Quotes About Purpose

There was no need to hurry that future—yet the length of his own youth pressed upon him. Whatever he was to do next he wanted to begin now. But how to begin and on what?

I think not everyone can see the whole picture. It has long been said we each see what we look for. You and I, we look at land and think of seed and harvests. A builder looks at the same land and thinks of houses, and a painter of its colors. The priest sees men only as those who need to be saved, and so naturally he sees most clearly those who need to be saved.

Why must this happen to me?" To this there could be no answer and there was none. When I knew at last that there could never be an answer, my own resolve shaped into the determination to make meaning out of the meaningless, and so provide the answer, though it was of my own making.

The best thing in the world for each of us is that which we can best do, because it gives us the feeling of being useful. That's happiness.

His problem was the eternal question: What should he be? Inventor, scientist, artist—the energy he felt surging through him, an energy far more than physical and yet pervading the restlessness of his body, was a burden to him until he could find the path for its release.

It is not that we cannot believe," he replied. "It is that we do not want anything enough. Faith rises from necessity. We have no necessity.

I wish to produce the fruit of my brain for my country's good. A mere dog may fill the earth with the fruit of his body!

and when the hour is come that has been set for each of us before ever we can walk or talk, then what need of mourning?

Life without idealism is empty indeed. We just hope or starve to death.

Making good use of our limited time - the limited time from birth to death, as well as our limited time each day - is the key to developing inner steadiness and calm.

The test is can you do something, rather than have a theoretical argument - can you make a difference?

Only work which is the product of inner compulsion can have spiritual meaning.

If you know the why, you can live any how.

Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.

The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but rather the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.

Here is what we have to offer you in its most elaborate form -- confusion guided by a clear sense of purpose.

Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don't see a different purpose for it now.

Fashion is not art. The aims of fashion and art are different and there is no need to compare them.

The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows it to realize its supreme purpose through him.

If painting is no longer needed, it seems a pity that some of us are born into the world with such a passion for line and color.

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.

If one does not understand the usefulness of the useless and the uselessness of the useful, one cannot understand art.

I don't paint to live, I live to paint.