16 Quotes To Help Motivate Your Job Search

Summer means reading on the beach! Hanging with friends on a rooftop bar! And, if you're a recent grad, weeping softly into a stack of job applications! (I know that most job apps are online these days, but you get the idea.) If you didn't come raring out of college with a firm job offer, then you're in good company. Lots of shiny new post-grads are spending their first summer in the "real world" sending out job application after job application. And it can be... discouraging, to say the least. But don't lose hope, because here are some motivational quotes from literature to help you survive the job hunt hustle!

Of course, you don't have to be a recent grad to be drowning in job search woes. No matter where you are in life, updating your resume is an unpleasant task. And then those websites make you enter your previous job experience all over again! Why are we uploading our resumes if you're just going to make us enter all that information again, website? The first few months of a job hunt involve a lot of rejection. Add to that the expenses of everyday living, plus seeing all your Facebook friends posting about their wildly successful careers in new media and, well... here are some quotes to remind you that it's all going to work out:

1. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

2. There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.

― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

3. All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

― Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

4. What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.

― Maya Angelou, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

5. Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

6. I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

― Frank Herbert, Dune

7. People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.

― George Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession

8. Life is full of screwups. You're supposed to fail sometimes. It's a required part of the human existence.

― Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride

9. Some people say, “Never let them see you cry.” I say, if you’re so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone.

― Tina Fey, Bossypants

10. You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be.

― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

11. You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...

― Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You'll Go!

12. Work hard, know your shit, show your shit, and then feel entitled. Listen to no one except the two smartest and kindest adults you know, and that doesn't always mean your parents. If you do that, you will be fine.

― Mindy Kaling, Why Not Me?

13. Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.

― Eleanor Roosevelt, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt

14. But I kept at it with the help-wanted ads. My standards were sliding swiftly. At first I had insisted I would only work at a company with a mission I believed in. Then I thought maybe it would be fine as long as I was learning something new. After that I decided it just couldn't be evil. Now I was carefully delineating my personal definition of evil.

― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

15. Treat your career like a bad boyfriend. Here's the thing. Your career won't take care of you. It won't call you back or introduce you to its parents. Your career will openly flirt with other people while you are around. It will forget you birthday and wreck your car. Your career will blow you off if you call it too much. It's never going to leave its wife. Your career is f*cking other people and everyone knows but you. Your career will never marry you. (...) If your career is a bad boyfriend, it is healthy to remember you can always leave and go sleep with somebody else.

― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

16. Hold fast to dreams, For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird, That cannot fly.

― Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes

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