Purpose Quotes

“The purpose of life is not to be happy—but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.”
― Leo Rosten

“Lord, when I feel that what I'm doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it.”
― Brennan Manning, Souvenirs of Solitude: Finding Rest in Abba's Embrace

“Accept yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses, your truths, and know what tools you have to fulfill your purpose.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“Sometimes it's the same moments that take your breath away that breathe purpose and love back into your life.”
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

“Even seasonal situations can bring with them lessons that last a lifetime. If the love doesn’t last, it prepares you for the one that will.”
― Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass

“A wind that blows aimlessly is no good to anyone.”
― Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus

“Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. It is far better to be free, to leave the forts and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face the future with a smile. It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence, to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the world, to think and dream, to forget the chains and limitations of the breathing life, to forget purpose and object, to lounge in the picture gallery of the brain, to feel once more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring life's morning back, to see again the forms and faces of the dead, to paint fair pictures for the coming years, to forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within your veins life's joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may find art's nectar in the weeds of common things, to look with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle threads that join the distant with the now, to increase knowledge, to take burdens from the weak, to develop the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the soul. This is real religion. This is real worship”
― Robert Green Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. IV

“To me it seems that too many young women of this time share the same creed. 'Live, laugh, love, be nothing but happy, experience everything, et cetera et cetera.' How monotonous, how useless this becomes. What about the honors of Joan of Arc, Beauvoir, Stowe, Xena, Princess Leia, or women that would truly fight for something other than just their own emotions?”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“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

“It is not true that everyone is special. It is true that everyone was once special and still possesses the ability to recover it.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Dedicate yourself to what gives your life true meaning and purpose; make a positive difference in someone's life.”
― Roy T. Bennett

“To find a happy ending with someone else, first you have to find it alone.”
― Soman Chainani, The Last Ever After

“Although it is very easy to marry a wife, it is very difficult to support her along with the children and the household. Accordingly, no one notices this faith of Jacob. Indeed, many hate fertility in a wife for the sole reason that the offspring must be supported and brought up. For this is what they commonly say: ‘Why should I marry a wife when I am a pauper and a beggar? I would rather bear the burden of poverty alone and not load myself with misery and want.’ But this blame is unjustly fastened on marriage and fruitfulness. Indeed, you are indicting your unbelief by distrusting God’s goodness, and you are bringing greater misery upon yourself by disparaging God’s blessing. For if you had trust in God’s grace and promises, you would undoubtedly be supported. But because you do not hope in the Lord, you will never prosper.”
― Martin Luther, The Sermons Of Martin Luther

“She has man's brain--a brain that a man should have were he much gifted--and woman's heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me when He made that so good combination.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“A soul needs a purpose to live and so I concluded that my purpose was to kill everyone besides myself. I felt alive.

--Gaara”
― Masashi Kishimoto

“By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.”
― Emil Cioran

“To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“It’s a strange myth that atheists have nothing to live for. It’s the opposite. We have nothing to die for. We have everything to live for.”
― Ricky Gervais

“Without God, life has no purpose, and without purpose, life has no meaning. Without meaning, life has no significance or hope.”
― Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

“If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life; it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.”
― Mitsugi Saotome

“Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. … The ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, your purpose, is to bring that power into this world.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this—the absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage—such events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality—to draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are “raw files.” But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero’s personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him.”
― Bernard Knox, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“But eventually, you'll have to ask yourself precisely what you're fighting for. And you'll have to find a reason to live past vengeance.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Dragon Republic

“A universe without purpose should neither depress us nor suggest that our lives are purposeless. Through an awe-inspiring cosmic history we find ourselves on this remote planet in a remote corner of the universe, endowed with intelligence and self-awareness. We should not despair, but should humbly rejoice in making the most of these gifts, and celebrate our brief moment in the sun.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss

“Do you always ask me the same questions you ask him?"

"It depends on whether or not I get an answer.”
― Anne Bishop, Daughter of the Blood

“You were not meant for a mundane or mediocre life!”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?'

'I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It's hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“The purpose of influence is to "speak up for those who have no influence." (Pr.31:8) It's not about you.”
― Rick Warren