Motivational Quotes

Purpose

Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim.

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Best Quotes about Purpose

It's not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised. The mosquito is swatted.

O'Connor, Mary

I know of no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that of tenacity of purpose...

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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.

Blanchard, Ken

Ordinary people think merely of spending time. Great people think of using it.

One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek: That I may dwell in the house f the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple. [Psalms 27:4]

Bible

Give me a man who says, This one thing I do, and not, These fifty things, I dabble in.

Moody, Dwight L.

Anyone can live heroically and successfully for one day. The man who achieves a high purpose makes that day the pattern for all the days of his life.

Never be afraid to treat the path alone. Know which is your path and follow it wherever it may lead you; do not feel you have to follow in someone else's footsteps.

Bellin, Gita

A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

10.

Your cause belongs to those that can avenge your wrongs.

Winkworth

11.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. [2 Corinthians 5:20]

Bible

12.

We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us.

Shaw, George Bernard

13.

The whole life is but a point of time; let us enjoy it, therefore, while it lasts, and not spend it to no purpose.

Plutarch

14.

The first thing to do in life is to do with purpose what one purposes to do.

Casals, Pablo

15.

All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.

Thurber, James

16.

Many men go fishing their entire lives without knowing it is not fish they are after.

Thoreau, Henry David

17.

Knowing our personal mission further enhances the flow of mysterious coincidences as we are guided toward our destinies. First we have a question, then dreams, daydreams, and intuitions lead us toward the answers, which usually are synchronistically provided by the wisdom of another human being.

Redfield, James

18.

Many good purposes lie in the churchyard.

Henry, Philip

19.

Man becomes greater in proportion to knowing himself and his faculties. Let him become conscious of what he is and he will soon also learn what he should be.

Schelling, Felix E.

20.

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and your discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.

Patanjali

21.

The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

22.

The sense of paralysis proceeds not so much out of the mammoth size of the problem but out of the puniness of the purpose.

Cousins, Norman

23.

Only the consciousness of a purpose that is mightier than any man and worthy of all men can fortify and inspirit and compose the souls of men.

Lippmann, Walter

24.

The one who adapts his policy to the times prospers, and likewise that the one whose policy clashes with the demands of the times does not.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

25.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

Seneca

26.

For I say unto you in all sadness of conviction that to think great thoughts you must be heroes as well as idealists. Only when you have worked alone -- when you have felt around you are a black gulf of solitude more isolating than that which surrounds the dying man, and in hope and despair have trusted to your own unshaken will -- then only can you gain the secret isolated joy of the thinker, who knows that a hundred years after he is dead and forgotten men who have never heard of him will be moving to the measure of his thought -- the subtle rapture of postponed power, which the world knows not because it has no external trappings, but which to his prophetic vision is more real than that which commands an army. And if this joy should not be yours, still it is only thus you can know that you have done what lay in you to do -- can say that you have lived, and be ready for the end.

Holmes Jr., Oliver Wendell

27.

The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

28.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

29.

At a turbulent public meeting once I lost my temper and said some harsh and sarcastic things. The proposal I was supporting was promptly defeated. My father who was there, said nothing, but that night, on my pillow I found a marked passage from Aristotle: Anybody can become angry--that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way -- that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.

Gordon, Arthur

30.

The longest journey is the journey inwards. Of him who has chosen his destiny, Who has started upon his quest for the source of his being.

Hammarskjold, Dag

31.

The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

Eliot, George

32.

What on earth are you doing for Heaven's sake?

33.

They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.

Socrates

34.

Pep without purpose is piffle.

35.

Every man is occasionally visited by the suspicion that the planet on which he is riding is not really going anywhere; that the Force which controls its measured eccentricities hasn't got anything special in mind. If he broods on this somber theme long enough he gets the doleful idea that the laughing children on a merry-go-round or the thin, fine hands of a lady's watch are revolving more purposely than he is.

Thurber, James

36.

The great and glorious masterpiece of man is how to live with purpose.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

37.

The purpose of man is in action not thought.

Carlyle, Thomas

38.

The only way you can be successful on a post or win at it is to be at cause over it.

Hubbard, L. Ron

39.

Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.