Purpose & Meaning

Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you.

Kahlil Gibran The Prophet

If a given science accidentally reached its goal, this would by no means stop the workers in the field, who would be driven past their goal by the sheer momentum of the illusion of unlimited progress.

Hannah Arendt The Human Condition

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.

Simone de Beauvoir The Ethics of Ambiguity

Arise, awake and Stop not till the Goal is Reached.

Swami Vivekananda Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda

The first duty of a man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.

Cicero De Officiis & Tusculan Disputations

The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.

Augustine of Hippo Confessions

Pascal scornfully said that simple workmen had been able to convince of error those great men that are called 'philosophers'. It was, then, these unlearned men... who were most ready to believe 'what they saw with their eyes and touched with their hands'.

Blaise Pascal Pensées

The essence of the good is a certain kind of moral purpose, and that of the evil is a certain kind of moral purpose.

Epictetus Discourses & Enchiridion

And so, from this day forth, we want all the more to let our thoughts revolve around and hover over Socrates and Christ at all times, openly taking pride that they are more alive for us than all those living today and that we listen to and love them as we do none of the living.

Socrates Apology (via Plato)

The beginning in every task is the chief thing. • variant: The beginning is the most important part of any work. (Jowett translation)

Plato The Republic & Dialogues

For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

Confucius The Analects (Lunyu)

A leader is best when people barely know he exists; Not so good when people obey and acclaim him; worst when they despise him; but a good leader who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say "We did it our selves!

Laozi Tao Te Ching

Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don't claim them. Feel the artistry moving through, and be silent.

Rumi Masnavi & Divan-e Shams

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

Albert Camus The Myth of Sisyphus & Notebooks

If the genius is an artist, then he accomplishes his work as art, but neither he nor his work of art has a telos outside him.

Søren Kierkegaard Either/Or & Journals

How every line is of such strong, determined, and consistent meaning! And on every page, we encounter deep, original, hefty thoughts, while the whole is suffused with a high and holy seriousness.

Arthur Schopenhauer Parerga and Paralipomena

...nature has no particular goal in view, and final causes are mere human figments. ...everything in nature proceeds from a sort of necessity, and with the utmost perfection.

Baruch Spinoza Ethics (Ethica)

Besides, what renown can be compared with his? Nothing lives like his fame and his works on the lips of men... Homer provides a noble farce in which over the centuries Kings, Republics and Emperors all play their parts and for which this great universe serves as the theatre.

Michel de Montaigne Essais

Aime la vérité, mais pardonne à l'erreur.

Voltaire Candide & Philosophical Dictionary

Honest work is much better than a mansion.

Leo Tolstoy War and Peace & A Calendar of Wisdom

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.

William Shakespeare First Folio & Sonnets

The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

Oscar Wilde De Profundis & Essays

Man was made at the end of the week's work, when God was tired.

Mark Twain Notebooks & Autobiography

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 Essays: First and Second Series

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

Henry David Thoreau Walden