Dalai Lama Quotes

Making a living and having a life are not the same thing. Making a living and making a life that's worthwhile are not the same thing. Living the good life and living a good life are not the same thing. A job title doesn't even come close to answering the question. "What do you do?".

What preoccupies us is the way we define success. If you see your life purely in terms of money and power, then everything in your life becomes about 'Am I getting ahead?' and that is truly a barbaric way to live, because it eliminates huge chunks of our humanity.

I think everyone is always asking themselves, How is my work meaningful, how is my life meaningful? As I get older, I feel like who I am as a person and a citizen is more important than who I am in my work. But I do think it reframed slightly for me, how much I have to care about a project in order to want to do it. Sometimes, obviously, you have a take a job for money. But I think I'm quicker now when I get a script that's, say, borderline misogynist, I'm not going to go in for it. I'm thinking more about what I'm putting into the world.

One of the things you'll discover... as you listen to your own soul is that you spend a great amount of your life trying to bring meaning to your own life. And, by the way, most people are not going to church, so the place they're actually trying to find meaning in their life is at work.

For most people, life would be boring without meaningful work.

Work defines our lives and our place in the world.

I want it to be said when I leave this world that 'he was not just a money-making machine.'

Work is a salvation. Work is how you connect with who you are, no matter how painful it might be.

Everyone has wondered if his or her life will ultimately be a happy one.

My career had zero to do with whether or not my husband also worked. It had everything to do with personal identity, personal goals, and making the most of my life.

Life is all about balance. My work is very important to me, but so are my relationships. I make time for that aspect of my life, and it makes me happy having balance in my life.

You have to have something in your life that's more important than the work. People don't really like to admit that. They say, 'Oh, my work is my most important thing.'

Without boxing, there ain't no life. For me, at least.

The way I see it is if I can't be happy doing this job, which is my dream job, then what's going to make me happy in life?

Neither of us are workaholics. I think the key thing is to accept that if you only exist through what you do, then you become what you do, and this is very wrong.

Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the first.

It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.

A man or woman is seldom happy unless he or she is sustaining him or herself and making a contribution to others.

You make the mistake of thinking you have to choose, that you have to do what you want, that there are conditions for happiness. What matters — all that matters, really is the will to happiness, a kind of enormous, ever present consciousness. The rest - women , art, success — is nothing but excuses. A canvas waiting for our embroideries.

There is a lot more to this life than just the struggle to make money.

A man can be so busy making a living that he forgets to make a life.

The school asks a person who has achieved a certain level of career success to give you a speech telling you that career success is not important.

Finding happiness is like finding yourself. You don't find happiness, you make happiness. You choose happiness. Self-actualization is a process of discovering who you are, who you want to be and paving the way to happiness by doing what brings you the most meaning and contentment to your life over the long run.

Working is part of life, I don't know how to distinguish between the two... Work is an expression of life.

Don't forget until too late that the business of life is not business but living.