Quotes about Purpose

For many of the churchly, the life of the spirit is reduced to a dull preoccupation with getting to Heaven.

He turned to his own place then . . . and began to ask what might be the best use of it. How might a family live there without reducing it?

My life, though, has been something (as only now at last I am able to see), but it is something that it has made of itself, not something that I have made of it. All I seem to have done is avoid wherever I could (so far) the man across the desk—for (so far) the world has afforded a little room for a few of us, lucky or blessed, to go around him. And now I wonder if I can die quickly enough and secretly enough to make the final evasion.

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.

I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.

For the Lord aimed for him to do and not to spend too much time thinking, because his brain it's like a piece of machinery: it won't stand a whole lot of racking. It's best when it all runs along the same, doing the day's work and not no one part used no more than needful.

Addie: My father said that the reason for living is getting ready to stay dead.

For the Lord aimed for him to do and not to spend too much time thinking, because his brain it's like a piece of machinery: it won't stand a whole lot of racking. It's best when it all runs along the same, doing the day's work and not no one part used no more than needful. … But I reckon Cora's right when she says the reason the Lord had to create women is because man don't know his own good when he see it.

He aimed for them to stay put like a tree or a stand of corn. Because if He'd a aimed for man to be always a-moving and going somewhere else, wouldn't He put him longways on his belly, like a snake? It stands to reason He would.

When [God] aims for something to be always a-moving, He makes it longways, like a road or a horse or a wagon, but when He aims for something to stay put, He makes it up-and-down ways, like a tree or a man. . . . [I]f He'd a aimed for man to be always a-moving and going somewheres else, wouldn't He a put him longways on his belly, like a snake? It stands to reason He would. Anse in As I Lay Dying, pp. 34-5

For the Lord aimed for him to do and not to spend too much time thinking, because his brain it's like a piece of machinery: it won't stand a whole lot of racking. It's best when it all runs along the same, doing the day's work and not no one part used no more than needful.

Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.