Quotes About Purpose

No matter how shallow and dull things might get, this life is worth living.

While you're playing yourself out in lonesome dissipation in front of a pinball machine, someone else might be reading through Proust. Still another might be engaged in heavy petting with a girlfriend at a drive-in theater showing of Paths of Courage. The one could well become a writer, witness to the age; the others, a happily married couple. Pinball machines, however, won't lead you anywhere. Just the replay light. Replay, replay, replay...

Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even it's imperfection.

You know, Junpei, everything in the world has its reasons for doing what it does.

I knew that life was pointless, but I couldn't give up on it.

It's simple. If there's no station, no trains will stop there.

As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the line it all changed. Living turned me into nothing. Weird... People are born in order to live, right? But the longer I've lived, the more I've lost what's inside me --- and ended up empty. And I bet the longer I live, the emptier, the more worthless I'll become. Something's wrong with this picture. Life isn't supposed to turn out like this! Isn't it possible to shift direction, to change where I'm headed?

Mas, vendo bem, e se me é permitido um lugar-comum corriqueiro, não será que até as coisas inúteis têm cabimento neste mundo longe-de-ser-perfeito? Se desta vida imperfeita eliminássemos tudo o que é inútil, a imperfeição deixaria ela própria de fazer sentido.

I could do just about anything if somebody made me. But I don't have an image of the one thing I really want to do. That's my problem now. I can't find the image... I'm standing still, and I can't find the image. - Toru

Whether it's good for anything or not, cool or totally uncool, in the final analysis what's most important is what you can't see but can feel in your heart. To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts. But even activities that appear fruitless don't necessarily end up so.

I'm going to swim 0.93 miles, ride a bike 24.8 miles, then run a final 6.2 miles. And what's all that supposed to prove? How is this any different from pouring water in an old pan with a tiny hole in the bottom?

You need to use the thread of logic, as best you can, to skillfully sew onto yourself everything that's worth living for.

Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest.

If, as the dowager had said, we are nothing but gene carriers, why do so many of us have to lead such strangely shaped lives? Wouldn't our genetic purpose—to transmit DNA—be served just as well if we lived simple lives, not bothering our heads with a lot of extraneous thoughts, devoted entirely to preserving life and procreating? Did it benefit the genes in any way for us to lead such intricately warped, even bizarre, lives?

But there's such a thing as a way of living that's guided by the way a person's going to die.

A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.

Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success. Originally

Articulate each meeting's purpose (Making an announcement? Delivering a report?). Terminate the meeting once the purpose is accomplished. Follow up with short communications summarizing the discussion, spelling out new work assignments and deadlines for completing them. General Motors CEO Alfred Sloan's legendary mastery of meeting follow-up helped secure GM's industry dominance in the mid-twentieth century.

Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.

Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so love the people who treat you right, forget about the ones who don't, and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would be worth it.

Mooreland is a long way to go to not to be anywhere when you get there.

To die with something to live for

I have a friend who says we spend the first half of our life building it and the second half preventing it from falling apart. I'd rather be under construction when I die.

People don't gather after a death to mourn, but rather to reaffirm why life matters and to remember to exult in the only one we'll ever have. We hold funerals, memorials, celebrations—whatever you want to call them—to seek and to find the heart of the matter of this trip we call Life.