Purpose and Meaning of Life

The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything.

We shall not cease from exploration

Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion.

That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great.

L’élan vital.

The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews

Nobody dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die from.

Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life.

Your tomorrow depends entirely on what you do today.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is important that you do it.

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

Infinite striving to be the best is man’s duty; it is its own reward.

Champions are made from something they have deep inside them: a desire, a dream, a vision.

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.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

It’s all a mystery, so much is mysterious. And we are here to endure it. And in the How, there lies the whole difference— 1

But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future’s sakes.

Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges— Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!

The common problem, yours, mine, everyone’s, Is—not to fancy what were fair in life Provided it could be—but, finding first What may be, then find how to make it fair Up to our means.

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?

O for ten years, that I may overwhelm Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed That my own soul has to itself decreed.

Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour.