Purpose and Meaning of Life

Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.

The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory. . . . We never seek things for themselves, but for the search.

It’s better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you’re fighting for.

The noblest question in the world is What Good may I do in it ?

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

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.

The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder.

Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.

There is at bottom only one problem in the world, and this is its name. How does one break through? How does one get into the open? How does one burst the cocoon and become a butterfly?

Problems are to the mind what exercise is to the muscles, they toughen and make strong. Problems make one better able to cope with life.

All that we do is done with an eye to something else.

The root of joy, as of duty, is to put all one’s powers towards some great end.

An aim in life is the only fortune worth the finding; and it is not to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself.

Be winged arrows, aiming at fulfillment and goal, even though you will tire without having reached the mark.

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.

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

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

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

If you want to understand the meaning of happiness, you must see it as a reward and not as a goal.

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.

Heaven never helps the man who will not act.

The purpose of life is a life of purpose.

Furthermore, we have not even to risk the journey alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.

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