The main purpose of every job search should be to find work you love doing.
Instead the main purpose for most people is to get a job. And too many people make the mistake of thinking the goal is to get any job.
Then you know the story: they dread waking up during the week, live for the weekend, and spend the majority of their waking hours the rest of their life doing something that’s not for them. How awful is that?
I urge you to not settle for any job, even a job that is sort of what you want to do. Screw that!
You only get one shot at life, and that means you must follow your passion.
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To inspire you in this noble pursuit, I created the following list of 101 do what you love quotes.
1. If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. — Marc Anthony
2. When asked, “Mr. Gandhi, you have been working fifteen hours a day for fifty years. Don’t you think you should take a vacation?” Gandhi smiled and replied, “I am always on vacation.” — Gandhi
3. What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do. — Bob Dylan
4. Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else. — James M. Barrie
5. I’d rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate. – George Burns
6. Forget about the fast lane. If you really want to fly, harness your power to your passion. Honor your calling. Everybody has one. Trust your heart, and success will come to you. — Oprah Winfrey
7. Any human being is really good at certain things. The problem is that the things you’re good at come naturally. And since most people are pretty modest instead of an arrogant S.O.B. like me, what comes naturally, you don’t see as a special skill. It’s just you. It’s what you’ve always done. — Stephen Jay Gould
8. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. - Katherine Hepburn
9. You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid, monotonous work, chances are you’ll end up boring, stupid, and monotonous. – Bob Black
10. Passion is the genesis of genius. — Tony Robbins
11. I learned many, many lessons from my father, but not least of which is that you can fail at something you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance doing what you love. – Jim Carrey
12. I believe you are your work. Don’t trade the stuff of your life, time, for nothing more than dollars. That’s a rotten bargain. — Rita Mae Brown
13. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. 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
14. Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. — Aristotle
15. If you don’t love what you do, you won’t do it with much conviction or passion. — Mia Hamm
16. Do what you love and the necessary resources will follow. — Peter McWilliams
17. I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. — Jerome K. Jerome
18. 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
19. There is no passion to be found playing small–in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living. — Nelson Mandela
20. The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. — Mark Twain
21. 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
22. When you’re following your energy and doing what you want all the time, the distinction between work and play dissolves. – Shakti Gawain
23. 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
24. Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. — Les Brown
25. Work without love is slavery. ― Mother Teresa
26. Whatever you make, base it upon that which is most important to you. Only then will it have depth and meaning, and only then will it resonate with others. ― Christopher Paolini
27. 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 Buffett
28. Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate. — Jon Bon Jovi
29. 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
30. 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
31. 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 … I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever. — Stephen King
32. Hide not your talents, they for use were made, what’s a sundial in the shade? ― Benjamin Franklin
33. We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us. ― Marshall McLuhan
34. That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it. ― Charles Bukowski
35. Paul and I, we never thought that we would make much money out of the thing. We just loved writing software. — Bill Gates
36. Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there’s love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong. — Ella Fitzgerald
37. The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else…The driving force of a career must come from the individual. Remember: Jobs are owned by the company, you own your career! — Earl Nightingale
38. I enjoy my work so much that I have to be pulled away from my work into leisure. — Ralph Nader
39. People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working. — Elon Musk
40. I am focused on the work. I am constantly creating. I am a busy girl. I live and breathe my work. I love what I do. I believe in the message. There’s no stopping. ― Lady Gaga
41. Never work just for money or for power. They won’t save your soul or help you sleep at night. — Marian Wright Edelman
42. Do what you love; you’ll be better at it. It sounds pretty simple, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t get this one right away. — LL Cool J
43. 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
44. We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give. — Winston Churchill
45. Passion kept one fully in the present, so that time became a series of mutually exclusive ‘nows.’ — Sue Halpern
46. Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. — Buddha
47. If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep the streets as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. — Martin Luther King
48. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. – Theodore Roosevelt
49. 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 W. Watts
50. But to believe that getting stuff is the purpose and aim of life is madness. ― Hubert Selby Jr.
51. I like to build things, I like to do things. I am having a lot of fun. — Walter Chrysler
52. The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire. — Ferdinand Foch
53. When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece. — John Ruskin
54. If your work is becoming uninteresting, so are you. Work is an inanimate thing and can be made lively and interesting only by injecting yourself into it. Your job is only as big as you are. — George Hubbs
55. Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart. — Rumi
56. Finding the humility to happily walk away from those who don’t get it unlocks our ability to do good work. — Seth Godin
57. Nobody can be successful unless he loves his work. — David Sarnoff
58. Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming — John Wooden
59. When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too. — Paulo Coelho
60. Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow. — Anthony J. D’Angelo
61. The man who does not work for the love of work but only for money is not likely to make money nor find much fun in life. — Charles Schwab
62. Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
63. I found out it is just as hard to make a movie that you are not proud of as it is to make one you love. ― Craig Ferguson
64. There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life. ― Alain de Botton
65. If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old ― Peter F. Drucker
66. You can’t fake passion. — Barbara Corcoran
67. 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
68. Rest in reason; move in passion — Khalil Gibran
69. Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood… Make big plans; aim high in hope and work. – Daniel Burnham
70. If we resist our passions, it is more through their weakness than from our strength. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld
71. 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
72. It is never too late to be what you might have been. — George Eliot
73. Desire! That’s the one secret of every man’s career. Not education. Not being born with hidden talents. Desire. — Bobby Unser
74. 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
75. God sells us all things at the price of labor. ― Leonardo da Vinci
76. The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become. — Jim Rohn
77. There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something. — Henry Ford
78. It is the soul’s duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion. — Rebecca West
79. Passion will move men beyond themselves, beyond their shortcomings, beyond their failures. — Joseph Campbell
80. The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work. — Oprah Winfrey
81. Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life. — Dr. Wayne Dyer
82. There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life. — Federico Fellini
83. Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. — Henry David Thoreau
84. Do it no matter what. If you believe in it, it is something very honorable. If somebody around you or your family does not understand it, then that’s their problem. But if you do have a passion, an honest passion, just do it. — Mario Andretti
85. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it. — Ray Bradbury
86. People who lack the clarity, courage, or determination to follow their own dreams will often find ways to discourage yours. Live your truth and don’t EVER stop! ― Steve Maraboli
87. The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work. ― Emile Zola
88. Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes; work never done. — Christina Rossetti
89. Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. — Malcolm Gladwell
90. When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor. — Elon Musk
91. To be successful, the first thing to do is fall in love with your work. — Sister Mary Lauretta
92. What is it that you like doing? If you don’t like it, get out of it, because you’ll be lousy at it. You don’t have to stay with a job for the rest of your life, because if you don’t like it you’ll never be successful in it. — Lee Iacocca
93. Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me… Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me. — Steve Jobs
94. Do what you love. When you love your work, you become the best worker in the world. — Uri Geller
95. Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs. — Farrah Gray
96. I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious. — Albert Einstein
97. Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies. — Albert Camus
98. In fifty years, he never worked a day. To him, nine to five was odds on a horse. — Archie Bunker
99. Love the life you live. Live the life you love. — Bob Marley
100. 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
101. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man’s entire existence. — Honore′ de Balzac
What are some other do what you love quotes? Do me a favor and comment below with your favorite one.
And if you know what career you love, this is for you:
Want to never work another day at a job you don’t like, so you can find your dream job? Check out my course Master The Resume that shows you a step-by-step system to do exactly that.
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