Selected purpose quotes

1. I feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.

2. I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I do know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, He will not ask, 'How many good things have you done in your life?,' rather He will ask, 'How much love did you put into what you did?

3. How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?

4. Of course my moods change, but the average is serenity. I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidence in its being a powerful stream which carries a man to a harbor, though he himself must do his bit too; at all events, I think it such a great blessing when a man has found his work that I cannot count myself among the unfortunate. I mean, I may be in certain relatively great difficulties, and there may be gloomy days in my life, but I shouldn't like to be counted among the unfortunate, nor would it be correct if I were.

5. I do not intend to spare myself, not to avoid emotions or difficulties. I don't care much whether I live a longer or shorter time: the world concerns me only in so far as I feel a certain debt toward it, because I have walked on this earth for thirty years, and out of gratitude I want to leave some souvenir.

6. The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting.

7. Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?

8. Does the end justify the means? That is possible. But what will justify the end? To that question, which historical thought leaves pending, rebellion replies: the means.

9. If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

10. A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.

11. The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.

12. I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

13. The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.

14. The true worth of a man is not to be found in man himself, but in the colours and textures that come alive in others.

15. I must make MAGICK the essential factor in the life of ALL. In presenting this book to the world, I must then explain and justify my position by formulating a definition of MAGICK and setting forth its main principles in such a way that ALL may understand instantly that their souls, their lives, in every relation with every other human being and every circumstance, depend upon MAGICK and the right comprehension and right application thereof.

16. Private passions tire and exhaust themselves, public ones never.

17. For a heart without love is a song with no words And a tune to which no one is listening So your heart must give love and you'll find that You shine like rain on the leaves you'll be glistening.

18. My experience is that it's precisely the ones who don't know what to do with this life who are all hot and bothered about what they are going to do with another life.

19. It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.

20. If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.

21. The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.

22. For just as for a flute-player, a sculptor, or an artist, and, in general, for all things that have a function or activity, the good and the well is thought to reside in the function, so would it seem to be for man, if he has a function.

23. Happiness is a sort of action.

24. Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

25. A cause may be inconvenient, but it's magnificent. It's like champagne or high heels, and one must be prepared to suffer for it.

26. The task I've been given seems absurd: To wait here on earth until I no longer exist.

27. How can I fail when I have no purpose?

28. It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.

29. Every investigation which is guided by principles of Nature fixes its ultimate aim entirely on gratifying the stomach.

30. I am a person always full of contradictions... It was hard to choose whether to devote myself to revolution as a soldier or as a writer.

31. If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.

32. It wasn't a matter of courage or dreams, but something a whole lot simpler. A pilot would call it ground orientation. I'd spent a long time circling above the clouds, looking for life, while Hallie was living it.

33. The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.

34. Happiness is mostly a by-product of doing what makes us feel fulfilled.

35. Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.

36. The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.

37. The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

38. My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.

39. All I want to do, ever, is play chess.

40. A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.

41. The world is not divine sport, it is divine destiny. There is a divine meaning of the world, of man, of human persons, of you and me.

42. O strong soul, by what shore Tarriest thou now? For that force, Surely, has not been left vain!

43. All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

44. If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

45. Either we stay at home and become pillars of the community or we go out and tour. We couldn't really find any communities that still needed pillars.

46. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?

47. The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him.

48. I'm on this search trying to figure out exactly who I am and what I have to say to people.

49. Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal.

50. Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.

51. Pilots take no special joy in walking. Pilots like flying.

52. The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.

53. No one rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going.

54. The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams.

55. Unless you choose to do great things with it, it makes no difference how much you are rewarded, or how much power you have.

56. If life isn't about human beings and living in harmony, then I don't know what it's about.

57. Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.

58. It is only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere that it begins to have meaning.

59. The work of a director can be summed up in two very simple words. Why and How.

60. But tell me, this physician of whom you were just speaking, is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick?

61. God finds himself by creating.

62. Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it.

63. Man's abiding happiness is not in getting anything but in giving himself up to what is greater than himself, to ideas which are larger than his individual life, the idea of his country, of humanity, of God.

64. Things in which we do not take joy are either a burden upon our minds to be got rid of at any cost; or they are useful, and therefore in temporary and partial relation to us, becoming burdensome when their utility is lost; or they are like wandering vagabonds, loitering for a moment on the outskirts of our recognition, and then passing on. A thing is only completely our own when it is a thing of joy to us.

65. You are invited to the festival of this world and your life is blessed.

66. My job is to help you fall in love.

67. A life spent worthily should be measured by a nobler line,-by deeds, not years.

68. For me, success is being able to give back to your friends, your family, your community, those in need and the world entire.

69. When you understand that life is a test, you realize that nothing is insignificant in your life.

70. I've always thought anyone can make money. Making a life worth living, that's the real test.

71. It may sound surprising when I say, on the basis of my own clinical practice as well as that of my psychological and psychiatric colleagues, that the chief problem of people in the middle decade of the twentieth century is emptiness.

72. We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for.

73. Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one's identity as a being of worth and dignity.

74. I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life.

75. All this business of a labour to accomplish, before I can end, of words to say, a truth to recover, in order to say it, before I can end, of an imposed task, once known, long neglected, finally forgotten, to perform, before I can be done with speaking, done with listening, I invented it all, in the hope it would console me, help me to go on, allow me to think of myself as somewhere on a road, moving, between a beginning and an end, gaining ground, losing ground, getting lost, but somehow in the long run making headway.

76. If I were in this business only for the business, I wouldn't be in this business.

77. Don't go to college, unless to get knowledge.

78. Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.

79. Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.

80. My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

81. I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which, if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again, or perhaps any twig with any property that we would care to call consciousness.

82. I put hardwood floors on top of wall-to-wall carpet.

83. If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.

84. A tremendous stream is flowing toward the ocean, carrying us all along with it; and though like straws and scraps of paper we may at times float aimlessly about, in the long run we are sure to join the Ocean of Life and Bliss.

85. Let us worship the spirit in spirit, standing on spirit. Let the foundation be spirit, the middle spirit, the culmination spirit.

86. Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

87. We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord.

88. One joins the movement in a valueless world, Choosing it, till both hurler and the hurled, One moves as well, always toward, toward.

89. Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

90. The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.

91. The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.

92. My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers.

93. It's the wanting to know that makes us matter.

94. Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of simple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries.

95. How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?

96. The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.

97. When we are working at a difficult task and strive after a good thing, we are fighting a righteous battle, the direct reward of which is that we are kept from much evil. As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

98. A person should set his goals as early as he can and devote all his energy and talent to getting there. With enough effort, he may achieve it. Or he may find something that is even more rewarding. But in the end, no matter what the outcome, he will know he has been alive.

99. You reach a point where you don't work for money.

100. We therefore need to know the gifts given us by God, so that we may use them, for by these we shall be saved.