A self is a personal mythos — a story through which we sieve the complexity and condradictions of lived experience for coherence. The cruelest price of success — that affirmation of the self by the world — is the way it can ossifty the story of person, ensnare them into believing their own myth. In this regard, learning to live with your success can be as challenging as learning to live with your failure — both are continual acts of courage and resistance to the petrification of personhood into a selfing story, a refusal to measure your soul by the world’s estimation.

Rockwell Kent (June 21, 1882–March 13, 1971) labored at his singular paintings and prints in solitude, in penury, in obscurity for decades. When the New York art world declared him an overnight success, largely thanks to his transcendent account of nine months on a remote Alaskan island, he left the city and moved to a quiet farmstead uptate, then left the continent, returning to the austere solitudes of the Arctic to paint, write, and reflect on the meaning of it all. In a lovely passage from N by E (public library) — his altogether exquisite 1930 memoir of the year he spent in the far north, rife with wisdom on how to be more alive — he models that courage, recounting a thrift store encounter that stands as a scale model of the disorientation of success.

Fifteen years earlier, living in Newfoundland during WWI, Kent had adorned his doorway with a statue of a maiden he had found “weatherbeaten and neglected in the rubbish heap of a ship store,” which he had washed, sanded, painted, and bejeweled to restore her haunting beauty. When the time came for him to return to New York, he yearned to take her home, but could not afford the fees:

I offered what I could for her. But I was poor and it was little. So I left her there.

A decade passed. The gallery world awoke to the shimmering originality of his paintings and Kent became one of New York’s most celebrated artists. One day, he wandered into a thift store and there was his maiden, “hardly changed” — a ghost of the life that had changed so profoundly, yet in that moment Kent realized how hard he must fight to keep it from changing him, from turning him into a statue of himself. He recounts:

Out from among rare cabinets and chairs and clocks and porcelains, the frayed and mellowed chattels of decayed gentility, she stared — that sailor’s sweetheart — vacantly, as if the room, the city and the world were part of the wide sea and firmament that she was born to. And as I turned and ran to her, and sweet memories and almost love crowded and clamored in my brain and breast, as I reached out to touch her as I used to — suddenly I dared not. And I knew what changes time and affluence had wrought. And I reproached myself.

“Where did you find her?” I asked the salesman in a whisper.

“In Boston,” he whispered back.

So then — not even asking what her city price might be — I tiptoed out.

Couple this modern koan, which releases more and more nuances of wisdom the more you turn it over on the tongue of the mind, with Arundhati Roy on the deepest measure of success, then revisit Kent on wilderness, solitude, and creativity.

Some mornings you just feel tired and unmotivated.

And some days at work sure do seem longer than others.

So to help you out I’d like to share 120 of the most motivational, positive and powerful short work quotes.

I hope you’ll find something here that will renew your energy. Give you a jolt of motivation or a few laughs to release some of that stress.

And inspiration so you can make this day a successful one.

Positive Short Work Quotes for Quick Motivation

“Every moment is a fresh beginning.”
– T.S. Eliot

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
– Wayne Gretzky

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
– Arthur Ashe

“Work hard in silence, let success be your noise.”
– Frank Ocean

“Make each day your masterpiece.”
– John Wooden

“Dream big and dare to fail.”
– Norman Vaughan

“Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”
– Oscar Wilde

“Happiness is not by chance but by choice.”
– Jim Rohn

“Turn your wounds into wisdom.”
– Oprah Winfrey

“You must do the things you think you cannot do.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

“Perfect is boring. Human is beautiful.”
– Tyra Banks

“Whatever you are, be a good one.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“Impossible is for the unwilling.”
– John Keats

“The future depends on what you do today.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

“Believe you can, and you’re halfway there.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.”
– Wayne Dyer

“Your most important work is always ahead of you, never behind you.”
– Stephen Covey

