Purpose Quotes

Most are unsure of their ‘true’ purpose and feel unfulfilled as a result. I have good news for everyone drawn to this page. You are on track. Your purpose has been calling you and you are paying attention right now. Everything you have done in your life has led you to this moment. We are all million piece puzzles looking for the missing parts.

Paying attention to what brings you joy will reveal your purpose faster than any other path. It might help to re-name ‘purpose’ your ‘path of joy.’ This ‘path of joy’ is filled with clues to what you came to earth to do. Think about what you would call your ‘happiest dream’. In fact, close your eyes right now and imagine three happy dreams you’d love to accomplish in this lifetime. Make them wildly exciting-to-you dreams. What would you dream of doing if you knew you could not fail? Imagine being honored for your accomplishments. You are being awarded a huge prize in front of an audience of thousands of enthusiastic fans. What award are you receiving? What great thing did you do? Grab a notebook and record the ideas that come into your mind. They are all puzzle pieces that fit into your purpose/joy path. Have no concerns about how to put the pieces together. The way will be shown to you when the time is right. Take baby action steps daily to explore your joys and watch your true purpose unfold. Remember that authentic joy is linked to harmlessness and giving of yourself in your own special way. Imposing your will on another is always ‘off the mark.’ You are hard-wired to make a positive difference in the world. The fun is doing it all with joy.

HOT TIP: One of my favorite sources of inspiration (besides this web site) is Mike Dooley’s fabulous www.TUT.com. Go there. Register your dreams and start receiving daily notes from the Universe to support your visions. I promise these notes will light a fire under your dreams! I wish you beautiful dreams and magical manifestations.

Your personal joy and inspiration coach,
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The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.
Mitch Albom

Remember that you are needed. There is at least one important work to be done that will not be done unless you do it.
Charles Allen

Words transform. Speak only with a good purpose. Say only things that serve you and others. Choose your words wisely.
Robert G. Allen

When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life.
Greg Anderson

You were born to greatness. Having a life mission implies that that world has need of you. In fact, the world has been preparing you to fill this need with one incredible life experience after another. Finding and fulfilling your potential will lead you to your highest experience in this life. Believe it, you have a mission. It is the gateway to your personal greatness.
Greg Anderson

Find what makes your heart sing and create your own music.
Mac Anderson

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.
Aristotle

There is a need to find and sing our own song, to stretch our limbs and shake them in a dance so wild that nothing can roost there, that stirs the yearning for solitary wings.
Barbara Lazear Ascher

Happiness is living by inner purpose, not by outer pressures.
David Augsberger

You have to do what you love to do, not get stuck in that comfort zone of a regular job. Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it.
Lucinda Basset

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
Sir Cecil Beaton

Vision animates, inspires, transforms purpose into action.
Warren Bennis

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven; A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
Ecclesiastes 3:1,2,4

He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
William Blake

I believe that nothing that happens to me is meaningless and that it is good for us all that it should be so, even if it runs counter to our own wishes. As I see it, I’m here for some purpose, and I only hope I may fulfill it.
Dietrich Bondoeffer

Soulmates tend to find each other during their respective pursuits of their soul missions. Creating a soulmate could be seen as a spiritual reward that we give outselves, after pursuing many soul contracts rife with discord.
Linda Brady

The self must know stillness before it can discover its true song.
Ralph Brum

Your work is to discover your work and then, with all your heart, to give yourself to it.
Buddha

God calls you to the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
Frederick Buechner

The secret to happiness is something to do.
John Burroughs

A wonderful realization will be the day you realize that you are unique in all the world. The world is an incredible unfulfilled tapestry, and only you can fulfill that tiny space that is yours.
Leo Buscaglia

All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler

The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
Robert Byrne

What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.
Julia Cameron

Follow your bliss, and doors will open for you that you never knew existed.
Joseph Campbell

I even have a superstition that has grown on me as the result of invisible hands coming all the time—namely that if you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you.
Joseph Campbell

I think a person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money - has turned himself into a slave. Work begins when you don't like what you're doing. There's a wise saying: make your hobby your source of income. Then there's no such thing as work, and there's no such thing as getting tired. That's been my own experience. I did just what I wanted to do. It takes a little courage at first, because who the hell wants you to do just what you want to do; they've all got lots of plans for you. But you can make it happen.
Joseph Campbell

If you follow someone else’s way, you are not going to realize your potential.
Joseph Campbell

