Quotes About Purpose

Self-realization and self-fulfilment are the sine qua non for human existence.

You want to live? You better figure out your life.

Willy: I am building something with this firm, Ben, and if a man is building something he must be on the right track, mustn't he? Ben: What are you building? Lay your hand on it. where is it? Willy [hesitantly]: That's true, Linda, there's nothing.

I've always made a point of not wasting my life, and everytime I come back here I know that all I've done is waste my life.

Every man does have a star. the star of one's honesty. and you spend your life groping for it, but once its out it never lights again.

I stopped middle of that I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can't I say that, Willy?

and if a man is building something he must be on the right track, mustn't he?

I've always made a point of not wasting my life, and everytime I come back here I know that all I've done is to waste my life.

Willy: Figure it out. Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there's nobody to live in it.

He would tell himself he had momentarily gone mad and forgotten why he existed. Do not forget again and you will never feel so lost again, he would remind himself, confident in his memory's ability to be permanently fixed.

Ordinary people merely think how they shall 'spend' their time; a man of talent tries to 'use' it.

There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy... So long as we persist in this inborn error... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in things great and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of what is called disappointment.

What keeps all living things busy and in motion is the striving to exist. But when existence is secured, they do not know what to do: that is why the second thing that sets them in motion is a striving to get rid of the burden of existence, not to feel it any longer, 'to kill time', i.e. to escape boredom.

No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.

If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most ill-adapted to its purpose in the world.

Life presents itself first and foremost as a task: the task of maintaining itself, the task of earning one's living. If this task is accomplished, what has been gained is a burden, and there then appears a second task: that of doing something with it so as to ward off boredom, which hovers over every secure life like a bird of prey. Thus the first task is to gain something and the second to become unconscious of what has been gained, which is otherwise a burden.

If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most Ill-adapted to its purpose in the world: for it is absurd to suppose that the endless affliction of which the world is everywhere full, and which arises out of the need and distress pertaining essentially to life, should be purposeless and purely accidental. Each individual misfortune, to be sure, seems an exceptional occurrence; but misfortune in general is the rule.

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. [...] The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.

You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing.

Common people are merely intent on spending time - whoever has some talent, on making use of it.

The ultimate aim of all love affairs ... is more important than all other aims in man's life; and therefore it is quite worthy of the profound seriousness with which everyone pursues it.

Whenever we are not occupied in one of these ways, but cast upon existence itself, its vain and worthless nature is brought home to us; and this is what we mean by boredom.

En büyük bilgelik ÅŸu andan zevk almay? hayat?n en büyük amac? k?lmakt?r, çünkü tek gerçek budur, baÅŸka her ÅŸey düÅŸünce oyunudur. Ama bunun en büyük budalal???m?z olduÄŸunu da söyleyebiliriz, çünkü yaln?zca k?sa bir süre için var olan ve bir rüya gibi kaybolan içinde bulunduÄŸumuz bu an asla ciddi bir çabaya deÄŸmez.

There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy.