Quotes about Purpose

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

Each of us has... all the time there is. Those years, weeks, hours, are the sands in the glass running swiftly away. To let them drift through our fingers is tragic waste. To use them to the hilt, making them count for something, is the beginning of wisdom.

The most unhappy people in the world are those who face the days without knowing what to do with their time. But if you have more projects than you have time for, you are not going to be an unhappy person. This is as much a question of having imagination and curiosity as it is of actually making plans.

If anyone were to ask me what I want out of life I would say- the opportunity for doing something useful, for in no other way, I am convinced, can true happiness be attained.

Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don't be concerned about whether people are watching your or critising you. The chances are that they aren't paying any attention to you.

Nothing we learn in this world is ever wasted and I have come to the conclusion that practically nothing we do ever stands by itself. If it is good, it will serve some good purpose in the futue. If it is evil, it may haunt us and handicap our efforts in unimagined ways.

It is not more vacation we need — it is more vocation.

Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.

And yet we spend so much time and effort and energy on those résumé entries—entries that lose all significance as soon as our heart stops beating.

Why do we spend so much of our limited time on this earth focusing on all the things that our eulogies will never cover?

There is a purpose to our lives, even if it is sometimes hidden from us, and even if the biggest turning points and heartbreaks only make sense as we look back, rather than as we are experiencing them. So we might as well live life as if—as the poet Rumi put it—everything is rigged in our favor.

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.