“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”
– Charles R. Swindoll

“Dreams don’t work unless you do.”
– John C. Maxwell

“Focus on being productive instead of busy.”
– Tim Ferriss

Short Inspirational Work Quotes for the Day

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
– Will Rogers

“Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”
– Vince Lombardi

“Impossible is just an opinion.”
– Paulo Coelho

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”
– Walt Disney

“Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.”
– Albert Einstein

“The expert in anything was once a beginner.”
– Helen Hayes

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”
– Tim Notke

“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is hard work.”
– Stephen King

“Do or do not. There is no try.”
– Yoda

“It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”
– Babe Ruth

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”
– Milton Berle

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”
– Albert Einstein

“Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.”
– Sam Levenson

“Build your own dreams or someone else will hire you to build theirs.”
– Farrah Gray

“What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.”
– Ralph Marston

“The more I want to get something done the less I call it work.”
– Richard Bach

“Talent wins games, but teamwork wins championships.”
– Michael Jordan

“Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.”
– Albert Einstein

“Light tomorrow with today.”
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Short Hard Work Quotes to Help You Reach Your Dreams

“Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen.”
– Conan O’Brien

“Hard work always pays off, whatever you do.”
– Dustin Lynch

“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
– Vidal Sassoon

“Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.”
– Henry Ford

“A lot of hard work is hidden behind nice things.”
– Ralph Lauren

“Preparation for tomorrow is hard work today.”
– Bruce Lee

“Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice.”
– Henry Ford

“Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No excuses.”
– Kobe Bryant

“I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work.”
– Margaret Thatcher

“If you do the work you get rewarded. There are no shortcuts in life.”
– Michael Jordan

“Nothing will work unless you do.”
– Maya Angelou

“Without labor, nothing prospers.”
– Sophocles

“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”
– Beverly Sills

“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”
– Robert Collier

“A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.”
– Colin Powell

“Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.”
– John F. Kennedy

“Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs.”
– Malcolm Forbes

“Without a struggle there can be no progress.”
– Frederick Douglass

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.”
– Aristotle

“All growth depends upon activity.”
– Calvin Coolidge

Funny Short Work Quotes for Stress Relief

“If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in the dark with a mosquito.”
– Betty Reese

“I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.”
– Charles Lamb

“Work is the greatest thing in the world, so we should always save some of it for tomorrow.”
– Don Herold

“Beat the 5 o’clock rush. Leave work at noon.”
– Unknown

Television is not real life. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.”
– Bill Gates

“Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work.”
– Robert Orben

“There’s no business like show business, but there are several businesses like accounting.”
– David Letterman

“The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”
– Robert Frost

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
– Thomas Edison

“Nothing is impossible. The word itself says ‘I’m possible!’”
– Audrey Hepburn

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.”
– Zig Ziglar

“I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.”
– Lily Tomlin

“I work for myself, which is fun. Except when I call in sick, I know I’m lying.”
– Rita Rudner

“If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving definitely isn’t for you.”
– Steven Wright

“I am an early bird and a night owl. So I am wise, and I have worms.”
– Michael Scott (from the TV-show The Office)

“Age is of no importance unless you’re a cheese.”
– Billie Burke

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.”
– Mark Twain

“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”
– Bill Gates

“Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?”
– Edgar Bergen

“People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.”
– Winnie the Pooh

Short Work Quotes for Those Tough and Bad Days

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action.”
– Carrie Fisher

“A bend in the road is not the end of the road, unless you fail to make the turn.”
– Helen Keller

“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.”
– Richard Branson

“It ain’t as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.”
– Colin Powell

“The best way out is always through.”
– Robert Frost

“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
– Harriet Beecher Stowe

“You can’t change how people treat you or what they say about you. All you can do is change how you react to it.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
– Dale Carnegie

“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
– Truman Capote

“As long as they are well-intentioned, mistakes are not a matter for shame, but for learning.”
– Margaret Heffernan

“Show me a person who has never made a mistake and I’ll show you someone who has never achieved much.”
– Joan Collins

“Strength does not come from winning. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
– C.S. Lewis

