Quotes About Purpose

Many a man would have been a success had ne connected his fragmentary efforts. Spasmodic, disconnected attempts, without concentration, uncontrolled by any fixed idea, will never bring success. It is continuity of purpose alone that achieves results.

He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity.

I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself.

You're not a human being until you value something more than the life of your body. And the greater the thing you live and die for the greater you are.

But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.

If you give orders and explain nothing, you might get obedience, but you'll get no creativity. If you tell them your purpose, then when your original plan is shown to be faulty, they'll find another way to achieve your goal. Explaining to your men doesn't weaken their respect for you, it proves your respect for them.

None of us could be happy for long, doing nothing.

Everybody dies. What matters is what you do between now and when it happens to you.

It's what I was born for, isn't it? If I don't go, why am I alive?

As he thought of it, though, he could not imagine what "just living" might actually be. He had never done it in his life. But he wanted to do it anyway.

Nobodys life ever goes according to plan. So why do we keep on planning? Because that's how we know who we are. By what we intend to be. By what we try to become. And fail. I don't say 'fail'. I saw we aim and miss. But we still hit something.

Americans love to pick up, move on, start over. But instead of being somebody fresh and new, they become somebody lonely and lost, or, far too often these days, they become nobody at all, a machine for satisfying hunger, without loyalty or honor or duty.

A character is what he does, yes - but even more, a character is what he means to do.

With life. Rooter says that life is how God gives purpose to the universe.

it's so easy, when you never meet people, when you never know the Earth itself... it's easy to forget why Earth is worth saving. Why the world of people might be worth the price you pay.

Well, I'm your man. I'm the bloody bastard you wanted when you had me spawned. I'm your tool, and what difference does it make if I hate the part of me that you most need? What difference does it make that when the little serpents killed me in the game, I agreed with them, and was glad.

Life is a suicide mission.

Maybe I will do what I want with my life! The only problem is that I have no idea what I want to do with it.

who would expect less? she said. You're a Wiggin. Whatever that means. He said. It means that you are going to make a difference in the world.

But whether there's some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this. To see what could be, and to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost. And when a life ends as mine will end, no one can persuade me that the cost was not worth what it has brought me at last.

Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it.

Happiness can depend as easily on useless things as on useful ones.

We're all tools in somebody's kit. But that doesn't mean we can't make tools out o other people. Or figure our interesting things to use ourselves for.

Just because your former understanding of the purpose of your life is contradicted doesn't mean that you have to decide there is no purpose.