Quotes About Purpose

As long as there is a single god standing, mankind's work will not be finished.

Budu?i da te nikakva prirodna sklonost ne nagoni na djelo i njegovo dovršenje, zašto tako silno težiš samoostvarenju? I budu?i da ne osu?uješ dokolicu, što te tjera na užurbanost i djelovanje? Odakle grižnja savjesti što tratiš vrijeme kad znaš za njegovu uzaludnost?

The more you live, the less useful it seems to have lived.

We should repeat to ourselves, every day: I am one of the billions dragging himself across the earth's surface. One, and no more. This banality justifies any conclusion, any behavior or action: debauchery, chastity, suicide, work, crime, sloth, or rebellion...Whence it follows that each man is right to do what he does.

It is a great force, and a great fortune, to be able to live without any ambition whatever. I aspire to it, but the very fact of so aspiring still participates in ambition.

And this nothing, this everything, cannot give life a meaning, but it nonetheless makes life persevere in what it is: a state of non-suicide.

Deep in his heart, man aspires to rejoin the condition he had before consciousness. History is merely the detour he takes to get there.

By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing; but instead of nonchalantly promenading our corruption, we exude our sweat and grow winded upon the fetid air. All History is in a state of petrification; its odours shift toward the future: we rush toward it, if only for the fever inherent in any decomposition.

It may very well be tht man's sole purpose is none other than to think of god. If we could either love him or ignore him we would be saved.

If we do not regard ourselves as entrusted with a mission, existence is difficult; action, impossible.

Getting up with my head full of plans, I would be working, I was sure of it, all morning long. No sooner had I sat down at my desk than the odious, vile, and persuasive refrain: "What do you expect of this world?" stopped me short. And I returned, as usual, to my bed with the hope of finding some answer, of going back to sleep...

When I torment myself a little too much for not working, I tell myself that I might just as well be dead and that then I would be working still less...

So long as there is a single god standing, man's task is not done.

Do I look like someone who has something to do here on earth?

Why do men insist on achieving something? Would it not be better if they stood still under the sun in calm and silent immobility? What is there to accomplish? Why so much effort and ambition? Man has forgotten the meaning of silence.

Ennui is the martyrdom for those who live and die for no belief

Where to go? Where to live? And what to seek in the uproar of a Babylonized planet?

If I used to ask myself, over a coffin: "What good did it do the occupant to be born?", I now put the same question about anyone alive.

Do I look like someone who has something to do here on earth?" —That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities.

Ennui is the martyrdom of those who live and die for no belief.

Estar en el tiempo, con menos provecho que Dios antes de la creación —imaginar y alcanzar el límite absoluto de la inutilidad.

Si la Historia tuviera una finalidad, que lamentable sería el destino de quienes no hemos hecho nada en la vida. Pero en medio del absurdo general, nos alzamos triunfadores, piltrafas ineficaces, canallas orgullosos de haber tenido razón.

Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing. No argument or consideration can absolve typography from this duty. A printed work which cannot be read becomes a product without purpose.

Todo meio é ele próprio um fim.