#Purpose Quotes

“Now, my masters, happy man be his dole, say I; every man to his business.”

“But earthlier happy is the rose distill'dThan that which withering on the virgin thornGrows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.”

“What e'er thou art, act well thy part.”

“If wishes would prevail with me, my purpose should not fail with me.”

“What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.”

“The sweat of industry would dry and die,But for the end it works to.”

“In brief, sir, study what you most affect.”

“O, this life Is nobler than attending for a check, Richer than doing nothing for a robe, Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk: Such pain the cap of him that makes him fine Yet keeps his book uncrossed.”

“To business that we love we rise betime, and go to't with delight.”

“Spirits are not finely touched But to fine issues.”

“The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, - a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man. Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm.”

“The desire of gold is not for gold. It is not the love of much wheat, and wool and household stuff. It is the means of freedom and benefit.”

“For naught so vile that on the earth doth live But to the earth some special good doth give.”

“Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another's dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.”

“The common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then he is part of the machine he moves; the man is lost.”

“Life is comic or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend towhat addresses the senses.”

“The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work.”

“Freedom is not the right to live as we please, but the right to find how we ought to live in order to fulfill our potential.”

“Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.”

“The world when seen through a little child's eyes, greatly resembles paradise. Happiness is doing with a smile what you have to do anyway. This time, like all time, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it.”

“Romeo, of dead, should be cut up into little stars to make the heavens fine. Life, with this pair, has no other aim, asks no more,than Juliet,--than Romeo.”

“What is man born for but to be a Reformer, a Remaker of what man has made? A renouncer of lies; a restorer of truth and good? Imitating that great Nature which embossoms us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but every hour repairs herself, yielding us every morning a new day, with every breath a new life?”

“I think that the heroism which at this day would make on us the impression of Epaminondas and Phocion must be that of a domestic conqueror. He who shall bravely and gracefully subdue this Gorgon of Convention and Fashion, and show men how to lead a clean, handsome and heroic life amid the beggarly elements of our cities and villages; whoso shall teach me how to eat my meat and take my repose and deal with men, without any shame following, will restore the life of man to splendor, and make his own name dear to all history.”

“What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused.”

“He's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter.”

“Nothing is arbitrary, nothing is insulated in beauty. It depends forever on the necessary and the useful. The plumage of the bird, the mimic plumage of the insect, has a reason for its rich colors in the constitution of the animal. Fitness is so inseparable an accompaniment of beauty, that it, has been taken for it.”

“Go out of the house to see the moon, and't is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey.”

“When science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they will appear the supplements and continuations of the material creation.”

“You have a place to live in this world which no other man can occupy; hence no competitors.”

“Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.”

“Every man has business and desire, Such as it is.”

“O gentlemen, the time of life is short!To spend that shortness basely were too long,If life did ride upon a dial's point,Still ending at the arrival of an hour.”

“The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life,in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality, and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every truth by use.”

“What is a man born for but to be a reformer, a remaker of what has been made, a denouncer of lies, a restorer of truth and good?”

“The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.”

“Something is wanting to science until it has been humanised.”

“Don't make a novel to establish a principle of political economy. You will spoil both.”

“No matter what your work, let it be your own. No matter what your occupation, let what you are doing be organic. Let it be in your bones. In this way, you will open the door by which the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you.”

“Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.”

“What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth andheaven?”

“A poet is no rattlebrain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says every thing, saying, at last, something good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. There is nothing whimsical or fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his times.”

“Power is what they want, not candy-power to execute their design, power to give legs and feet, form and actuality to their thought; which, to a clear-sighted man, appears the end for which the universe exists, and all its resources might be well applied.”

“Every mind has a new compass, a new direction of its own, differencing its genius and aim from every other mind.--We call this specialty the bias of each individual. And none of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.”

“Who is it that can tell me who I am?”

“My purpose is, indeed, a horse of that color.”

“Every man who would do anything well, must come to it from a higher ground.”

“Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.”

“When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.”

“Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.”

“The world exists, as I understand it, to teach the science of liberty.”