Blessed is he who has found his work.
Thomas Carlyle

Listen to the clues. The next time you feel real joy, stop and think. Pay attention. Because joy is the universe’s way of knocking on your mind’s door. Hello in there. Is anyone home? Can I leave a message? Yes? Good! The message is that you are happy, and that means that you are in touch with your purpose.
Steve Chandler

The true object of all human life is play.
G.K. Chesterton

Everyone has a purpose in life…a unique gift or special talent to give to others. And when we blend this unique talent with service to others, we experience the ecstasy and exultation of our own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals.
Deepak Chopra

When work, commitment, and pleasure all become one and you reach that deep well where passion lives, nothing is impossible.
Nancy Coey

Life does not require you to sacrifice or compromise your joy to get what you want. Joy is what you want, so when you choose in harmony with it, you are fulfilling your purpose in living.
Alan Cohen

Simply be who you are, do what you do best, be where you are called by joy, and let life work its magic on your behalf.
Alan Cohen

Truly creative people care a little about what they have done, and a lot about what they are doing. Their driving focus is the life force that surges in them now.
Alan Cohen

We only do well the things we like doing.
Colette

Choose a job you love and you will never work another day in your life.
Confucius

The one way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life.
Cyril Connolly

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
William Cowper

The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose.
Michel de Montaigne

The first person I learned I could make happy with laughter was my mother, whom I idolize. It was a powerful thing to realize. I knew I had found my life’s work.
Ellen DeGeneres

To awaken each morning with a smile brightening my face; to greet the day with reverence for the opportunities it contains; to approach my work with a clean mind; to hold ever before me, even in the doing of little things, the ultimate purpose toward which I am working; to meet men and women with laughter on my lips and love in my heart; to be gentle, kind, and courteous through all the hours; to approach the night with weariness that ever woos sleep and the joy that comes from work well done - this is how I desire to waste wisely my days.
Thomas Dekker

I think, therefore I am.
Rene Descartes

At this very moment, there are people only you can reach…and differences only you can make.
Mike Dooley

Joy is but the sign that creative emotion is fulfilling its purpose.
Charles Du Bos

Authentic empowerment is the knowing that you are on purpose, doing God’s work, peacefully and harmoniously.
Wayne Dyer

When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It’s to enjoy each step along the way.
Wayne Dyer

Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead, and the purpose surging in our nature responds.
Arthur Eddington

Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.
Marion Wright Edelman

Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men -- above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.
Albert Einstein

Inspiration Deficit Disorder is about losing your vitality and purpose, and forgetting your original source of love and potential. It's about the cost of being disconnected and unaware of your own unique talents, needs, and destiny.
Jonathan H. Ellerby

Luck is tenacity of purpose.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

What makes your heart flutter? Do only that. There is not enough time for anything else.
Richard P. Feynman

Let’s assume that each person has an equal opportunity, not to become equal, but to become different – to realize whatever unique potential of body, mind and spirit he or she possesses.
John Fischer

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
Malcolm Forbes

Creativity is an attitude that transcends paradigms and beliefs.It's a soul level yearning to fulfill a purpose, uniquely contribute and leave a mark.
Janice Francisco

Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.
Viktor Frankl

You don't create your mission in life - you detect it.
Viktor Frankl

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

When you work, you fulfill a part of earth's fondest dream assigned to you when that dream is born.
Kahlil Gibran

There are many wonderful things that will never be done if you do not do them.
Charles D. Gill

You will recognize your own path when you come upon it, because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need.
Jerry Gillies

What you call freedom is still nothing but choosing how to steer straight into the heart of what chooses you.
Kate Gleason

The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred…unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.
Jane Goodall

To love what you do and feel that it matters—how could anything else be more fun?
Katharine Graham

Joy of life seems to me to arise from a sense of being where one belongs…of being foursquare with the life we have chosen. All the discontented people I know are trying sedulously to be something they are not, to do something they cannot do.
David Grayson

Everyone has a covenant and a purpose which is special, and if you do not fulfill it, -- there is no one else who will.
Glenda Green

Human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves.
Germaine Greer

Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwhile.
Wilfred T. Grenfell

We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do.
Edward Everett Hale

The secret is keeping busy, and loving what you do.
Lionel Hampton

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
Sydney J. Harris

The true profession of man is to find his way to himself.
Hermann Hesse

Great minds have purposes, little minds have wishes. Little minds are subdued by misfortunes, great minds rise above them.
Washington Irving

It’s time to start living the life you’ve imagined.
Henry James

In the dim background of our mind, we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.
William James

Saying yes means getting up and acting on your belief that you can create meaning and purpose in whatever life hands you.
Susan Jeffers

