Quotes About Meaning

life is a mission and not a career," and that we could find true happiness by serving others.

How many on their deathbeds wished they'd spent more time at the office—or watching TV? The answer is, No one. They think about their loved ones, their families, and those they have served.

Hasta que no hayamos elegido nuestras motivaciones, no podemos elegir vivir nuestra vida de verdad. Todo es fruto de los motivos y de la motivación, que constituyen las raíces de nuestros deseos más profundos.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Our meaning comes from within. Again, in the words of Frankl, "Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

Victor Frankl suggests that there are three central values in life—the experiential, or that which happens to us; the creative, or that which we bring into existence; and the attitudinal, or our response in difficult circumstances such as terminal illness.

I'm busy—really busy. But sometimes I wonder if what I'm doing will make any difference in the long run. I'd really like to think there was meaning in my life, that somehow things were different because I was here.

Now think deeply. What would you like each of these speakers to say about you and your life? What kind of husband, wife, father, or mother would you like their words to reflect? What kind of son or daughter or cousin? What kind of friend? What kind of working associate? What character would you like them to have seen in you? What contributions, what achievements would you want them to remember? Look carefully at the people around you. What difference would you like to have made in their lives?

As long as you feel you are serving others, you do the job well. When you are concerned only with helping yourself, you do it less well—a law as inexorable as gravity.

Nietzsche: "He who has a 'why' can live with any 'what.'" Dr. Frankl hypothesized that we have three parts to our nature: our body, our mind, and our spirit. But his deepest conviction is that most—not all—diseases originate in the spirit. That is, in a sense of meaninglessness, a sense of hollowness, a sense of purposelessness. No mission. No vision.

If you don't have a mission statement, spend a few moments connecting with your inner compass and thinking about what really matters most in your life.

Third, what you choose to do contributes to your ultimate values in life. Staying at work to get the edge on someone at the office is an entirely different evening in your life from staying because you value your boss's effectiveness and you genuinely want to contribute to the company's welfare. The experiences you have as you carry out your decisions take on quality and meaning in the context of your life as a whole.

Your vision is the end, the destination. Principles are the means, like the flight plan. Vision is who you really are and what you could become. Principles are those unalterable truths you feel so strongly about that you are willing to accept them as your own set of values.

It's much more a matter of what you do and why you do it, than how fast you get it done.

It was the responsibility of the living to make meaningful the sacrifices of the dead.

The idea that his wedding band was some kind of talisman nauseated him like the smell of attar.

No matter. All things end, in perversion and death. Sorrow belongs to those who also hope. But that Unfettered One gave his life so that you and your message and your ring might reach the Lords. This we will accomplish, so that such sacrifices may have meaning.

Are you alive?" "Perhaps. While I have purpose, I move and speak. My eyes behold. Is this life?

Futility is the defining characteristic of life. Pain is the proof of existence.

There is] truth on the far side of despair and doom. All we have to do is find it.

Service enables service. Hope came from the power and value of what was served, not from the one who served it.

Abruptly Loerya joined the probing. "And if there is no Creator? Or if the creation is untended?" "Then who is there to reproach us? We provide the meaning of our own lives. If we serve the Land purely to the furthest limit of our abilities, what more can we ask of ourselves?

But even if religion makes no sense to you, you need to make sense of religion to to make sense of the world.

Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.