Purpose and Meaning of Life

Do you wish to roam farther and farther? See! The Good lies so near. Only learn to seize good fortune, For good fortune’s always here.

Man errs as long as he strives. 9

From reveries so airy, from the toil Of dropping buckets into empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up.

He left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale.

Not to go back is somewhat to advance, And men must walk, at least, before they dance.

All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good; And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

Who ever loves, if he do not propose The right true end of love, he’s one that goes To sea for nothing but to make him sick.

How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge! 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 godlike reason To fust in us unus’d.

Many things, having full reference To one consent, may work contrariously; As many arrows, loosed several ways, Fly to one mark; as many ways meet in one town; As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea; As many lines close in the dial’s center; So may a thousand actions, once afoot, End in one purpose, and be all well borne Without defeat.

The time of life is short; To spend that shortness basely were too long.

Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week? Or sells eternity to get a toy? For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?

Nature that framed us of four elements, Warring within our breasts for regiment, Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds: Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend The wondrous Architecture of the world: And measure every wandering planet’s course, Still climbing after knowledge infinite, And always moving as the restless Spheres, Will us to wear ourselves and never rest, Until we reach the ripest fruit of all, That perfect bliss and sole felicity, The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.

Judge each day not by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant.

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?

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.