
The Purpose of Life, p. 53
The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? (2002)
Act IV, A High Mountain Range
Faust, Part 2 (1832)
The Purpose of Life, p. 53
The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? (2002)
“Avoid shame, but do not seek glory, — nothing so expensive as glory.”
Vol. I, ch. 4
Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)
Source: Seven Against Thebes (467 BC), lines 683–685 (tr. Anna Swanwick)
“Nor can one easily find among many thousands a single man who considers virtue its own reward. The very glory of a good deed, if it lacks reward, affects them not; unrewarded uprightness brings them regret. Nothing but profit is prized.”
Nec facile invenias multis in milibus unum,
virtutem pretium qui putet esse sui.
ipse decor, recte facti si praemia desint,
non movet, et gratis paenitet esse probum.
nil nisi quod prodest carum est.
II, iii, 11-15; translation by Arthur Leslie Wheeler. Variant translation of gratis paenitet esse probum, in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 15th ed. (1980), p. 114: "It is annoying to be honest to no purpose."
Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters From the Black Sea)
“Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.”
"For Those Who Fail" in Memorie and Rime (1884), p. 237.
Context: "All honor to him who shall win the prize,"
The world has cried for a thousand years;
But to him who tries, and who fails and dies,
I give great honor and glory and tears.Give glory and honor and pitiful tears
To all who fail in their deeds sublime;
Their ghosts are many in the van of years,
They were born with Time in advance of Time.
“It is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risk everything.”
Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Karma
“Children find everything in nothing, men find nothing in everything.”
Source: Zibaldone (2013) trans. Kathleen Baldwin et al., [527] ISBN 978-0374296827