Favorite Quotations ~  Purpose & Meaning, 3 Meditations on the Purpose Driven Life

"Great minds have purposes, others have wishes." ~ Washington Irving

Ewing Galloway

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

If our life has a meaning, an aim, it has nothing to do with our personal happiness, but something wiser and greater. ~ Anton Chekhov

To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,/But life without meaning is the torture/Of restlessness and vague desire—/It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid. ~ Edgar L. Masters

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. ~ Viktor Frankl

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess. ~ Napoleon Hill

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another. ~ Plotinus

It is by that which cannot be taken away that we can measure ourselves. ~ Mia Farrow, Esquire, 6/06

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

Uncharged with invisible meaning, the visible is nothing, mere clay; and without visible circumstance, a territory, to connect to, our spirit is shapeless, nameless, and undefined. ~ E. L. Doctorow

The question is not to know what is the meaning of life, but what meaning I can give to my life. ~ Dalai Lama

Each of our acts makes a statement as to our purpose. ~ Leo Buscaglia

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