“They say, Find a purpose in your life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind.”— Khaled Hosseini, amazon.com
“And people get all fouled up because they want the world to have meaning as if it were words... As if you had a meaning, as if you were a mere word, as if you were something that could be looked up in a dictionary. You are meaning.”— Alan Watts, amazon.com
“When I was young, my father used to say, ‘If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.’ I thought about these words during my journey, and they kept me moving even when I didn’t know where…”— Ishmael Beah, amazon.com
“People who have purpose are too busy getting stuff done to worry about how they look. In the end, creative expression, passionate parenting, effective leadership and growing the best-goddamn-tomatoes-in-the-neighborhood is far more satisfying than making sure you look good in an outfit at all times.”— Linsey Hart, huffingtonpost.com
“Surely there were others like me, born without an inkling of direction. The wanderers, the amblers, the dabblers, united by our purposeless mantra--I have no idea what to do with my life.”— Suzanne Selfors, amazon.com
“He died that day because his body had served its purpose. His soul had done what it came to do, learned what it came to learn, and then was free to leave.”— Garth Stein, amazon.com
“I know only that a life without cause is a life without effect. And I can't allow that to happen to me.”— Paulo Coelho, amazon.com
“Not everything happens for a reason. Some things happen purely because evil exists in the world. That did not happen to you because you deserved it. It didn’t happen to you because you needed to learn a lesson. There are lessons you can learn without experiencing pain.”— caringsuggestions, wonderr-lustt.tumblr.com
“My life has a mysterious purpose that I don't understand, and day by day, conflict by conflict, I learn by going where I have to go.”— Dean Koontz, amazon.com
“My real purpose was to see you, and to judge, if I could, whether I might ever hope to make you love me.”— Darcy, amazon.com
“But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors — but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal. In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and…”— Hunter S. Thompson, tranquilmonkey.com
“Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN — and here is the essence of all I’ve said — you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.”— Hunter S. Thompson, tranquilmonkey.com
“Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.”— Helen Keller, amazon.com
“Many persons have the wrong idea of what constitutes real happiness. It is not obtained through self gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”— Helen Keller, amazon.com
“We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed.”— Viktor E. Frankl, amazon.com
“We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.”— Viktor E. Frankl, amazon.com
“According to logotherapy, this striving for to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in man.”— Viktor E. Frankl, amazon.com
“The more one forgets himself — by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love — the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.”— Viktor E. Frankl, amazon.com
“There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: ‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.’”— Viktor E. Frankl, amazon.com
“To be sure, man’s search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health.”— Viktor E. Frankl, amazon.com