Work & Career: Work-Life Balance Quotes

Explore curated quotes that reflect the pursuit of harmony between career ambitions and personal wellbeing. These lines invite a steady rhythm of focus, rest, and renewal. Use them to spark perspective, set boundaries, and align priorities without losing momentum. Whether navigating deadlines, family time, or self-care, find reminders that sustainable success grows from balance. Let these insights encourage mindful choices that support both meaningful work and a full life.

Similar topics:Career New Job Quitting Job Work Work Ethic

"It is better to rust out than wear out"

Edwin Markham, Poet

"No one on his deathbed ever said, I wish I had spent more time on my business"

Paul Tsongas, Politician

Small: Paul Tsongas

"A man should never neglect his family for business"

Walt Disney, Cartoonist

"Chess is my life, but my life is not chess"

Anatoly Karpov, Celebrity

"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it"

Ellen Goodman, Journalist

"Behind every working woman is an enormous pile of unwashed laundry"

Barbara Dale

"I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business"

Henry David Thoreau, Author

Small: Henry David Thoreau

"I've yet to be on a campus where most women weren't worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children, and a career. I've yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing"

Gloria Steinem, Activist

"You CAN have it all. You just can't have it all at once"

Oprah Winfrey, Entertainer

Small: Oprah Winfrey

"Live and work but do not forget to play, to have fun in life and really enjoy it"

Eileen Caddy, Celebrity

"I simply do not distinguish between work and play"

Mary Oliver, Poet

"And unless you have that sense of being creative, people think you're just working all the time"

Jackie DeShannon, Musician

"Child actors come off as work being their life and doing it 24/7, but I still have those days where it's totally, like, whatever: shopping, movies, adventures"

Hailee Steinfeld, Actress

Small: Hailee Steinfeld

"One cannot become a saint when one works sixteen hours a day"

Jean-Paul Sartre, Philosopher

Small: Jean-Paul Sartre

"It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work"

William Faulkner, Novelist

"The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play"

Arnold J. Toynbee, Historian

Small: Arnold J. Toynbee

"I love what I do for a living, it's the greatest job in the world, but you have to survive an awful lot of attention that you don't truly deserve and you have to live up to your professional responsibilities and I'm always trying to balance that with what is really important"

Tom Hanks, Actor

Small: Tom Hanks

"My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other"

Stephen Sondheim, Composer

Small: Stephen Sondheim

"The best thing about my job, though, is stopping at the end of the day and rejoining the human universe"

Orson Scott Card, Writer

"There are countless studies on the negative spillover of job pressures on family life, but few on how job satisfaction enhances the quality of family life"

Albert Bandura, Psychologist

"Put off thy cares with thy clothes; so shall thy rest strengthen thy labor, and so thy labor sweeten thy rest"

Francis Quarles, Poet

"Architecture tends to consume everything else, it has become one's entire life"

Arne Jacobsen, Architect

Small: Arne Jacobsen

"It is very hard to separate one's self from a character. Sometimes the people closest to me have to be very understanding"

Halle Berry, Actress

Small: Halle Berry

"I turned into a workaholic to the point of where my health was in jeopardy"

Tab Hunter, Actor

"It's all about quality of life and finding a happy balance between work and friends and family"

Philip Green, Businessman

"Were women meant to do everything - work and have babies?"

Candice Bergen, Actress

"Just as we have had great working lives, we have also had good personal lives. For instance, we have made school our number one priority. We have been in school our entire lives with kids our own age. We guess that's pretty regular"

Mary-Kate Olsen, Actress

Small: Mary-Kate Olsen

"I was very strongly influenced by women's magazines and I really believed tha a woman could not be married and raise a family and have a successful career all at the same time"

Helen Reddy, Actress

"From offstage until the moment I walk onstage, I constantly tweak my talk show and 'Top Model', but at the same time, I often leave my private life by the wayside"

Tyra Banks, Model

"There aren't more lady songwriters for the same reason that there aren't more lady doctors or lady accountants or lady lawyers; not enough women have the time for careers"

Dorothy Fields, Musician

Small: Dorothy Fields

"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, Scientist

"Many people worry so much about managing their careers, but rarely spend half that much energy managing their LIVES. I want to make my life, not just my job, the best it can be. The rest will work itself out"

Reese Witherspoon, Actress

Small: Reese Witherspoon

"I've been careful to keep my life separate because it's important to me to have privacy and for my life not to be a marketing device for a movie or a TV show. I'm worth more than that"

Lisa Kudrow, Actress

"Being on Broadway is the modern equivalent of being a monk. I sleep a lot, eat a lot, and rest a lot"

Hugh Jackman, Actor

Small: Hugh Jackman

"I've been sacrificing my life for my work for 30 years, and now I want it the other way around. I want to find work that fits into my life and that would be based here"

Glenn Close, Actress

"I literally have meetings at eight o'clock in the morning, and I finish at nine o'clock at night. It sounds pathetic, but I don't even have time to go shopping"

Stella McCartney, Designer

"I just decided that I would not put my professional life on hold to raise children. I know that sounds selfish to a lot of people and I don't know if what I'm doing is the right thing. But that's the way I'm doing it"

Emmanuelle Beart, Actress

"Anytime you're away from your home filming, it messes with your head"

Jennifer Lawrence, Actress

"Working gets in the way of living"

Omar Sharif, Actor

"There's also, I think more so in the music business and especially for women, this ceiling that people put on you if you have children or a family and decide to spend time with them"

Juice Newton, Musician

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