"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"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

"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
— Albert Camus

"When faith replaces doubt, when selfless service eliminates selfish striving, the power of God brings to pass His purposes."
— Thomas S. Monson

"A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!'
'However,' replied the universe. 'The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."
— Stephen Crane

"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 have lived at all."
— Leo Rosten

"Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it."
— Siddhārtha Gautama

"Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night- she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question-- 'Is this all?'"
— Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique)

"If you want to identify me,ask me not where I live,or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail,ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for."
— Thomas Merton

"all of us have a place in history. mine is clouds."
— Richard Brautigan

"This is why I'm here on this planet, at this time, Francesca. Not to travel or make pictures, but to love you. I know that now. I have been falling from the rim of a great, high place, somewhere back in time, for many more years than I have lived in this life. And through all of those years, I have been falling toward you."
— Robert James Waller

"Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one."
— Dean Koontz (The Darkest Evening of the Year)

"Being successful and fulfilling your lifes purpose are not at all the same thing; You can reach all your personal goals, become a raving success by the worlds standard and still miss your purpose in this life."
— Rick Warren

"Here is a test to find out whether your mission in life is complete. If you’re alive, it isn’t."
— Lauren Bacall

"Those who have failed to work toward the truth have missed the purpose of living."
— Siddhārtha Gautama

"'Garion,' she said very calmly, 'the universe knew your name before that moon up there was spun out of the emptiness. Whole constellations have been waiting for you since the beginning of time.'
'I didn't want them to, Aunt Pol.'
'There are those of us who aren't given that option, Garion. There are things that gave to be done and certain people who have to do them. It's as simple as that.'
He smiled rather sadly at her flawless face and gently touched the snowy white lock at her brow. Then, for the last time in his life, he asked the question that had been on his lips since he was a tiny boy. 'Why me, Aunt Pol? Why me?'
'Can you possibly think of anyone else you'd trust to deal with these matters, Garion?'
He had not really been prepared for that question. It came at him in stark simplicity. Now at last he fully understood. 'No,' he sighed, 'I suppose not. Somehow it seems a little unfair, though. I wasn't even consulted.'
'Neither was I, Garion,' she answered. 'But we didn't have to be consulted, did we? The knowledge of what we have to do is born into us.'"
— David Eddings (Sorceress of Darshiva)

"Learn to get intouch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in life has a purpose."
— ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS MD

"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 (Sermons of Martin Luther, The)

"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

" "For every man there is a purpose which he sets up for his life and which he pursues. Let yours be the doing of all good deeds. "

"
— Quran

"And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not."
— Søren Kierkegaard

""I have come to see clearly that life is more than self. It is more than doing what I want, striving for what will benefit me, dreaming of all I can be. Life is all about my relationship with God. There is no higher calling, no loftier dream, and no greater goal than to live, breathe, and be poured out for Jesus Christ."
--Jamie in Brother Andrew's "The Calling""
— Brother Andrew (The Narrow Road : Stories of Those Who Walk This Road Together)

"You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world."
— Woodrow Wilson

"The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are going."
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

"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."
— Hellen Keller

"In spite of where we were, how we had gotten here and why we had come, I felt that at this moment of our lives, this place was exactly where we belonged. We were not drifting but rising, rising toward something right and of significance."
— Dean Koontz

"Maybe the trying is the thing. Maybe it doesn't get better than that. Maybe you never quite get there. And maybe that's okay."
— Keith Ablow (Murder Suicide: A Novel)

"Everything has a purpose, even this, and it's up to you to find it."
— Peaceful warrior

"Don’t worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive."
— Howard Thurman

"To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top."
— Robert M. Pirsig

""All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.""
— Jorge Luis Borges

"Pride makes us long for a solution to things – a solution, a purpose, a final cause; but the better telescopes become, the more stars appear."
— Julian Barnes (Flaubert's Parrot)

"Everything had changed suddenly-the tone, the moral climate; you didn't know what to think, who to listen to. As if all your life you had been led by the hand like a small child and suddenly you were on your own, you had to learn to walk by yourself. There was no one around, neither family nor people whose judgment you respected. At such a time you felt the need of committing yourself to something absolute-life or truth or beauty-of being ruled by it in place of the man-made rules that had been discarded. You needed to surrender to some such ultimate purpose more fully, more unreservedly than you had ever done in the old familiar, peaceful days, in the old life that was now abolished and gone for good."
— Boris Pasternak

"Remember: in order for a perception to change one must be frustrated in one's actions or change one's purpose."
— Neil Postman (Teaching as a Subversive Activity)

"The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection ...***...is what alone gives meaning to our life on this unavailing star."
— Logan Pearsall Smith

"Then she understood that what she needed was the motion to a purpose, no matter how small or in what form, the sense of an activity going step by step to some chosen end across a span of time. The work of cooking a meal was like a closed circle, completed and gone, leading nowhere. But the work of building a path was a living sum, so that no day was left to die behind her, but each day contained all those that preceded it, each day acquired its immortality on every succeeding tomorrow. A circle, she thought, is the movement proper to physical nature, they say that there's nothing but circular motion in the inanimate universe around us, but the straight line is the badge of man, the straight line of a geometrical abstraction that makes roads, rails and bridges, the straight line that cuts the curving aimlessness of nature by a purposeful motion from a start to an end. The cooking of meals, she thought, is like the feeding of coal to an engine for the sake of a great run, but what would be the imbecile torture of coaling an engine that had no run to make? It is not proper for man's life to be a circle, she thought, or a string of circles dropping off like zeros behind him--man's life must be a straight line of motion from goal to farther goal, each leading to the next and to a single growing sum, like a journey down the track of a railroad, from station to station to--oh, stop it!"
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"The purpose of life is a life of purpose. "
— Robert Byrne

"She watched the tunnels as they flowed past: bare walls of concrete, a net of pipes and wires, a web of rails that went off into black holes where green and red lights hung as distant drops of color. There was nothing else to dilute it, so that one could admire naked purpose and the ingenuity that had achieved it."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living."
— Chris Hedges (War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning)

"Why do you so earnestly seek
the truth in distant places?
Look for delusion and truth in the
bottom of your own heart."
— Ryokan

"…the whole creation, though as creatures it is infinitely far removed from God, is still God’s handiwork and related to him. The world is not an independent entity on a par with, and antithetically related to, God. It is not a second God, but totally God’s work, both in its “isness” and its “whatness”. From the very beginning it was designed to reveal God. The entire people of Israel were designed to make known God’s excellencies in its laws and institutions, its offices and ministries, its character and mores. And Christ’s humanity was equipped by the Holy Spirit to make known to people the Father and his name. The circle of the apostles, with its diversity of education, preparation, gifts, and calling, was designated to tell the world the “mighty acts of God”."
— Herman Bavinck