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens.”
– Helen Keller

“I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.”
– Maya Angelou

“The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.”
– Harry Golden

“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something.”
– Barack Obama

“Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.”
– Dale Carnegie

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.”
– Maya Angelou

Short Motivational Work Quotes for Success

“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency.”
– Dwayne Johnson

“Don’t count the days, make the days count.”
– Muhammad Ali

“The best revenge is massive success.”
– Frank Sinatra

“Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out.”
– Robert Collier

“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
– Henry Ford

“Don’t aim for success if you want it, just do what you love and believe in and it will come naturally.”
– David Frost

“You are enough just as you are.”
– Meghan Markle

“You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.”
– Zig Ziglar

“If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.”
– Jim Rohn

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
– Vincent Van Gogh

“The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs… one step at a time.”
– Joe Girard

“Whatever your life’s work is, do it well.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone.”
– Johnny Cash

“Real courage is holding on to a still voice in your head that says, ‘I must keep going.’”
– Cory Booker

“Whenever you see a successful person you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them.”
– Vaibhav Shah

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’”
– Mary Anne Radmacher

“Small disciplines repeated with consistency every day lead to great achievements gained slowly over time.”
– John C. Maxwell

“If you can’t stop thinking about it, don’t stop working on it.”
– Michael Jordan

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.”
– Amelia Earhart

“Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.”
– William Feather

“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”
– Suzy Kassem

Want more inspiration and motivation for your day? Then check out these quotes to help you work smarter, the hard work quotes here, this one with positive quotes about life and also this post with quotes for daily inspiration.

Successful people usually don’t achieve success by accident. It’s often in how they think and what they do that makes a difference. After all, success isn’t just about achieving goals—it’s about cultivating the habits, mindsets and actions that lead to consistent growth and fulfillment. While the goal might be the ultimate prize, we should feel successful every step we take in the right direction. 

These successful people quotes, many from high achievers and well-known leaders in various industries, can inspire and guide others on their path to success. By internalizing these messages, we can shift our perspectives, adopt more effective habits and cultivate the mindset necessary to achieve our own version of success.

Quotes on What Successful People Do

What are the things that successful people do? From planning for success to daily goal-setting, those who are high achievers take different approaches to help them get ahead. Success is more than just having a positive mindset; it’s about the actions you take and the steps you make each day. These quotes about success and growth show the steps that successful people take to reach their goals, whether in their personal or professional life. 

• “The path to success is to take massive, determined action.” —Tony Robbins
• “Success is not how high you have climbed, but how you make a positive difference to the world.” —Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
• “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” —Elinor Smith, Aviatrix
• “Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” —Coco Chanel, Believing in Ourselves: The Wisdom of Women
• “Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” —Sun Tzu, The Art of War
• “Whatever the mind can of man conceive and believe, it can achieve.” —Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice
• “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
• “When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.” —Ellen DeGeneres, Seriously… I’m Kidding
• “Successful people do daily what unsuccessful people do occasionally. They practice daily disciplines. They implement systems for their personal growth. They make it a habit to maintain a positive attitude. ”—John Maxwell, Good Leaders Ask Great Questions

Related: “When One Door Closes, One Door Opens” Quotes for a Positive Outlook

Quotes on Business, Success and Growth from Successful People

Succeeding in business can look like a lot of different things—getting a promotion, winning a new client, receiving praise from a boss or something else. Sometimes success can be as small as remembering a task that’s slipped to the wayside. These business and success quotes will inspire you to achieve, one step at a time. They might also show you just how successful people lead as well. 

• “Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.” —Zig Ziglar
• “If you talk about it, it’s a dream. If you envision it, it’s possible. If you schedule it, it’s real.” —Tony Robbins
• “Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’ ” —Brian Tracy
• “In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.” —Nikos Kazantzakis
• “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
• “Don’t confuse poor decision making with destiny. Own your mistakes. It’s ok; we all make them. Learn from them so they can empower you!” —Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

• “Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.” —Robert T. Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Related: The Ultimate Guide to Bulletproof Habits

How Successful People Think: Quotes to Inspire a New Mindset

Successful people cultivate mindsets that focus on growth, resilience and purpose. They view setbacks as opportunities to learn, embrace challenges as pathways to improvement and maintain unwavering belief in their goals even when faced with obstacles. These quotes on what makes a person successful show how self-reflection, gratitude practices and a commitment to lifelong learning will help you achieve. They give a few clues on how successful people think to help inspire all of us, too. 

