Quotes about Purpose
I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.
— Henry David Thoreau
I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about
— Henry David Thoreau
Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.
— Henry David Thoreau
Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
— Henry David Thoreau
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around. Nothing can be more useful to a man than the determination not to be hurried.
— Henry David Thoreau
To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
— Henry David Thoreau
We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course.
— Henry David Thoreau
You must get your living by loving, or at least half your life is a failure.
— Henry David Thoreau
Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead.
— Henry David Thoreau
I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear.
— Henry David Thoreau
Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then throwing them back again, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.
— Henry David Thoreau
Some are 'industrious' and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such I have at present nothing to say.
— Henry David Thoreau