Quotes About Purpose

What, then, is your own? The way you live your life.

If you act rashly, without regard to consequences, you may defeat your purposes.

If it should ever happen to you to be turned to externals in order to please some person, you must know that you have lost your purpose in life.

First, tell yourself what you want to be, then act your part accordingly.

Furthermore the true Cynic must know that he is sent as a Messenger from God to men, to show unto them that as touching good and evil they are in error; looking for these where they are not to be found, nor ever bethinking themselves where they are.

What is my position in society?" The one best suited to your talents, which you can hold with honor. Each person has a vital role in society; you are important right where you are. But if you lose your honor in striving for greater (perceived) significance, you become useless.

First, say to yourself what you would be; then do what you have to do

Will you never come to a realisation of who you are, what you have been born for and the purpose for which the gift of vision was made in our case?

This is the road that leads to liberty, the only road that delivers us from slavery: finally to be able to say, with meaning: Lead me, Zeus, lead me, Destiny, to the goal I was long ago assigned

such is Death, a greater change, from what now is, not to what is not, but to what is not now. Shall I then no longer be? Not so; thou wilt be; but something different, of which the World now hath need. For thou too wert born not when thou chosest, but when the World had need of thee.

Look at the matter in this way. Since we can see that a dog is fitted by nature to do one thing, and a horse to do another, and a nightingale, if you like, to do yet another, it wouldn't be absurd for one to declare overall that each of them is beautiful precisely in so far as it best fulfils its own nature; and since each is different in nature, it would seem to me that each of them is beautiful in a different way. Isn't that so? The student agreed.

But they have produced such wonderful fruit in a human mind, as part of their plan to bestow on humanity the true secret of happiness.

If God had created colours, but not the faculty of vision, colours would have been of little use. [4] Or if God had created vision, but not made sure that objects could be seen, vision would have been worthless. [5] And even if he had made them both, but not created light – [6] then neither would have been of any value. So who contrived this universal accommodation of things to one another? Who fitted the sword to the scabbard and the scabbard to the sword? No one?

Every choice moves us closer to or farther away from something. Where are your choices taking your life? What do your behaviors demonstrate that you are saying yes or no to in life?

Back in civilization I begin the questioning," wrote Randy. "What to do with life? What kind of life? In wilderness this ceases; the questions aren't answered, they dissolve."   BEFORE

Jeff: I could go to New York if I wanted to, but what's the point? So I can learn how to order a capuccino? So I can get mugged by some crackhead? So I can see homeless people up close and personal? Sooze: So what do you want to do? Jeff: Nothing. Sooze: No one does nothing, Jeff! Jeff: Okay, well, then I'm going to break new ground. Sooze: New ground?! Jeff: Mm-hmm. Sooze: Taking one community college course on the history of Nicaragua while barely holding a job packing boxes?

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.

The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else--we are the busiest people in the world.

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.

Passionate hatreds can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. These people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance.

Action is a unifier.

One of the rules that emerges from a consideration of the factors that promote self-sacrifice is that we are less ready to die for what we have or are than for what we wish to have and to be. It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have "something worth fighting for," they do not feel like fighting. People who live full, worthwhile lives are not usually ready to die for their own interests nor for their country nor for a holy cause.

If anything ail a man," says Thoreau, "so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even … he forthwith sets about reforming—the world."3

Ideas have significance for him only as a prelude to action.