51+ Work-Life Balance Quotes to Know for Happiness & Success

It's all about the equilibrium between your professional and personal lives. To that end, here are the best quotes about work-life balance to know!

Your personal and professional halves are both important for happiness and success.

It’s called the work-life balance.

Many of us tend to sacrifice our mental and physical health to favor career growth. But, this leads to burnout, discouragement, stress, and even diseases like aches, pains, and gastrointestinal problems. Not to mention the toll it takes on our relationships.

In this case, as in many other areas of life, balance is crucial. Today, we’re here to help you remember that a healthy work-life balance is important with dozens of quotes from influential people around the world.


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Here are the best work-life balance quotes to know:

I believe a balanced life is essential, and I try to make sure that all of our employees know that and live that way. It’s crucial to me as a manager that I help ensure that our employees are as successful as our customers and partners. I also think that employees these days expect less of a separation of work and personal life. That doesn’t mean that work tasks should encroach upon our personal time, but it does mean that employees today expect more from the companies for whom they work. Why shouldn’t your workplace reflect your values? Why is ‘giving back’ not a part of our jobs? The answer for us is to integrate philanthropy with work.

Marc Benioff

The gift of balance in your life – May you find the balance of life, time for work but also time for play. Too much of one thing ends up creating stress that no one needs in their life.

Catherine Pulsifer

Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be.

Shonda Rhimes

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.

Harriet Braiker

Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, friends and spirit and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.

Brian Dyson

Related Read: How to Improve Reading Comprehension: 15 Strategies to Follow

I have so much admiration for women who are mothers, who balance family and work.

Beyoncé

Most people chase success at work, thinking that will make them happy. The truth is that happiness at work will make you successful.

Alexander Kjerulf

Work, love and play are the great balance wheels of man’s being.

Orison Swett Marden

You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.

Charles Buxton

A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.

Marilyn Monroe

You will never feel truly satisfied by work until you are satisfied by life.

Heather Schuck

Invest in your work life balance. Time with friends and family is as important as times at work. Getting that out of balance is a path toward unhappiness.

Stephen Gillett

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

Either you run the day, or the day runs you.

Jim Rohn

Related Read: 50+ Best Entrepreneurship Quotes to Inspire, Motivate, and Encourage

Take care of yourself: When you don’t sleep, eat crap, don’t exercise, and are living off adrenaline for too long, your performance suffers. Your decisions suffer. Your company suffers. Love those close to you: Failure of your company is not failure in life. Failure in your relationship is.

Ev Williams

Balance activity with serenity, wealth and simplicity, persistence with innovation, community with solitude, familiarity with adventure, constancy with change, leading with following.

Jonathan Lockwood Huie

You can’t have everything you want, but you can have the things that really matter to you.

Marissa Mayer

You have to balance your passions, not your time.

Lisa Sugar

I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

Anna Quindlen

Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose.

Thomas Edison

I think taking vacations and turning off the phone and only doing emails or social media for a specific short amount of time helps with work/life balance. If I’m checking it all day I start to feel cuckoo-bird. So I just do it once or twice a day instead of a thousand. And then remembering that it doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter.

Maria Bamford

Related Read: Top New Year’s Resolutions and How to Follow Through

You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.

Oprah Winfrey

Don’t confuse having a career with having a life.

Hillary Clinton

Be moderate in order to taste the joys of life in abundance.

Epicurus

If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them and half as much money.

Abigail Van Buren

You don’t have to make yourself miserable to be successful. It’s natural to look back and mythologize the long nights and manic moments of genius, but success isn’t about working hard, it’s about working smart.

Andrew Wilkinson

The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

Stephen Covey

Burnout is about resentment. Preventing it is about knowing yourself well enough to know what it is you’re giving up that makes you resentful.

Marissa Mayer

You’re probably wondering what I mean by ‘The Pillars of Your Life,’ right? Well this is simple. It’s the things that make your life what it is. The things or people that make you, you. There’s work, family, your hobby, your art, and your traditions. Except some of us have wonky pillars. Some of us give one pillar too much to hold, and the others not enough. One’s too tall, whilst the others are too small. Therefore we become unstable, and sometimes everything comes crashing down.

S.R. Crawford

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A time for everything: A time to relax and a time to be busy, a time to frolic and a time to labor, a time to receive and a time to give, a time to begin and a time to finish.

Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.

Dolly Parton

Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.

Gustave Flaubert

We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality of time we put in.

Arianna Huffington

Women in particular need to keep an eye on their physical and mental health, because if we’re scurrying to and from appointments and errands, we don’t have a lot of time to take care of ourselves. We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.

Michelle Obama

The challenge of work life balance is without question one of the most significant struggles faced by modern man.

Stephen Covey

Related Read: 55+ Teamwork Quotes That Celebrate & Inspire Collaboration

Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress: Working hard for something we love is called passion.

Simon Sinek

Do less, be more.

Elizabeth Grace Saunders

For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.

Lily Tomlin

When you’re gone would you rather have your gravestone say, ‘He never missed a meeting?’ Or one that said, ‘He was a great father.’

Steve Blank

To have someone who never makes a mistake, never finds her personal life in disarray, never worries about work life balance? I think that would be unreal.

Sophie Kinsella

Always take some of the play, fun, freedom, and wonder of the weekend into your week and your work.

Rasheed Ogunlaru

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Work-life balance is not an entitlement or benefit. Your company cannot give it to you. You have to create it for yourself.

Matthew Kelly

The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.

Michael Altshuler

You can’t do a good job if your job is all you do.

Katie Thurmes

A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.

Alain de Botton

Wealth does not mean a person who owns a lot, but refers to someone who has enough time to enjoy what nature and human collaboration place within everyone’s reach. If the great majority of people could understand this basic notion, if they could be liberated from the competitive illusion that is impoverishing everyone’s life, the very foundations of capitalism, would start to crumble.

Franco Bifo Berardi

Related Read: How to Use the Feynman Technique to Learn Anything Fast & Effectively

If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.

Mother Teresa

No one on his deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office.

Paul Tsongas

Framing the issue of work life balance – as if the two were dramatically opposed – practically ensures work will lose out. Who would ever choose work over life?

Sheryl Sandberg

We have overstretched our personal boundaries and forgotten that true happiness comes from living an authentic life fueled with a sense of purpose and balance.

Kathleen Hall

Balance is not better time management, but better boundary management. Balance means making choices and enjoying those choices.

Betsy Jacobson

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

Albert Einstein

When in doubt, choose the kids. There will be plenty of time later to choose work.

Anna Quindlen

Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.

Stephen Covey

Related Read: 15 Best Time Management Tips: How to Manage Your Time Effectively

That’s all our work-life balance quotes for now, and we hope it helps you lead a happier and more successful life, both professionally and personally! Got any questions, feedback, or other quotes about work-life balance to add to this article? Let us know below in the comments, and thanks for reading!

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Christian Eilers
Written By Christian Eilers
is a writer and expert on the topics of education, entrepreneurship, career advice, travel, and culture. On the Goodwall Blog, he covers topics including self-improvement, social impact, college preparation, career development, climate action, and more. Christian is originally from New York City and now resides in Kyiv, Ukraine after living in Warsaw, Poland for the past 4 years. At his desk, you're sure to find Pickwick, his Devon Rex cat, either attacking his fingers as he types or the monitor as the mouse pointer moves around.

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  1. The quotes are very insightful. I like the quote of Hillary Clinton, “Don’t confuse career and life.” Thank you for sharing these motivational quotes.