Quotes about Purpose

If you gave more frequent thought to your death than to a long life, you would unquestionably be more eager to amend your life.

It is vanity to desire a long life, and to have little care for a good life.

Why seekest thou rest when thou art born to labour? Prepare thyself for patience more than for comforts, and for bearing the cross more than for joy.

You were born to work, so why do you look for rest?

The performance of an action is worthless in itself, if it is not done out of charity. Charity must be our motive; then everything we do, however little and insignificant, bears a rich harvest. After all, what God takes into account is not so much the thing we do, as the love that went to the doing of it.

How many perish through empty learning in this world, who care little for serving God.

It is vanity to wish for a long life and to care little about a well-spent life.

A life without a purpose is a languid, drifting thing. Every day we ought to renew our purpose, saying to ourselves: This day let us make a sound beginning, for what we have hitherto done is nought.

To live well is to work well, to show a good activity.

Now in matters of action the reason directs all things in view of the end:

No more does one who is on a journey have to think at every step of his destination.

The Philosopher says (Metaph. ii, 2) that "to suppose a thing to be indefinite is to deny that it is good." But the good is that which has the nature of an end. Therefore it is contrary to the nature of an end to proceed indefinitely. Therefore it is necessary to fix one last end.