'You will never feel proud of your work if you find no joy within it; your best work is always joyful work.'

'Follow your enthusiasm. It's something I've always believed in. Find those parts of your life you enjoy the most. Do what you enjoy doing.'

- "Muppets" creator Jim Henson (1936-1990)

'Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results.'

- Willie Nelson (1933-present)

A quote from Robin Williams

"There’s no shame in failing. The only shame is not giving things your best shot."

'I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning ... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.'

- Miles Davis (1926-1991)

'The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.'

- American musician BB King (1925-2015)

'Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.'

- Maya Angelou

'Everybody has talent and it's just a matter of moving around until you've discovered what it is. A talent is a combination of something you love a great deal and something you can lose yourself in.'

- George Lucas (1944-present)

'Do something you really like, and hopefully it pays the rent. As far as I'm concerned, that's success.'

- Musician Tom Petty (1950–2017)

A quote from Van Gogh

"Find things beautiful as much as you can, most people find too little beautiful."

'Happiness depends more upon the internal frame of a persons own mind—than on the externals in the world.'

- George Washington (1732-1799)

'Don't gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.'

-Reggae pioneer Bob Marley (1945-1981)

'You shouldn't dream your film, you should make it!'

- Filmmaker Steven Spielberg (1946-present)

'Voices ought not be measured by how pretty they are. Instead they matter only if they convince you that they are telling the truth.'

- Iconic singer Sam Cooke (1931–1964)

'My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each others' negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts.'

-Apple co-founder Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

'If you can't do it with feeling, don't.'

-Singer Patsy Cline (1932-1963)

'The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.'

-Writer J.D. Salinger (1919-2010)

How to find happiness at work

Can someone be happy at work? Harvard Business School professor and co-author (with Oprah Winfrey) of “Build the Life You Want” attempts to answer the enduring question in this video. Brooks strays from measuring one’s power, income, or title and instead emphasizes the importance of believing in one’s work and positively impacting others.

'After you make a fool of yourself a few hundred times, you learn what works.'

- Musician Gwen Stefani (1969-present)

'You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.'

- Hollywood legend Bette Davis (1908 - 1989)

'Mediocrity is always invisible until passion shows up and exposes it'

- Graham Cooke

'What each of us must come to realize is that our intent always comes through.'

- First African American Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993)

'The good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems.'

- Billy Joel (1949-present)

'The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.'

- Poet Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

'I don't know what you can say about a day when you see four beautiful sunsets.'

- Astronaut John Glenn (1921–2016)

Author David Foster Wallace's 'This Is Water' speech provides guidance for adulthood

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

Studies suggest when you sleep is as important as how much you get, and syncing with your circadian rhythms may lead to less fatigue and improved long-term health outcomes

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.

Dorothy's famous entrance into Oz in 'The Wizard of Oz' relied on analog tricks, including a body double and sepia-toned paint, as much as it did on technology

Stars appear to twinkle because turbulence in the motion of molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes light to bend and wiggle rapidly on its way to the surface—a phenomenon called scintillation.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

The American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report card gave the US a C in 2025, its highest grade since the project launched in 1998.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'