It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.
Thomas Jefferson

Don’t let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.
Mae Jemison

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
Jesus (The Gospel of Thomas/Gnostic Gospels)

I am not afraid…I was born to do this.
Joan of Ark

Follow your heart and intuition, they already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Steve Jobs

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
Steve Jobs

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Steve Jobs

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.
Carl Jung

The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its supreme purpose through him.
Carl Jung

The ‘still, small voice’ of God never calls on me to be like another man. It appeals to me to rise to my full stature and fulfill the promise that sleeps within my being.
Sam Keen

Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.
Helen Keller

True happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Helen Keller

The most common form of despair is not being who you are…
Søren Kierkegaard

Doing work you love is the dizzying path of saying yes to yourself and yes to a brilliant, hidden self you do not yet know.
Tama J. Kieves

Finding and creating your life's work, even if it is entirely different from what you have done most of your life, will bring you more happiness and health than any other action you can take. If your primary responsibility in life is being true to yourself, that can only be accomplished by carrying out what you are called to do - your unique and special vocation...Your life's work involves doing what you love and loving what you do.
Dennis Kimbro

The true American dream not only provides the freedom to use your gifts and talents to achieve your highest goal but also gives you the freedom to fulfill your purpose in life. You are meant to work in ways that suit you, drawing on your natural talents and gifts. This work, when you find it and commit to it -- even if only as a hobby -- is the key to happiness.
Dennis Kimbro

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
Barbara Kingsolver

Balance, peace, and joy are the fruit of a successful life. It starts with recognizing your talents and finding ways to serve others by using them.
Thomas Kinkade

Your chances of success are directly proportional to the degree of pleasure you derive from what you do.
Michael Korda

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

I promise myself…to be so strong that nothing can disturb my peace of mind; to talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person I meet; to make all my friends feel that there is something worthwhile in them; to look at the sunny side of everything and make my optimism come true; to think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best; to be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as I am about my own; to forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future; to wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile to every living creature I meet; to give so much time to improving myself that I have no time to criticize others; to be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble; to think well of myself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud word, but in great deeds; to live in the faith that the whole world is on my side, so long as I am true to the best that is in me.
Christian D. Larson

Our world is incomplete until each one of us discovers what moves us - our passion. No other person can hear our calling. We must listen and act on it for ourselves.
Richard J. Leider

When I was 5 years old my mother told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment. I told them they didn’t understand life.
John Lennon

Hell is not fire and brimstone, not a place where you are punished for lying or cheating or stealing. Hell is wanting to be something and somewhere different from where you are.
Stephen Levine

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
Audre Lorde

There is no right path. Only the one that allows you to sleep soundly and wake up excited.
Jennifer Louden

All who have accomplished great things have had a great aim, have fixed their gaze on a goal which was high, one which sometimes seemed impossible.
Orison S. Marden

The Creator has not given you a longing to do what you have no ability to do.
Orison S. Marden

I will not die an unlived life…I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me…I choose to risk my significance.
Dawna Markova

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.
Abraham Maslow

Almost all creativity involves purposeful play.
Abraham Maslow

What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.
Abraham Maslow

Work for your own soul’s sake.
Edgar Lee Masters

Trust the process of the subtle push toward art and creative expression from inside you – it is the gentle call of your heart and renewed search for soul. It is an opening to expansion of your expressive abilities and the discovery of hidden limitations ready to be challenged. Be open to what it means, it has many possibilities for action in every part of your life. Ultimately it will lead to significant personal changes – to living life in a new way with new tools of creative expression.
Donald William Mathews

Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one’s death.
Rollo May

Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one’s identity as being of worth and dignity.
Rollo May

The death of someone we know always reminds us that we are still alive – perhaps for some purpose which we ought to re-examine.
Mignon McLaughlin

We must not only give what we have, we must give what we are.
Desire-Joseph Mercier

Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
Henry Miller

Paint as you like and die happy.
Henry Miller

There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few that will catch your heart – pursue those.
Michael Molan

Every single thing you've been through in your life has had a purpose.
Beth Moore

Nothing will kill what you've been called to do more than comparing yourself to someone else.
Beth Moore

The meaning of life is creative love. Not love as an inner feeling, as a private sentimental emotion, but love as a dynamic power moving out in the world and doing something original.
Tom Morris

Do you really want to look back on your life and see how wonderful it could have been had you not been afraid to live it?
Caroline Myss

None of us needs instruction in how to recognize what your heart is saying. We do need guidance, however, on how to have the courage to follow those feelings, since they will force us to change our lives in any case. But consider the consequences of not listening to the heart's guidance: depression, confusion, and the wretched feeling that we are not on our life's true path, but viewing it from a distance.
Caroline Myss

