Quotes About Purpose

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

How shall I go on, with my introspective and ambitious life?

I don't want to end up simply having visited the world.

I did not come into this world to be comforted. I came, like red bird, to sing. But I'm not red bird, with his head-mop of flame and the red triangle of his mouth full of tongue and whistles, but a woman whose love has vanished, who thinks now, too much, of roots and the dark places where everything is simply holding on.

That God had a plan, I do not doubt. But what if His plan was, that we would do better?

that is to say, having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life.

This I have always known - that if I did not live my life immersed in the one activity which suits me, and which also, to tell the truth, keeps me utterly happy and intrigued, I would come someday to bitter and mortal regret.

Why do I have so many thoughts, they are driving me crazy. Why am I always going anywhere, instead of somewhere?

and there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do — determined to save the only life you could save.

I know several lives worth living.

there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do— determined to save the only life you could save.

from Emerson's journals. In the context, it is written in the past tense; changing the verb to present tense it reads: The poem is a confession of faith. Which is to say, the poem is not an exercise. It is not 'wordplay.' Whatever skill or beauty it has, in contains something beyond language devices, and has a purpose other than itself.

Everyone now and again wonders about those questions that have no ready answers: first cause, God's existence, what happens when the curtain goes down and nothing stops it, not kissing, not going to the mall, not the Super Bowl. Wild roses, I said to them one morning. Do you have the answers? And if you do, would you tell me? The roses laughed softly. Forgive us, they said. But as you can see, we are just now entirely busy being roses.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

At first they were just clouds like any other. Then they swelled and swirled; then they hung very still; then they broke open. This is, I suppose, just one of the common miracles, a transformation, not a vision, not an answer, not a proof, but I put it there, close against my heart, where the need is, and it serves the purpose

The cricket doesn't wonder if there's a heaven or, if there is, if there's room for him. It's fall. Romance is over. Still, he sings. If he can, he enters a house through the tiniest crack under the door. Then the house grows colder. He sings slower and slower. Then, nothing. This must mean something, I don't know what. But certainly it doesn't mean he hasn't been an excellent cricket all his life.

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

we are each other's destiny

else the responsibility for your life.

I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was alive for a little while.

The way I'd like to go on living in this world wouldn't hurt anything, I'd just go on walking uphill and downhill, looking around, and so what if half the time I don't know what for —

Let me be as urgent as a knife, then, and remind you of Keats, so single of purpose and thinking, for a while, he had a lifetime

I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was alive for a little while.

What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?