Quotes about Intention

We are likely to feel better when we go to bed tonight if we have an internal sense that we spent our lives meaningfully today.

The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises—it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them.

Everything in this life has a purpose, there are no mistakes, no coincidences.

Our intention creates our reality.

You've got to be before you can do and do before you can have.

A solider always assumes that he is going to shoot, not to be shot.

But the changes from the crab apple to the pippin, from the wolf and fox to the house dog, from the charger of Henry V to the brewer's draught horse and the racehorse, are real; for here Man has played the god, subduing Nature to his intention, and ennobling or debasing life for a set purpose. And what can be done with a wolf can be done with a man.

Our deeds determine us, as long as we determine our deeds

I fear that in this thing many rich people deceive themselves. They go on accumulating the means but never using them; making bricks, but never building.

He was doctrinally convinced that there was a total absence of merit in himself; but that doctrinal conviction may be held without pain when the sense of demerit does not take a distinct shape in memory and revive the tingling of shame or the pang of remorse. Nay, it may be held with intense satisfaction when the depth of our sinning is but a measure for the depth of forgiveness, and a clenching proof that we are peculiar instruments of the divine intention.

We read, indeed, that the walls of Jericho fell down before the sound of trumpets,39 but we nowhere hear that those trumpets were hoarse and feeble. Doubtless they were trumpets that gave forth clear ringing tones, and sent a mighty vibration through brick and mortar. But the oratory of the Rev. Amos resembled rather a Belgian railway-horn, which shows praiseworthy intentions inadequately fulfilled.

A character at unity with itself —that performs what it intends, subdues every counteracting impulse, and has no visions beyond the distinctly possible —is strong by its very negations.