What is [the role of money] in the search for meaning? Is our relationship to it one of the chief factors that keeps us in our prison, or could it also be a tool for breaking out, for awakening to a life filled with intensity of purpose?
Jacob Needleman

The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.
Earl Nightingale

If you live the life you love, you will receive shelter and blessings. Sometimes the great famine of blessings in and around us derives from the fact that we are not living the life we love; rather, we are living the life that is expected of us. We have fallen out of rhythm with the secret signature and light of our own nature.
John O’Donohue

Joy is your destiny. You were created for joy. Pay attention to what brings you joy and take joyful actions daily. Creative action equals joy attraction. Joy is the path to your true purpose.
Marta Davidovich Ockuly

Living with passion and purpose is about doing what ‘lights you up’ and makes your heart sing. It’s NOT about money. It’s about something much more rare and precious. It’s about shining your light in a way only YOU can do it in this world!
Marta Davidovich Ockuly

The dream and the dreamer are always matched. You could not have a dream without the means, right now, to begin it.
Marta Davidovich Ockuly

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
Mary Oliver

To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.
Cynthia Ozick

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.
Patanjali

Find a need and fill it.
Ruth Stafford Peale

Champion the right to be yourself; dare to be different and to set your own pattern, live your own life, and follow your own star.
Wilfred Peterson

It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.
Pablo Picasso

You have a unique message to deliver, a unique song to sing, a unique act of love to bestow. This message, this song, and this act of love have been entrusted exclusively to the one and only you.
John Powell

Goals help focus you on areas in both your personal and professional life that are important and meaningful, rather than being guided by what other people want you to be, do, or accomplish.
Catherine Pulsifer

If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.
Anna Quindlen

Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is.
Mary Anne Radmacher

Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness - not pain or mindless self-indulgence - is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.
Ayn Rand

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
Ayn Rand

Each one of us has a fire in our heart for something. It’s our goal in life to find it and keep it lit.
Mary Lou Retton

Goals are a means to an end, not the ultimate purpose of our lives. They are simply a tool to concentrate our focus and move us in a direction. They only reason we really pursue goals is to cause ourselves to expand and grow. Achieving goals by themselves will never make us happy in the long term; it’s who you become, as you overcome the obstacles necessary to achieve your goals, that can give you the deepest and most long-lasting sense of fulfillment.
Anthony Robbins

If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.
Nora Roberts

I have always found that my view of success has been iconoclastic: success to me is not about money or status or fame, its about finding a livelihood that brings me joy and self-sufficiency and a sense of contributing to the world.
Anita Roddick

You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you have to make choices, and hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.
Fred Rogers

What you don’t do can be a destructive force.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
Theodore Roosevelt

Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive – the risk to be alive and express what we really are.
Miguel Ángel Ruiz

Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.
Rumi

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
Rumi

Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.
Rumi

Sometimes you hear a voice through the door calling you. This turning toward what you deeply love saves you.
Rumi

The soul is here for its own joy.
Rumi

We were not sent into this world to do anything into which we cannot put our hearts.
John Ruskin

Love, and do what you like.
Saint Augustine

If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.
Mitsugi Saotome

We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.
May Sarton

The best work is not what is most difficult for you: it is what you do best.
Jean-Paul Sartre

We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything than when we are playing.
Charles Schaefer

Man’s ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he is born. And what is it that reason demands of him? Something very easy—that he live in accordance with his own nature.
Seneca

One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one's life has meaning, that one is needed in this world.
Hannah Senesh

Purpose is the most powerful motivator in the world. The secret of passion truly is purpose.
Robin Sharma

We are all here for some special reason. Stop being a prisoner of your past. Become the architect of your future.
Robin Sharma

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
George Bernard Shaw

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.
George Bernard Shaw

Disappointment often focuses on the failure of our own agenda rather than on God's long-term purposes for us, which may use stress and struggle as tools for strengthening our spiritual muscles.
Luci Shaw

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
Mary Shelly

Every single one of us can do things that no one else can do - can love things that on one else can love. We are like violins. We can be used for doorstops, or we can make music. You know what to do.
Barbara Sher

Everyone has unique gifts and talents. What you love is what you're gifted at. To be completely happy, to live a completely fulfilled life, you have to do what you love.
Barbara Sher

The first step is to find out what you love – and don’t be practical about it. The second step is to start doing what you love immediately, in any small way possible.
Barbara Sher

