuel Goldwyn

33. “It is not in the pursuit of happiness that we find fulfillment; it is in the happiness of pursuit.” — Denis Waitley

34. “Trust not what inspires other members of society to choose a career. Trust what inspires you.” — The Lazy Person’s Guide to Success

35. “Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.” — Simon Sinek

36. “When you’re following your energy and doing what you want all the time, the distinction between work and play dissolves.” — Shakti Gawain

37. “Whatever it is you want to do, take a job in that field. You will learn by experience and, slow and steady, you’ll get it done!” — Rachael Ray

38. “Happiness does not come from a job. It comes from knowing what you truly value and behaving in a way that’s consistent with those beliefs.” — Mike Rowe

39. “To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.” — Bette Davis

40. “If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.” — Joseph Campbell

Happy Work Quotes for Having Fun on the Job

Let these quotes remind you that work can and should be fun!

41. “Work hard, have fun, make history.” — Jeff Bezos

42. “Work is much more fun than fun.” — Noel Coward

43. “Work hard, be yourself, and have fun!” — Michelle Kwan

44. “I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.” — Thomas A. Edison

45. “You don’t have to be serious all the time to do a good job.” — Simone Biles

46. “Take your job seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously.” — Alex Trebek

47. “The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.” — Richard Bach

48. “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.” — Dale Carnegie

49. “Have fun, work hard, and money will come. Don’t waste time – grab your chances. Have a positive outlook on life. When it’s not fun, move on.” — Richard Branson

50. “Don’t have work-life balance – at least in the sense of trying to escape from work so you can have a life. Work should be fun – so make work enjoyable and satisfying for everyone – among other reasons because it pays off. “ — Don Tapscott

Work as a Fulfilling Part of Life

These quotes remind us that how we spend our days matters.

The goal at the end of a workday shouldn’t just be a paycheck but also a sense of satisfaction, pride, and enjoyment in how we spend our 9-to-5.

Whenever you’re in a slump, revisit these happy work quotes to find inspiration and motivation to pursue your passions and create a career that makes you happy!

Share which quote motivated you the most in the comments and share them with your coworkers who could use a pick-me-up.