Quotes about purpose
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“If you have felt hopeless, hold on! Wonderful changes are going to happen in your life as you begin to live it on purpose.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Life, Change

“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 (1954) Christian religious leader

Life, World, Success, Personality

“Pain serves a purpose. Without it you are in danger. What you cannot feel you cannot take care of.”

Rebecca Solnit book The Faraway Nearby

Source: The Faraway Nearby

Pain, Feeling

“We all make mistakes, but intelligence enables us to do it on purpose.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

Intelligence

“You have robbed me, and everyone here, of their purpose. That's not salvation, that's damnation.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: UnWholly

“The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Life, Way

“I hated roses. I hated them for being so trite, so clichéd, a default, all-purpose flower that said I love you, I'm sorry, and get well soon. Give me peonies and tulips, orchids or gardenia. Those were flowers with character.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

Love, Hate, Flowers

“People with places to go and people with no place to go; people with a purpose and people with no purpose; people trying to hold time back and people trying to urge it forward”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

People, Time

“The greatest tragedy in life is not death, but a life without a purpose.”

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

Life, Death

“The falling flakes were random and without purpose; the snow was drunker than she was.”

Chuck Klosterman book Downtown Owl

Source: Downtown Owl

“A fanatic is a man who, when he's lost sight of his purpose, redoubles his effort.”

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Source: Harvest of Stars

Effort

“Truth is a risky proposition. It's the nature of mediocre human beings to believe that lies are necessary, that they serve a purpose, that truth is subversive, that candor is dangerous, that the very scaffold of communal life is supported by lies.”

Anne Rice The Wolf Gift

Source: The Wolf Gift

Life, Truth, Communication, Support

“We come unbidden into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which, lest we forget, is the common lot.”

Abraham Verghese book Cutting for Stone

Source: Cutting for Stone

Life, Death, Forgetting

“Loneliness, when accepted, becomes a gift that will lead us to find a purpose in life.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Life, Loneliness

“Nothing is more creative… nor destructive… than a brilliant mind with a purpose.”

Dan Brown book Inferno

Source: Inferno

“I've been thinking Hobbes"
"On a weekend?"
"Well, it wasn't on purpose”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Thinking

“Most men have no purpose but to exist, Abraham; to pass quietly through history as minor characters upon a stage they cannot even see”

Seth Grahame-Smith (1976) US fiction author

Source: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Men, History

“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Art, Question

“War is an episode, a crisis, a fever the purpose of which is to rid the body of fever. So the purpose of a war is to end the war.”

William Faulkner book A Fable

Source: A Fable

War

“You take insult where none is intended, but if you will find insult where none is meant, then perhaps I should try harder to insult on purpose.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book The Harlequin

Source: The Harlequin

“We all wanted what we wanted, and when the Lord fulfilled HIS purpose rather than ours, we struck out against him. In anger. In disappointment. Yet, it is God's will that prevails.”

Francine Rivers book An Echo in the Darkness

Source: An Echo in the Darkness

God, Disappointment, Anger

“All power is the same. Magic. Physical strength. Economic strength. Political strength. It all serves a single purpose-it gives its possessor a broader spectrum of choices. It creates alternative courses of action.”

Jim Butcher Proven Guilty

Source: Proven Guilty

“I laid my hand on top of theirs, and all I could think was, Is this how revolutions begin? Not with a proclamation or a riot, but with a few people in a room somewhere with their hands clasped and a purpose.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Bullet

Source: Bullet

People, Thinking

“If you're going to be bad, be bad with a purpose or else you're not worth forgiving.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Forgiveness

“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 The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Soul, Learning

“So softly Lizzy has to lean over to hear me, I say, 'I can't face the world until I know why I'm here.'
You're kidding me.'
I shake my head vehemently. 'No. I need to figure out my purpose. Until I do, what's the use of getting up?”

