The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
Robert Byrne
Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.
Rumi
Great minds have purposes, others have wishes.
Washington Irving
An “unemployed” existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.
José Ortega y Gasset
When he walks he casts a shadow of purpose.
Emme Woodhull-Bäche
There is a purpose to our lives that each day tugs at our sleeve as an annoying distraction.
Robert Brault
When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.
Seneca
We all possess the thunder of pure fury and the calm breeze of tranquility. If it wasn’t for tomorrow, how much would we get done today? Whatever your purpose… embrace it completely. Get lost in the clouds every now and then so you never lose sight of God’s wonder.
Paul Vitale
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Peter F. Drucker
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.
Albert Einstein
Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled.
Barack Obama
We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years, and justify our existence… on pain of liquidation.
George Bernard Shaw
To have no set purpose in one’s life is the harlotry of the will.
Stephen MacKenna
If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.
Barack Obama
A useless life is an early death.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
George Bernard Shaw
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
Epictetus
The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
Robert Byrne
Solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the basic elements, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental pleas for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of results.
Eugene V. Debs
One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one’s life has meaning, that one is needed in this world.
Hannah Senesh
A useless life is an early death.
Goethe
Worry ducks when purpose flies overhead.
C. Astrid Weber
The human race may be compared to a writer. At the outset a writer has often only a vague general notion of the plan of his work, and of the thought he intends to elaborate. As he proceeds, penetrating his material, laboring to express himself fitly, he lays a firmer grasp on his thought; he finds himself. So the human race is writing its story, finding itself, discovering its own underlying purpose, revising, recasting a tale pathetic often, yet none the less sublime.
Felix Adler
I love the valiant; but it is not enough to wield a broadsword, one must also know against whom. Friedrich Nietzsche
Some men see things as they are and say, “Why?” I dream of things that never were and say, “Why not?”
George Bernard Shaw
I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Henry David Thoreau
The mere possession of a vision is not the same as living it, nor can we encourage others with it if we do not, ourselves, understand and follow its truths. The pattern of the Great Spirit is over us all, but if we follow our own spirits from within, our pattern becomes clearer. For centuries, others have sought their visions. They prepare themselves, so that if the Creator desires them to know their life’s purpose, then a vision would be revealed. To be blessed with visions is not enough…we must live them!
High Eagle
To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life.
Alan Coren
Don’t waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.
James Thurber
Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.
Lewis Carroll
Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose direction and begin to bend.
Walter Savage Landor
Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.
Vaclav Havel
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have one life and one chance to make it count for something . . . I’m free to choose what that something is, and the something I’ve chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands — this is not optional — my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.
Jimmy Carter
It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving — as if it were an individual person — its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.
Karl Marx
Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Helen Keller
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
George Bernard Shaw
It is more important to know where you are going than to get there quickly. Do not mistake activity for achievement.
Mabel Newcomber
And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.
Marcus Aurelius
But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it’s better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you’re fighting for.
Paulo Coelho
Service is the rent we pay to be living. It is the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time.
Marian Wright Edelman
Yes there is a meaning; at least for me, there is one thing that matters – to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Mark Twain
Never work just for money or for power. They won’t save your soul or help you sleep at night.
Marian Wright Edelman
Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.
Thomas Merton
I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
I’m doing what I think I was put on this earth to do. And I’m really grateful to have something that I’m passionate about and that I think is profoundly important.
Marian Wright Edelman
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Susan Ertz
I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.
Marie Curie
A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how.”
Victor Frankl
We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.
Marian Wright Edelman
We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don’t know.
W. H. Auden
Whatever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security, guidance, wisdom, and power.
Stephen Covey
The great end of life is not knowledge but action.
Thomas H. Huxley
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
Thomas Paine
People do not lack strength, they lack will.
Victor Hugo
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
Victor Frankl
That is happiness; to be dissolved into something completely great.
Willa Cather
If Heaven made him – earth can find some use for him.
Chinese Proverb
Never forget that the purpose for which a man lives is the improvement of the man himself, so that he may go out of this world having, in his great sphere or his small one, done some little good for his fellow creatures and labored a little to diminish the sin and sorrow that are in the world.
William E. Gladstone
My mother said to me, “If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general; if you become a monk, you’ll end up as the Pope.” Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.
Pablo Picasso
Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.
Paul Tillich
In the world to come, I shall not be asked, “Why were you not Moses?” I shall be asked, “Why were you not Zusya?”
Rabbi Zusya
Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.
Ralph Waldo Emerson