Quotes About Purpose

when I make up my mind to do a thing, I act.

If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do and how to do it.

power without purpose and without vision was not the same thing as leadership.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition

The author writes that key FDR aide Harry Hopkins was in such poor health near the end of his boss's second term that one observer said he didn't know how Hopkins could possibly report to the president. But, at the onset of war and genuine national emergency, Hopkins was animated with a new sense of purpose.

Regardless of one's impressive title, power without purpose and without vision was not the same thing as leadership.

We have but a short life to live here my dear friend. But let us make it long by noble deeds.

A hundred things to do, but only one thing to be, he said, obstinately. But perhaps I don't feel myself worthy of such a wealth of opportunity?

The young often have moments of clear thinking, which as they grow older become fewer, and muddied. He had kept alive in some part of him a knowledge that he was "destined" to do something or other. He felt this as pure and unsullied, but—more often and more deeply as he grew older—"impractical".

What I feel now doesn't matter at all? But at what point I am entitled to say to myself, what I am feeling now is valid? After all, one can't go through one's whole life in phases. There must be a goal somewhere

It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.

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

There is a place where we are always alone with our own mortality, where we must simply have something greater than ourselves to hold onto—God or history or politics or literature or a belief in the healing power of love, or even righteous anger.... A reason to believe, a way to take the world by the throat and insist that there is more to this life than we have ever imagined.

Stories open the door to the darkened room. Language can carry us past the horror to the sense of purpose in a life that refuses to surrender to that darkness.

People don't do right because of the fear of God or love of him. You do the right thing because the world doesn't make sense if you don't.

I wanted the way I felt to mean something and for everything in my life to change because of it.

I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself. That was all part of deciding to live, though I didn't know it.

I don't mind," said Redhead recklessly, "what crimes I commit, as long as they've got a sensible purpose. Wanton injury and destruction, of course, are just juvenile." "Of course," said the Master, digesting this remarkable statement. "Then let us be adult at all costs.

Her suspicions seethed. Over sixty, with a life of violence behind him, Buccleuch had been a broken man after the affair at Liddel Castle. More recently, however, the light of purpose had entered his eye, and, nimble as an elderly rectangular goblin, he had vanished and reappeared at Branxholm until they had all gone off their food.

Considering Lymond, flat now on the bed in wordless communion with the ceiling, Richard spoke. My dear, you are only a boy. You have all your life still before you. On the tortoise-shell bed, his brother did not move. But there was no irony for once in his voice when he answered. Oh, yes, I know. The popular question is, For what?

Why are you here?" Silence. Then the boy said slowly, "Because I admire you.

our childhood is over now, Marshal. Mankind can survive very well without an intimate study of your susceptibilities but not, unfortunately, without your other functions and talents. Do you think I bring any child into the world to live for himself alone?

Then I tell you,' Sybilla said, 'that you have no leave to die. Nor have you leave to desert the race you belong to. I want your word that from this moment, you live.

Lymond was drawing long breaths now, his hands forced back rigid behind him, driven into the lime of the wall. 'That is as far as I go,' he said flatly. 'I have never in my life subjected you to this kind of inquisition about your purpose, your doings or your relationships. I have answered you fairly enough.