Wendy Mass Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life

Source: Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life

World

“The purpose of dancing isn't to end up at a particular spot on the floor. The purpose of dancing and of life is to enjoy every moment and every step, regardless of where you are when the music ends.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Life, Music, Dance

“To be a princess is to play at life. To be a queen is to be a serious player… The purpose of life as a woman is to ascend to the throne and rule with heart.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Life, Heart, Princess

“I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money [not for purpose or passion]- has turned himself into a slave.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Money, Thinking, Passion, Personality

“The purpose of the poetry is not to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Nostalgia

“Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes?”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Episode 1, Chapter 12
The Power of Myth (1988)
Context: This is the threat to our lives. We all face it. We all operate in our society in relation to a system. Now is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes? … If the person doesn't listen to the demands of his own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program, you're going to have a schizophrenic crack-up. The person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life and it's not the one the body's interested in at all. And the world's full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.

“Enchantment and seduction were fine means of persuasion, but when time is short, an awkward but quick concussion could better serve a girl's purpose.”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Source: Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d Art

Girl, Time

“For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of the Law

Source: The Book of the Law

Way, Perfection

“Everything in this life has a purpose, there are no mistakes, no coincidences.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

Life

“Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

People, Art, Feeling, Communication

“He had got himself a life. Now he had to find a purpose in it.”

Douglas Adams book Mostly Harmless

Source: Mostly Harmless

Life

“The purpose exceeds the pain.”

Beth Moore (1957) American evangelist

Pain

“If the blind put their hands in God's, they find their way more surely than those who see but have not faith or purpose.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

God, Faith, Way

“The reality distortion field was a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand”

Walter Isaacson book Steve Jobs

Source: Steve Jobs

Reality

“You discover your identity and purpose through a relationship with Jesus Christ.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Christ

“You remember our talk about purpose and meaning?" he asked me, the smile disappearing. "Well, I think this might be mine. I think this is what I was meant to do, Georgina.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Revealed

Smile, Thinking

“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 (1945) American author

Source: Odd Interlude: A Special Odd Thomas Adventure

Life, Understanding, Learning

“Like black, do you? (Cassandra)
It serves its purpose. It’s hard to look intimidating in pastels. (Wulf)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

“Find out who you are, and do it on purpose.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

“Great minds have purpose, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.”

Washington Irving book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

"Philip of Pokanoket : An Indian Memoir".
A more extensive statement not found as such in this work is attributed to Irving in Elbert Hubbard's Scrap Book (1923) edited by Roycroft Shop:
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)
Variant: Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it.

“Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel small. But if that's their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We need only look up if we wish to feel small.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

God, Religion, Feeling, Idea

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Life, Deep, Powerful

“The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Suffering

“I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I am going.”

Anna Funder (1966) Australian writer

Source: Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

Freedom, Training

“With determination and purpose, I head into the light.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

Light

“The purpose of debates is to explore issues, not end them.”

David Gemmell (1948–2006) British author of heroic fantasy

Source: Lord of the Silver Bow

“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 (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Attributed to Emerson in Life’s Instructions for Wisdom, Success, and Happiness (2000) by H. Jackson Brown Jr., as well as numerous on-line sources since, the article "The Purpose of Life Is Not To Be Happy But To Matter" at the Quote Investigator https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/11/29/purpose/ indicates that this quote is probably derived from various statements first made by Leo Rosten, including the following words delivered at the National Book Awards held in New York in 1962: "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 lived at all." <br class="br">Misattributed

Life, Happiness, Wise

“Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.”

Napoleon Hill book Think and Grow Rich

Source: Think and Grow Rich (1938), p. 54

Idea

“The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person…”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

Personality

“And when you get down to it, Lily, that is the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love but to persist in love.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Love, Life

“What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?'

'I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris

God, Imagination, Idea, Passion

“I'm not senile," I snapped. "If I burn the house down it will be on purpose.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Housing

“She has man's brain--a brain that a man should have were he much gifted--and woman's heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me when He made that so good combination.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

God, Fashion, Heart

“To think what is true, to sense what is beautiful and to want what is good, hereby the spirit finds purpose of a life in reason.”

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic

Life, Beauty, Thinking, Sense

“The clitoris is pure in purpose. It is the only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure.”

