Working hard and struggling to keep up the momentum? The following quotes reflect how various authors, thinkers, and doers approach the reality of hard work from different angles and perspectives.

Hard work as an essential foundation for life and success

• “Talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.” - Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

• "I am not lucky. You know what I am? I am smart, I am talented, I take advantage of the opportunities that come my way and I work really, really hard. Don’t call me lucky. Call me a badass." - Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes:

• “Dreams mean work.” - Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

• "Inspiration on its own was shallow; you had to back it up with hard work." - Michelle Obama, Becoming

• “It's easier to bleed than sweat.” - Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood

• "No matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment." - Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

• “I want you to learn that you cannot have anything without working for it. The only way you can be taken advantage of is if you think you can get something for nothing.” - Maya Angelou, Mom & Me & Mom

• “The work you put in when no one is watching will matter far more than the work you do when the cameras are rolling.” - Leslie Odom Jr., Failing Up: How to Take Risks, Aim Higher, and Never Stop Learning

• “Only I have no luck any more. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.” - Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

• “Life in America was hard, but it was free, and if you worked hard, you might gain some opportunity, maybe even open a shop or business of some kind.” - James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

• “No one understands and appreciates the American Dream of hard work leading to material rewards better than a non-American.” - Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential

• “‘I think perhaps education doesn’t do us much good unless it is mixed with sweat.’” -Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father

• ″‘It’s work, son,’ Father said. ‘That’s what money is; it’s hard work.‘” - Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy

• “As long as you are alive, you will either live to accomplish your own goals and dreams or be used as a resource to accomplish someone else's.” - Grant Cardone, The 10x Rule

• "All I will say is that I’m a very good man who has worked very hard to become good and you wanna destroy that. You wanna destroy me but I am not gonna let you do that.” -Tony Kushner, Angels in America

• “There are no gains, without pains.” - Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac

Why hard work takes determination and persistence

• "If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault.” - Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

• “It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to quit. To know you want to quit but to plant your feet and keep inching closer until you take the impenetrable fortress you’ve decided to lay siege to in your own life—that’s persistence.” - Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way

• “Sometimes there's not a better way. Sometimes there's only the hard way.” - Mary E. Pearson, The Fox Inheritance

• “People don’t realize that the thing that separates real artists from wannabes is real ones finish what they started. Persistence. Commitment to a work nobody seems to want or need until you show them what it was they were missing.” - Danzy Senna, Colored Television

• “Being relentless means demanding more of yourself than anyone else could ever demand of you, knowing that every time you stop, you can still do more. You must do more.” - Tim S. Grover, Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable

• “When we're determined to reach an objective, it's the gap between where we are and where we aspire to be that lights a fire under us.” - Adam Grant, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

• “The time you least feel like doing something is the best time to do it.” - Robin Sharma, The 5AM Club

• “Until you become completely obsessed with your mission, no one will take you seriously. Until the world understands that you're not going away—that you are 100 percent committed and have complete and utter conviction and will persist in pursuing your project—you will not get the attention you need and the support you want.” - Grant Cardone, The 10x Rule

• “All shadows of insecurity dissolve in the warm glow of persistence.” - Robin Sharma, The 5AM Club

• “What defines us is how we rise after failing.” - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

• “Your life isn't about a big break. It's about taking one significant life-transforming step at a time.” - Oprah Winfrey, The Path Made Clear 

• “Do. The. Work. Every day, you have to do something you don’t want to do. Every day. Challenge yourself to be uncomfortable, push past the apathy and laziness and fear.” - Tim S. Grover, Relentless

• “Why had it never occurred to Frankie that a girl, a woman, could have a place on her father’s office wall for doing something heroic or important, that a woman could invent something or discover something or be a nurse on the battlefield, could literally save lives?” - Kristin Hannah, The Women

• “Goals are achieved through discomfort and hard work. They aren't achieved when you hide out in a place where you're nice and cozy.” - Colleen Hoover, November 9 

• “The only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your  willingness to work hard for them.” - Michelle Obama, Becoming

• “A scullery maid? Ridiculous. I was Matilda Cook, daughter of Lucille, granddaughter of Captain William Farnsworth Cook, of the Pennsylvania Fifth Regiment. I could read, write, and figure numbers faster than most. I was not afraid of hard work. I would set my own course.” - Laurie Halse Anderson, Fever 1793

• “The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.” - Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

• “Persistence turns a bar of iron into a needle.”  - Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Dust Child

• “My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest.” - Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

• “He wasn’t born an athlete. He made himself one.” - Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny

Taking a practical approach to hard work

• “Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.” - Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

• “Did you ever consider how ridiculous it would be to try to cram on a farm—to forget to plant in the spring, play all summer and then cram in the fall to bring in the harvest? The farm is a natural system. The price must be paid and the process followed. You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut.” - Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

• “A person who has not done one half his day's work by ten o'clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.” - Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

• “Things rarely get stuck because of lack of time. They get stuck because the doing of them has not been defined.” – David Allen, Getting Things Done

• “Ideas are worth nothing unless backed by application. The smallest of implementations is always worth more than the grandest of intentions.” - Robin Sharma, The 5AM Club

• “You can do whatever you set your mind to if you just roll up your sleeves, get in there, and do it. Everything is figureoutable.” - Marie Forleo, Everything Is Figureoutable

• "They tell you: Follow your dreams. Listen to your spirit. Change the world. Make your mark. Find your inner voice and make it sing. Embrace failure. Dream. Dream and dream big. As a matter of fact, dream and don’t stop dreaming until your dream comes true. I think that’s crap. I think a lot of people dream. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, powerful, engaged people? Are busy doing." - Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes

• "All profit that is out of proportion to the labor expended is dishonest.” - Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

• “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits

• “‘Do you see, Pooh? Do you see, Piglet? Brains first and then Hard Work. Look at it! That’s the way to build a house,’ said Eeyore proudly.” - A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

• “If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right. And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made—that you made—and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better. If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.” - William H. McRaven, Make Your Bed

• “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” - Stephen King, On Writing

• “I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield before you are up; and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all.” -Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

• “You should first follow the plow if you want to dance the harvest jig.” - Ken Follett, World Without End

Finding meaning and purpose in hard work

• “If you care about what you do and work hard at it, there isn't anything you can't do if you want to.” - Jim Henson, It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider

• “It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.” - John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

• “I don't like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself not for others—what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.” - Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

• “The homeliest tasks get beautified if loving hands do them.” - Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

• “Perhaps this is how you know you're doing the thing you're intended to: No matter how slow or how slight your progress, you never feel that it's a waste of time.” - Curtis Sittenfeld, The Man of My Dreams

• “Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.” - Madeleine L’Engle, The Summer of the Great Grandmother

• “The monkeys solved the puzzle simply because they found it gratifying to solve puzzles. They enjoyed it. The joy of the task was its own reward.” - Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

• “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, Eldest

• “Human beings, it seems, are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging.” - Cal Newport, Deep Work, Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

• “Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind.” - Tara Westover, Educated  

• “Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.” - Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers

• “When the reward is the activity itself—deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one's best—there are no shortcuts.” - Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

• “Go on with your work as usual, for work is a blessed solace.” - Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

• "It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it.” - A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine

• “It is hard work to fill one’s life with meaning.” -Chaim Potok, The Chosen

• “A job well done is a reward in its own right.” - Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove 

• “Belief, hard work, love–you have those things, you can do anything.” - Mitch Albom, For One More Day