Quotes About Purpose

Stop thinking about living in the north and in isolated communities as an unfortunate accident or a punishment or a failure; stop thinking about it in southern urban terms. Start thinking about it as a purpose in and of itself, a necessary and happy purpose covering two-thirds of Canada, with its own reality.

It is far better to give work that is above a person, than to educate the person to be above their work.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

For, truly, the man who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

A thing of worth is what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.

No lying knight or lying priest ever prospered in any age, but especially not in the dark ones. Men prospered then only in following an openly declared purpose, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.

We were not sent into this world to do anything into which we cannot put our hearts.

One of the major obstacles impeding any positive future change in our lives is that we are too busy with our current work or activity. Levi quit his tax-work, Peter stopped fishing at lake, Paul ceased being a priest. They all left their jobs because they thought it was necessary.

So then, men may let their great powers lie dormant, while they employ their mean and petty powers on mean and petty objects; but it is physically impossible to employ a great power, except on a great object.

If you do not wish for His kingdom, don't pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for it, you must work for it.

The weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him and which worthily used will be a gift also to his race.

The first and absolute condition of the thing's ever becoming saleable is, that we shall make it without wanting to sell it; nay, rather with a determination not to sell it at any price, if once we get hold of it. Try to make your Art popular, cheap –

Aging is a carefully designed exercise that constantly urges us with increasing insistence to attend to that part of our selves that is most important, the essential part of our selves that will endure and continue its endless journey toward fulfilling its capacity to become ever more refined, ever more complete and joyful.

Why would a just God allow this to happen? Was it all part of an evolutionary clockwork that God allowed to work through itself, unguided, an enormous experiment of some kind, for good reasons that humans couldn't perceive?

Filled with existential ennui about your place in the universe? Get over yourself. Yes, you're an inconsequential worm in the grand scope of history. But you're an inconsequential worm who makes shit up for a living, which means that you don't have to lift heavy boxes or ask people if they want fries with that. Grow up and get back to work.

The plan is not the goal.

I don't care whether I really exist or don't, whether I'm real or fictional. What I want right now is to be the person who decides my own fate. That's something I can work on. It's what I'm working on now.

But we get to live as long as we're useful. And that is a rare privilege.

I don't discount that in the end, everything I do, say, write and am will amount to a whole lot of not much; I just don't think it's a relevant metric. The relevant metric is: Have I constructed a life that gives me happiness, allows me to give happiness, and allows for this life to have meaning within its admittedly limited context? If I am succeeding in this particular metric, I think I'm doing pretty well.

Realborn go for years without the slightest clue what they're going to do with themselves. From what I understand, some of them never actually figure it out. They just walk through life in a daze and then fall into their graves at the end of it.

I'm trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up. A nice thing to wonder about when you're thirty.

Your friend Leon certainly didn't join to be in the military - he can't stand the people we will protect. People join because they're not ready to die and they don't want to be old. They join because life on Earth isn't interesting past a certain age. Or they join to see someplace new before they die. That's why I joined, you know. I'm not joining to fight or be young again. I just want to see what it's like to be somewhere else .

I am not Death. I am killing; I am the verb, I am the action, I am the performance.

Yes, and I have training dealing with deep, existential questions," Dahl said. "The way I'm dealing with it right now is this: I don't care whether I really exist or don't, whether I'm real or fictional. What I want right now is to be the person who decides my own fate. That's something I can work on. It's what I'm working on now.