Quotes about Purpose

For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.

Ask me not where I live or what I like to eat . . . Ask me what I am living for and what I think is keeping me from living fully that.

Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice "out there" calling me to be something I am not. It comes from a voice "in here" calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.

If I had a message to my contemporaries it is surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success . . . If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted.

In our creation, God asked a question and in our truly living; God answers the question.

Do not look for rest in any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure: you were created for spiritual joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and spiritual joy you have not yet begun to live.

The solution of the problem of life is life itself. Life is not attained by reason and analysis but first of all by living.

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone we find it with another.

It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more immediate and exalted task: that of creating our own lives.

What do you want to want to be, anyway? I don't know; I guess what I want to be is a good Catholic. What you should say--he told me--what you should say is that you want to be a saint.

In all His acts God orders all things, whether good or evil, for the good of those who know Him and seek Him and who strive to bring their own freedom under obedience to His divine purpose. All that is done by the will of God in secret is done for His glory and for the good of those whom He has chosen to share in His glory.

Finally, I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am.