Quotes about purpose

The universe will never give you peace in something you weren't meant to settle in.

Not everyone will understand your journey. That's okay. You're here to live your life, not to make everyone understand.

You are here to understand yourself, not to be understood.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

I am not concerned that I have no place; I am concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not known; I seek to be worthy to be known.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

Happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace.

The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person's good, wishes it for that person's own sake.

He who should teach men to die would teach them to live well.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.

Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

For it all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death.

There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life.

Our lives become beautiful not because we are perfect. Our lives become beautiful because we put our heart into what we are doing.

How deeply you touch another life is how rich your life is.

Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.

Each man had only one genuine vocation — to find the way to himself.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world.

I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?

In a world become blind, I beat the drum of the Deathless.

Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.

As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Come, seek, for search is the foundation of fortune: Every success depends upon focusing the heart.

Even though you’re not equipped, keep searching: equipment isn’t necessary on the way to the Lord.

Whoever enters the Way without a guide will take a hundred years to travel a two-day journey.

At fifteen my heart was set on learning; at thirty I stood firm; at forty I had no more doubts.

They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.

All men by nature desire to know.

We are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace.

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

Try to become not a man of success, but try rather to become a man of value.

Let others complain that the age is wicked; my complaint is that it is paltry; for it lacks passion.

What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know.

The crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.

The salvation of man is through love and in love.

Man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked.

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails gives him ample opportunity to add a deeper meaning to his life.

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

What is meant for you will not pass you by.

Do more of what makes you happy.

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

Give me liberty, or give me death!

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Find what you love and let it kill you.

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

Everything you can imagine is real.

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Whatever you are, be a good one.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

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

Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue.

Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure.

That government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

That is well said, replied Candide, but we must cultivate our garden.

Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.

The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

The only way to do great work is to love what you do.

Work is love made visible.

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

You are the artist of your own life. Don’t hand the paintbrush to anyone else.

Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I am among those who think that science has great beauty.

One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.

Let us pick up our books and our pens. They are our most powerful weapons.

Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all.

Living is the trade I want to teach him.

All our dignity consists in thought.

Existence precedes essence.

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.