• “Your success and happiness lie in you.” —Helen Keller, Out of the Dark: Essays, Lectures, and Addresses on Physical and Social Vision
• “I’m a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn’t have the heart to let him down.” —Abraham Lincoln
• “At the end of the day, let there be no excuses, no explanations, no regrets.” —Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

• “Our greatest fear… should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.” —Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
• “Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.” —Criss Jami, Killosophy
• “Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can’t exist without one.” —Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Related: 6 Qualities of Wildly Successful People 

Words from Successful People: Sayings for the Keys to Success

The road to success is not always straight. It’s often bumpy, with lots of detours, sharp turns and even cliffs on one side. From these “road to success” quotes and “keys to success” sayings, we can learn that a step in the right direction is a step towards success. It might feel insurmountable, but you can’t get there without taking that first step. 

• “Persistence overshadows even talent as the most valuable resource shaping the quality of life.” —Tony Robbins

• “Failures are the stairs we climb to reach success.” —Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
• “To be successful, you need friends, and to be very successful, you need enemies.” —Sidney Sheldon, The Other Side of Midnight
• “The way of success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge.” —Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich
• “It is said we learn more from our failures than our successes.” —Holly Black, The Wicked King
• “To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.” —Isaac Asimov, Foundation

SUCCESS® Exclusive Quotes from Successful Men and Women  

What makes someone successful can vary from person to person; after all, we each have our own unique definitions of success. However, these exclusive quotes from SUCCESS® show some common themes among great leaders and high achievers that help highlight what it takes to be successful.

• “Of course, technical skills matter. But if you want to lead a team effectively, your emotional intelligence will make or break your success. It’s about creating an environment where vulnerability is seen as strength, where personal stories become powerful teaching tools and where facing our fears together becomes the pathway to something extraordinary.” —Amy Somerville 
• “I think there’s a difference between successful and unsuccessful people in the way they particularly think about approaching something new. I think unsuccessful people, when they have a big dream and start thinking about what’s going to be required to accomplish that dream, they get very limiting in their beliefs about themselves and what’s possible.” —Brendan Burchard

• “[We’ve] all missed this hidden first step to personal growth and change…. Before you can take control of your own life, you must first stop trying to control everybody else’s.” —Mel Robbins
• “I remember when I was in a room with massively successful people, and yet I wasn’t vulnerable enough to say, ‘Hey, I don’t know this, but can you teach me this?’ Imagine if I had done that in my 20s? Imagine where I would be now. The people in that room were Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and various Hollywood celebrities.” —Daymond John 
• “Success is a result of good judgment; good judgment is a result of experience, in most cases. And what about experience? Yes, experience is most often a result of bad judgment. So here’s the good news: The experience gained from bad judgment and bad decisions is unbelievably valuable—it’s priceless! —Tony Robbins

Unique Sayings on Success

If you are looking for successful people quotes to use for affirmations, check out these short quotes originally written by SUCCESS® contributors. They offer inspiration to motivate change within yourself and achieve your goals. 

• The secret to success is to focus more on progress than perfection.
• Success does not come to you; you go to it.
• The only limit to your success is the belief that you can’t achieve it.

• Dream big, start small, but most importantly, start now.
• Every failure is a stepping stone to the success you’re building.
• Success is built on the lessons learned from every setback.
• Success begins the moment you decide to take the first step.
• Success is the sum of small efforts repeated daily, not a single monumental effort.
• Success requires consistency, not perfection.
• To succeed, focus on progress, not applause.
• Success is not what you get but who you become in the process.

Inspiring Success Through Words and Actions

Success is more than reaching a destination—it’s the journey of continuous growth, learning and resilience. These “success is no accident” quotes serve as powerful reminders that the path to success is paved with persistence, purpose and an unrelenting drive to keep moving forward. Let these words not only motivate you but also serve as a guide to building a life defined by meaningful progress and lasting impact.

This article was updated May 2025. Photo by Face Stock/Shutterstock