We’ve all heard it: Work hard, play hard. But how many of us are creating the life balance we truly deserve? That’s why we’ve put together this list of work-life balance quotes to help us remember the importance of priorities and boundaries. These powerful phrases remind us that success is not solely defined by our professional achievements, but also by the quality of our personal lives. We hope these work-life balance quotes help you have a harmonious day!
Our Favorite Work-Life Balance Quotes
The goal is to balance a life that works with a life that counts. —Peter Block
Life works upon a compensating balance, and the happiness we gain in one direction we lose in another. —Jerome K. Jerome
Fearing discovery of their fraudulence, they burden themselves with too much work to compensate for their lack of self-esteem and identity. Work-life balance is a meaningless concept to them. —Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries
The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. —Stephen Covey
Do not overwork the mind any more than the body; do everything with moderation. —Francis Bacon
I’ve found that volunteer work can enrich one’s life, providing balance and perspective. —Edgar Bronfman Sr.
People have to decide on priorities if they want to get anywhere. The best lesson I learned was to just do it. —Richard Branson
Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished forever. —George Orwell
Balance—between work and pleasure, giving and receiving, seriousness and levity—creates a happy, healthy life. —Kathy Freston
One of the joys of being in love is that it clarifies your priorities. Complication arises from not knowing what you want. —Philip Sington
Arranging for and allowing ourselves to have fun is an important part of taking care of ourselves. It helps us stay healthy. It helps us work better. It balances life. —Melody Beattie
It’s hard being a rock; they have such a strange sense of time—and priorities. —Mercedes Lackey
You may have what it takes to be successful, but if you lose yourself in someone else’s priorities or societal expectations, you will be judged not by your potential but rather by your history. —Lois P. Frankel
In those moments when priorities clash, always stay guided by your values, not your perceived necessities. —Adam Braun
Once you have a clear picture of your priorities—that is values, goals, and high-leverage activities—organize around them. —Stephen Covey
Here’s what management is about: Pick good people and set the right priorities. —Lee Iacocca
I had to learn my faith and look after my family, and I had to make priorities. But now I’ve done it all and there’s a little space for me to fill in the universe of music again. —Cat Stevens
More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies. —Rudyard Kipling
Part of our evolutionary heritage is the ability to adapt—species that survive, adapt. Humans adapt by altering their priorities to match evolving values. —Warren Farrell
No work is worse than overwork; the mind preys on itself—the most unwholesome of food. —Charles Lamb
We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them. —John Irving
This so-called affluent society is an ugly society still. It is a vulgar society. It is a meretricious society. It is a society in which priorities have gone all wrong. —Aneurin Bevan
Loss provides an opportunity to take inventory of our lives, to reconsider priorities, and to determine new directions. —Gerald Lawson Sittser
Get your priorities straight. No one ever said on his death bed, “Gee, if I’d only spent more time at the office.” —H. Jackson Brown Jr.
It is a better thing to weigh and measure priorities in the illuminating light of your own mission than to have your activities formed by the impressions and expectations of others. —Mary Anne Radmacher
Your choices and decisions are a reflection of how well you’ve set and followed your priorities. —Elizabeth George
We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own “to-do” list. —Michelle Obama
Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life. —Dolly Parton
Explore this next great frontier where the boundaries between work and higher purpose are merging into one, where doing good really is good for business. —Richard Branson
I want you to take a red-hot bath as hot as you can bear it, and just relax your nerves. You can read in the tub if you wish. —F. Scott Fitzgerald
Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting. —Jack Kornfield
I think there’s a time to work, and everyone has to kind of adjust. And then there’s a time to relax, and be the mom or take the kids on vacation when you need to wind down. So it’s a matter of planning … multi-tasking and being available. —Vanessa L. Williams
Jobs and money are never the primary cause of stress. Thinking, negative thinking, causes stress. … You and I possess the power to change our thoughts. It is our greatest power—the power to choose. … Look at your problems as a stranger might, then do something about them—NOW! —Bob Proctor
When we relax about imperfection, we no longer lose our life moments in the pursuit of being different and in the fear of what is wrong. —Tara Brach
This is where our obsession with going fast and saving time leads. To road rage, air rage, shopping rage, relationship rage, office rage, vacation rage, gym rage. Thanks to speed, we live in the age of rage. —Carl Honoré
I’ve been working for the weekend, but that weekend never came. Will you pat my back tomorrow if I break my back today? —Max Schneider
I do not really like vacations. … When I am confronted with a whole week in which I have nothing to do but enjoy myself, I do not know where to begin. —Robertson Davies
By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class. —Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important. —Stephen Covey
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. —Sydney J. Harris
The key is in not spending time, but in investing it. —Stephen Covey
A toxic workplace is more likely to change YOU than you are to change it. There’s no dishonor in leaving. It’s not running away; it’s liberation. —attorneyryan
I view this able and energetic man with some detachment. He is loyal to his own career but only incidentally to anything or anyone else. —Hugh Dalton
I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career. —Gloria Steinem
I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public—talent in privacy. —Marilyn Monroe
Nothing is more important than empathy for another human being’s suffering. Nothing. Not a career, not wealth, not intelligence, certainly not status. We have to feel for one another if we’re going to survive with dignity. —Audrey Hepburn
The outgoing and spontaneous person that the world knew while I was boxing was a persona that I created to sell tickets and promote my career. In my private life, I am quiet and reflective by nature. —Muhammad Ali
I don’t regard my career as something so precious that it comes before my convictions. —Orson Welles
The domestic career is no more natural to all women than the military career is natural to all men. —George Bernard Shaw
No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love. —Edvard Munch
Why not have your first baby at sixty, when your husband is already dead and your career is over? Then you can really devote yourself to it. —Fran Lebowitz
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet, drink and botanical medicines. —Henry David Thoreau
As for the possibility of “having it all,” career and family with no sacrifice to either, that is a myth we would do well to abandon, together with the pernicious notion that a woman who chooses one over the other is somehow deficient. —Sonia Sotomayor
Achievement doesn’t come from what we do but from who we are. Our worldly power results from our personal power. Our career is an extension of our personality. —Marianne Williamson
Building a career or a company is about living a few years of your life like most people won’t so that you can spend the rest of your life living at a level most people can’t. —Jay Samit
I enjoy inventing things out of fun. After all, life is a game, not a career. —Brion Gysin
Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you’re wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn’t love you anymore. —Lady Gaga
It’s not necessarily about what career you pick. It’s about how you do what you do. —Cory Doctorow
A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night. —Marilyn Monroe
We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to mankind. —Martin Luther King Jr.
When you are old and facing oblivion in a nursing home or a hospital or on a golf course in winter, you are not going to wish you had spent more time at the office or making a sales call or watching a show. You will wish you had spent more time with your family. —Ben Stein
Work is the greatest thing in the world, so we should always save some of it for tomorrow. —Don Herold
