quotations about purpose
When you're clear about your purpose and your priorities, you can painlessly discard whatever does not support these, whether it's clutter in your cabinets or commitments on your calendar.
VICTORIA MORAN
Lit from Within
Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Notebooks
The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
letter to Eliza Gurney, September 4, 1864
The hypothesis will lead to our thinking of features of each Universe as purposed; and this will stand or fall with the hypothesis. Yet a purpose essentially involves growth, and so cannot be attributed to God. Still it will, according to the hypothesis, be less false to speak so than to represent God as purposeless.
CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE
"A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God"
It may be that there was no reason or purpose, for mankind must always be finding reasons where there are none, and comfort in a purpose that hardly exists.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
Purpose has no place in biology, but history has no meaning without it.
GEORGE KUBLER
The Shape of Time
Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Gautama Buddha: Life & Words
Whenever I mentor people and help them discover their purpose, I always encourage them to start the process by discovering their strengths, not exploring their shortcomings. Why? Because people's purpose in life is always connected to their giftedness. It always works that way. You are not called to do something that you have no talent for. You will discover your purpose by finding and remaining in your strength zone.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
Leadership Gold
Nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose -- a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
Believe in your heart that you're meant to live a life full of passion, purpose, magic and miracles.
ROY T. BENNETT
The Light in the Heart
I need to have a purpose in life and for that I might sacrifice some of the luxuries that I enjoy; fortunately I am fairly adaptable. I try to be aware, flexible and unbiased in my thinking. If I have learnt anything, it is that life forms no logical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?
MARGOT FONTEYN
Margot Fonteyn: Autobiography
Sometimes it's the same moments that take your breath away that breathe purpose and love back into your life.
STEVE MARABOLDI
Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Within ourselves we all have the gifts and talents we need to fulfill the purpose we've been blessed with.
STEVE MARABOLI
Life, the Truth, and Being Free
If you are a philosopher you can do this thing: you can go to the top of a high building, look down upon your fellow-men 300 feet below, and despise them as insects. Like the irresponsible black waterbugs on summer ponds, they crawl and circle and hustle about idiotically without aim or purpose. They do not even move with the admirable intelligence of ants, for ants always know when they are going home. The ant is of a lowly station, but he will often reach home and get his slippers on while you are left at your elevated station.
O. HENRY
"Psyche and the Pskyscraper"
Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.
BETTE DAVIS
attributed, Witty Words From Wise Women
Purpose is a desire for something in our own power, coupled with an investigation into its means.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
"Everything must have a purpose?" asked God.
"Certainly," said man.
"Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this," said God. And He went away.
KURT VONNEGUT
Cat's Cradle
We often miss the end of life by having no object before us.
HENRY F. KLETZING
Traits of Character Illustrated in Bible Light
What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
I realized then that even though I was a tiny speck in an infinite cosmos, a blip on the timeline of eternity, I was not without purpose.
R. J. ANDERSON
Ultraviolet