Quotes About Purpose

Be not simply good; be good for something.

let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature.

Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?

In my opinion, the sun was made to light worthier toil than this.

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.

When it is time to die, let us not discover that we never lived.

Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmie that he can? Let everyone mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made

It's not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?

It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course.

I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.

I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get a good job, but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

One little chore to do, one little commission to fulfil, one message to carry, would spoil heaven itself.

If I should sell my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for.

A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit until we have so conducted that we feel like new men in the old.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around. Nothing can be more useful to a man than the determination not to be hurried.

Ich ging in die Wälder, weil ich bewusst leben wollte. Ich wollte das Dasein auskosten. Ich wollte das Mark des Lebens einsaugen! Und alles fortwerfen, das kein Leben barg, um nicht an meinem Todestag Innezuwerden, daß ich nie gelebt hatte.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.