Quotes About Purpose

Steven Erikson

T]he real meaning of 'tradition' was ... 'stupidity on purpose.

Maybe that fits. Maybe it's only right that we should be the ones to raise your standard, Fallen One. And ignorant historians will write of us, in the guise of knowledge. They will argue over our purpose – the things we sought to do. They will overturn every boulder, every barrow stone, seeking our motives. Looking for hints of ambition. They will compose a Book of the Fallen.

I feel at peace, content. My questions have been answered. I can accept my alone-life, knowing it's purpose. Interaction, love, is the purpose and the core. Now I see the possibility of a different kind of interaction - and it is something that I can start to learn as soon as I get home, beginning with my little place/house and my plants. How to interact with people this way I do not yet know. [Gift Bearer]

There is much to be cynical about—and it is a good answer if there has not been an incarnation. But if that has happened, if the Word did become flesh, and if there are men and women who in and through their own vocations imitate the vocation of God, then sometimes and in some places the world becomes something more like the way it ought to be.

In the context of one's calling, how does one learn to see with the eyes of the heart, to see oneself as responsible for the way the world is and isn't?

Steering is for people who know where they're going.

Excuses are the tools with which persons with no purpose in view build for themselves great monuments of nothing.

Reformers can learn from monks, who spend countless hours cooking or cleaning the grounds or raking the garden, and can view each and every task, no matter how menial or seemingly trivial, not simply as a means to an end, which is frustrating if the final goal seems remote or unattainable. Rather, the tasks are seen as ends in themselves to be celebrated as eminently worthwhile, which paradoxically enhances their possible benefit for the future.

Two Arts degrees does not a life make.

I work hard in the orchard, not for the money anymore, but for something I can't explain. Something worth more than money.

T]hink about culture as the collective manifestation of value—where value is that which is valuable to "sufficiently complex" agents, from which meaning, purpose, ethics, and aesthetics can be derived.

At minimum, there may be an implication that one of the great challenges for intelligent cultural beings may be to learn to cope with, and perhaps finally accept, a profound and deep sense of uncertainty regarding any larger cosmic sense of meaning and purpose—that such an uncertainty may have to be treated as a kind of empirical question to be possibly addressed over very long time periods as evidence is accumulated, but perhaps without ever obtaining a satisfactory answer.

Coping with the uncertainty of larger cosmic objective meaning may be one of the most profound challenges sufficiently aware beings have to face [...]. Indeed, human beings might be further along in this regard than may be commonly thought—much of the human population seems to able to cope without religion and without a larger sense of cosmic meaning and purpose.

A lack of "external" objective meaning may be unsatisfying to many—caught forever in endless cycles of relativism, a morass of unbearable responsibility for our own meaning and purpose, and perhaps ultimately for that of the universe. But it looks like choice is inescapable. And while choice can sometimes be oppressive and debilitating, it is also liberating and empowering[.]

Yes, we humans are more than merely biological creatures. We appreciate beauty, we struggle with ethical conflicts, and we strive to make sense of our purpose in the universe, asking questions that science cannot answer. And yet, our sense of aesthetics, our moral sensibilities, and our search for meaning may themselves be intricately connected to the fabric of the cosmos.

Every decision and direction must come under this overarching goal of bringing glory to God.

To preach the gospel is to proclaim with trumpet tongue and flaming zeal the unsearchable riches of Christ Jesus, so that men may hear, and understanding, may turn to God with full purpose of heart.30

You are not here by accident. You are where you are by divine appointment, for the purposes of sharing the gospel

And here is the truth from which all others grow; here is the spring from which all others flow: soon I will be dead. Soon, as measured by stardust and time. Soon as measured by comets and dreams. Soon. Soon. Soon, I will be dead. And here is the question that determines everything—what will I do until then?.

finding God brings meaning into every moment—I

opening lines of Ecclesiastes: "'Meaningless! Meaningless!' says the Teacher. 'Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.

UNA VISIÓN es un objetivo preciso y claramente definido, con un plan detallado y programado en el tiempo para alcanzar dicho objetivo.

The great civil rights leader Howard Thurman once said, "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs most is more people who have come alive.