The purpose of life is a life of purpose.

Robert Byrne
   
What people actually need is not a tensionless state
but rather the striving and struggling for some goal
worthy of them.  What they need is not the discharge
of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential
meaning waiting to be fulfilled by them.

Victor Frankl

      

I'm doing what I think I was put on this earth to do.
And I'm really grateful to have something that I'm passionate
about and that I think is profoundly important.

Marian Wright Edelman
  
Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness.  It is not
attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Helen Keller


Purpose serves as a principle around which to organize our lives.

Anonymous

   
It is as if a king had sent you to a country to carry out one special, specific
task.  You go to the country and you perform a hundred other tasks, but if
you have not performed the task you were sent for, it is as if you have done
nothing at all.  So people have come into the world for particular tasks, and
that is our purpose.  If we don't perform it, we will have done nothing.

Rumi
   
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Susan Ertz

We are here on earth to do good for others.
What the others are here for, I don't know.

W.H. Auden

Great minds have purposes, little minds have wishes.

Washington Irving
  

  

Never forget that the purpose for which we live is the improvement of ourselves,
so that we may go out of this world having, in our great sphere or our small
one, done some little good for our fellow creatures and labored a little
to diminish the sin and sorrow that are in the world.

William E. Gladstone
   

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

George Bernard Shaw
  

Above all be of single aim; have a legitimate and useful purpose,
and devote yourself unreservedly to it.

James Allen
   
   
  
The first principle of ethical power is purpose.  By purpose, I don't mean
your objective or intention-something toward which you are always striving.
Purpose is something bigger.  It is the picture you have of yourself--the kind
of person you want to be or the kind of life you want to lead.

Ken Blanchard
  

What mankind wants is not talent; it is purpose.

Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Each of our acts makes a statement as to our purpose.

Leo Buscaglia
  
   

The person without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder -- waif, a nothing,
a no body.  Have a purpose in life, and, having it, throw such strength
of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you.

Thomas Carlyle
    
The secret to success is constancy to purpose.

Benjamin Disraeli
  

Multitudes of people, drifting aimlessly to and fro without a set purpose,
deny themselves such fulfillment of their capacities, and the satisfying
happiness which attends it.  They are not wicked, they are only shallow.
They are not mean or vicious; they simply are empty -- shake them and
they would rattle like gourds. They lack range, depth, and conviction.
Without purpose their lives ultimately wander into the morass of
dissatisfaction.  As we harness our abilities to a steady purpose and
undertake the long pull toward its accomplishment, rich compensations
reward us. A sense of purpose simplifies life and therefore
concentrates our abilities; and concentration adds power.

Kenneth Hildebrand
  
There is no road to success but through a clear strong purpose.
Nothing can take its place.  A purpose underlies character,
culture, position, attainment of every part.

Thornton T. Munger
   

   

We are all designed for a specific purpose; we all have something
for which each of us, and each of us alone, is responsible.

Naomi Stephan
  

What allows us, as human beings, to psychologically survive life on earth,
with all of its pain, drama, and challenges, is a sense of purpose and meaning.

Barbara De Angelis
  
To have a purpose that is worthwhile, and that is steadily being
accomplished, that is one of the secrets of life that is worth living.

Herbert Casson
    
   

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I respect the people who know distinctly what they wish.  The greater part
of all the mischief in this world arises from the fact that people do not
sufficiently understand their own aims.  They have undertaken to build a
tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be
necessary to erect a hut.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
   

When you have chosen a great purpose, and are certain you have
chosen well and wisely, concentrate upon it.  Bend your best energies
to it.  Guard yourself against subtle and innumerable influences that
tend to divert you from it.  Make that single great purpose the
definite aim of your daily life.  Your thought and time will be solicited
by many influences, and you will do well to take special means to
protect yourself against them.  Make your resolutions so clear and
firm that nothing can lure you from your chosen path of purpose and
duty.  Substitute doing for dreaming, and achievement for wishing.
The great things of the world are done by people who
specialize and concentrate.

Glenville Kleiser
Riches for the Mind and Spirit
   

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Your life is always being shaped and driven by something.  For most, it's the
past -- beliefs and habits based upon survival and fear.  There's another option.
You decide what's going to shape and drive your life.  You choose the vision for
what your life is to be about, the values you hold most sacred and the kind of
person you are to be.  And you allow those three to shape and drive your actions
in each moment.  Life becomes much more joyful and productive when you can
filter out all the things that are not in alignment with your self-defined life purpose.

Helaine Iris
   

I am not on this earth by chance.  I am here for a purpose and that
purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand.
Henceforth will I apply all my efforts to become the highest mountain
of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy.

Og Mandino
The Greatest Salesman in the World
   
The purpose of life is to matter--to count, to stand for something,
to have made some difference that we lived at all.

Leo Rosten
   

   

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful,
to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make
some difference that you have lived and lived well.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
    

One needs something to believe in, something for which
one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm.  One needs to feel
that one's life has meaning, that one is needed in this world.

Hannah Senesh
   

No one can tell you how to find your purpose.  It can only be found, slowly,
in your own dark sky, in whatever is sacred to you, be that church or woods.
It can't be found by searching around for a role model or learning how cultural
heroes handled their difficulties.  It is seldom found by following anyone
else's rules.  It lives in the rest in the place where music is born, the fertile
void, the silence between notes.  It is simple and basic.  It emerges slowly
as a sunrise, as we search through our gifts, our darkness, our losses and loves.
Your job and mine is to be quiet and alone from time to time.  To be present to
ourselves and the natural world, and to be in conversation with what is hidden
in us in such a way that we can explore what brings us more alive.

Dawna Markova
   

To exist without purpose is to be at the mercy of the chance encounter,
the chance invitation, the chance phone call, the chance event--
always being controlled by forces external to oneself.

Nathaniel Branden
Self-Esteem Every Day

Not all purposes are equal.  The key questions about any purpose
are these:  Does this serve your life and well-bing?
Is this a purpose you can be proud of?