Eve Ensler book The Vagina Monologues

Source: The Vagina Monologues

Pleasure

“Purpose! Purposes are for animals with a hell of a lot more dignity than the human race! Just hop on that strange torpedo and ride it to wherever it's going”

Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Source: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Hell, Animals

“If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Life, Books, Soul

“Sarcasm is when you tell someone the truth by lying on purpose.”

Chuck Klosterman book Downtown Owl

Source: Downtown Owl

Truth, Lying

“Travel's greatest purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

Travel

“We are frightfully concerned with our own deaths, sometimes so much so that we forget the real purpose of our lives”

Brian L. Weiss

Source: Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives

Death, Forgetting

“Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.”

Marian Wright Edelman (1939) American children's rights activist

Life, Time, Business

“I fell in love with you. I didn't do it on purpose”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Variant: I'm in love with you. I think everything you do is marvelous.
Source: The Hunter

Love

“The purposeful destruction of information is the essence of intelligent work.”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

Source: The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

Intelligence

“Vampires smiled for many reasons, but when a vampire male smiled at you from this distance with that kind of look in his eyes it was done for one purpose only: to impress. Look at my big teeth. I’m an apex predator. My genetic material is awesome.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Clean Sweep

Smile

“We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth

Forgetting

“Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

God

“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Life, Happiness

“Everything in the universe has a purpose. Indeed, the invisible intelligence that flows through everything in a purposeful fashion is also flowing through you”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Intelligence, Fashion, Universe

“Anyone can get a job, but do you have a purpose?”

Tom Butler-Bowdon (1967) Australian writer

Source: 50 Self-Help Classics: 50 Inspirational Books to Transform Your Life from Timeless Sages to Contemporary Gurus

“Ka was like a wheel, its one purpose to turn, and in the end it always came back to the place where it had started.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands

Source: The Waste Lands

“But the purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world.”

Umberto Eco book The Island of the Day Before

Source: The Island of the Day Before

World

“The heart wants what it wants, Dolp. You don't plan on making your life complicated, it just happens, and you don"t do it on purpose, and you don't do it to hurt people who love you. It just turns out that way sometimes.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Narcissus in Chains

Source: Narcissus in Chains

Love, Life, People, Way

“No one lights a lamp in order to hide it behind the door: the purpose of light is to create more light, to open people's eyes, to reveal the marvels around.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

People, Light

“You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Art, Search

“Your purpose… should always be to know… the whole that was intended to be known.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: The Guide for the Perplexed

“If you are always frightened for yourself you can't act, and then life loses its purpose. You just have to tell yourself that, when you get right down to it, you don't matter all that much.”

Terry Brooks book The Elf Queen of Shannara

The Elf Queen Of Shannara
Source: The Elf Queen of Shannara

Life

“If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

God, World, Heart

“If I have not read a book before, it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Reading New Books" (1825)
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)

Books, Reading

“A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes--will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”

John Stuart Mill book On Liberty

Source: On Liberty

Men

“She was a ghost in a strange house that overnight had become immense and solitary and through which she wandered without purpose, asking herself in anguish which one of them was deader: the man who had died or the woman he had left behind.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Housing

“Are you mad? (Artemis)
Yes, I am. Mad at this world where we are nothing to the gods. Mad at the Fates who put us here for no purpose except to toy with us for their petty amusement. I wish all of the gods were dead and gone. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

God, Fate, World, Madness

“When you know that everything matters—that every move counts as much as any other—you will begin living a life of permanent purpose.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

Life

“You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Love, Death, Loyalty

“nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer

“Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead, and the purpose surging in our nature responds.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Source: The Nature of the Physical World

Nature, Light, Science

“… Writings can be stolen, or changed, or used for evil purposes. But isn't the risk worth taking? The more people who share knowledge, the greater safeguard for it. Isn't there more danger in ignorance than knowledge?”

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

Source: The Arkadians

People, Knowledge, Evil, Change

“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Source: Quoted in: Kabir, Hajara Muhammad,. Northern women development. [Nigeria]. p, 351. ISBN 978-978-906-469-4. OCLC 890820657.

Happiness, Idea, Personality, Happy

“The purpose of influence is to "speak up for those who have no influence." (Pr.31:8) It's not about you.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Variant: There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer.
Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 37

Business, Business