Quotes about Purpose

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no 'brief candle' to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations.

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.

But the changes from the crab apple to the pippin, from the wolf and fox to the house dog, from the charger of Henry V to the brewer's draught horse and the racehorse, are real; for here Man has played the god, subduing Nature to his intention, and ennobling or debasing life for a set purpose. And what can be done with a wolf can be done with a man.

men never really overcome fear until they imagine they are fighting to further a universal purpose—fighting for an idea, as they call it. Why was the Crusader braver than the pirate? Because he fought, not for himself, but for the Cross.

My life is too short, and God's work is too great for me to think of making a home for myself in this world.

Our deeds determine us, as long as we determine our deeds

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

When a homemaking aunt scolds a niece for following her evangelistic passion instead of domestic pursuits, her reply is interesting. First, she clarifies that God's individual call on her doesn't condemn those in more conventional roles. Then, she says she can no more ignore the cry of the lost than her aunt can the cry of her child.

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

I fear that in this thing many rich people deceive themselves. They go on accumulating the means but never using them; making bricks, but never building.

Only those who know the supremacy of intellectual life - the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it - can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing, soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.

I used to think I could never bear life if it kept on being the same every day, and I must always be doing things of no consequence and never know anything greater.