Purpose and Meaning of Life

An ignorance of means may minister To greatness, but an ignorance of aims Makes it impossible to be great at all.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

I read somewhere of a shepherd who, whenasked why he made, from within fairy rings, ritual observances to the moon to protect his flocks, replied: I’d be a damn fool if I didn’t!These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn fool if they weren’t.

The unbearable lightness of being.

I am an idealist. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.

The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.

In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches.

L’élan vital.

Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.

Think of the long view of life, not just what's going to happen today or tomorrow. Don't give up what you most want in life for something you think you want now.

Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, wants to re-establish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

The joy of life is to put out one’s power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other. And the real misery is not to do this.

Nobody can advise and help you, nobody. There is only one single means. Go inside yourself. Discover the motive that bids you write; examine whether it sends its roots down to the deepest places of your heart, confess to yourself whether you would have to die if writing were denied you. This before all: ask yourself in the quietest hour of your night: must I write?

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life.

The purpose of life is a life of purpose.

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim.

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience ultimately one must have one's experiences in common.

I think a man's duty is to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to disprove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life.

It’s not the basic I that the poet is after but the essential you.

 

One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves.

 

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

Dreams do come true, if we only wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.