If God came in and said, I want you to be happy for the rest of your life, what would you do?
Bernie Siegel

Do what you love and the money will follow.
Marsha Sinetar

We must trust our soul's noncallings as well as its callings. Destiny seems to have very specific ideas about what each of us should be doing on the planet, and our greatest personal fulfillment always lies in those directions and none other.
Dianne Skafte

The meaning of earthly existence lies, not as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Love is nothing but joy accompanied with the idea of an eternal cause.
Baruch Spinoza

If you’re gonna be a failure, at least be one at something you enjoy.
Sylvester Stallone

What constitutes success? She who has achieved success has lived well; laughed often and loved much; has gained the respect of little children; has filled her niche and accomplished her task; has left the world better than she found it; has always looked for the best in others and given the best she had.
Bessie Anderson Stanley

Creativity is our highest and greatest response to all that is within us, and all that surrounds us, and, thus, it is our raison d'etre, individually and collectively.
Algene Steele

You have to know what you want to get.
Gertrude Stein

Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.
Stendhal

When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it.
W. Clement Stone

Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose – not the one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember.
Anne Sullivan

I know of no realm of life that can provide more companionship in a lonely world or greater feelings of security and purpose in chaotic times than the close ties of a family.
Charles R. Swindoll

Life is a promise; fulfill it.
Mother Teresa

All of us are born for a reason, but all of us don’t discover why. Success in life has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It’s what you do for others.
Danny Thomas

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined.
Henry David Thoreau

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
Henry David Thoreau

We are constantly invited to be who we are.
Henry David Thoreau

All successful people, men and women, are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.
Brian Tracy

Happiness is the sense that one matters.
Sarah Trimmer

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.
Mark Twain

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn’t have done it. Who was it who said, Blessed is the man who has found his work? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work—not somebody else’s work. The work that is really a man’s own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man’s work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great.
Mark Twain

How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?
Vincent van Gogh

Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your profession is what you were put on earth to do with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.
Vincent van Gogh

The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The meaning of life is giving your gift away.
David Viscott

What we do flows from who we are.
Paul Vitale

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.
Voltaire

We must cultivate our garden.
Voltaire

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown.
Denis Waitley

It is the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
Rebecca West

We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting laundry.
E. B. White

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Harold Thurman Whitman

You can change your beliefs so they empower your dreams and desires. Create a strong belief in yourself and what you want.
Marcia Wieder

When you die and go to heaven, our maker is not going to ask, Why didn’t you discover the cure for such and such? The only question we will be asked in that precious moment is, Why didn’t you become you?
Elie Wiesel

Live the wonderful life that is in you.
Oscar Wilde

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Marianne Williamson

Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our talents and abilities were used in a way that served others.
Marianne Williamson

The purpose of our lives is to give birth to the best which is within us.
Marianne Williamson

Nothing but what you volunteer has the essence of life, the springs of pleasure in it. These are the things you do because you want to do them, the things your spirit has chosen for its satisfaction. The more you are stimulated to such action the more clearly does it appear to you that you are a sovereign spirit, put into the world, not to wear a harness, but to work eagerly without it.
Woodrow Wilson

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget that errand.
Woodrow Wilson

Every day, passion speaks to us through our feelings. That’s why when you allow yourself to become anesthetized by what others think, you literally block yourself from living the life you were called to live. I promise you that if you make a choice that doesn’t please your mate, your friends, your mother, or whoever, the world will not fall apart. The people who truly love you want you to love yourself.
Oprah Winfrey

Find a way to get paid for doing what you love. Then every paycheck will be a bonus.
Oprah Winfrey

Have the courage to follow your passion – and if you don’t know what it is, realize that one reason for your existence on earth is to find it.
Oprah Winfrey

Ignoring your passion is like dying a slow death…Passion whispers to you through your feelings, beckoning you toward your highest good. Pay attention to what makes you feel energized, connected, stimulated- what gives you your juice. Do what you love, give it back in the form of service, and you will do more than succeed. You will triumph.
Oprah Winfrey

I've come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that's as unique as a fingerprint - and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.
Oprah Winfrey

Let passion drive your profession.
Oprah Winfrey

Real success means creating a life of meaning through service that fulfills your reason for being here.
Oprah Winfrey

The real point of being alive is to evolve into the whole person you were intended to be.
Oprah Winfrey

Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility.
Oprah Winfrey

What I know for sure is that you feel real joy in direct proportion to how connected you are to living your truth.
Oprah Winfrey

I wouldn't dream of working on something that didn't make my gut rumble and my heart want to explode.
Kate Winslet

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.
Margaret Young