91 Inspiring Purposeful Quotes

In a world where clarity and motivation can sometimes seem elusive, finding words that resonate with our deeper intentions can make all the difference. Purposeful quotes have the power to inspire, uplift, and provide guidance as we navigate through life's various challenges. They serve as reminders of our values and aspirations, offering a burst of encouragement exactly when we need it. In this carefully curated collection of 91 inspiring purposeful quotes, you'll find wisdom from thought leaders, authors, and philosophers, each shedding light on the pathways to a meaningful life. Whether you're seeking to reinvigorate your daily routine or looking for profound insights to share, these quotes are bound to spark a renewed sense of purpose and drive.

1. “In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done." And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely."Everything must have a purpose?" asked God."Certainly," said man."Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this," said God.And He went away.” - Kurt Vonnegut

2. “Although it is very easy to marry a wife, it is very difficult to support her along with the children and the household. Accordingly, no one notices this faith of Jacob. Indeed, many hate fertility in a wife for the sole reason that the offspring must be supported and brought up. For this is what they commonly say: ‘Why should I marry a wife when I am a pauper and a beggar? I would rather bear the burden of poverty alone and not load myself with misery and want.’ But this blame is unjustly fastened on marriage and fruitfulness. Indeed, you are indicting your unbelief by distrusting God’s goodness, and you are bringing greater misery upon yourself by disparaging God’s blessing. For if you had trust in God’s grace and promises, you would undoubtedly be supported. But because you do not hope in the Lord, you will never prosper.” - Martin Luther

3. “Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. … The ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, your purpose, is to bring that power into this world.” - Eckhart Tolle

4. “It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?” - Henry David Thoreau

5. “Garion,' she said very calmly, 'the universe knew your name before that moon up there was spun out of the emptiness. Whole constellations have been waiting for you since the beginning of time.'I didn't want them to, Aunt Pol.'There are those of us who aren't given that option, Garion. There are things that gave to be done and certain people who have to do them. It's as simple as that.'He smiled rather sadly at her flawless face and gently touched the snowy white lock at her brow. Then, for the last time in his life, he asked the question that had been on his lips since he was a tiny boy. 'Why me, Aunt Pol? Why me?'Can you possibly think of anyone else you'd trust to deal with these matters, Garion?'He had not really been prepared for that question. It came at him in stark simplicity. Now at last he fully understood. 'No,' he sighed, 'I suppose not. Somehow it seems a little unfair, though. I wasn't even consulted.'Neither was I, Garion,' she answered. 'But we didn't have to be consulted, did we? The knowledge of what we have to do is born into us.” - David Eddings

6. “[Responding to the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce's question whether he traced his descent from an ape on his mother's or his father's side]A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who … plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.” - Thomas Huxley

7. “But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,But often, in the din of strife,There rises an unspeakable desireAfter the knowledge of our buried life;A thirst to spend our fire and restless forceIn tracking out our true, original course;A longing to inquireInto the mystery of this heart which beatsSo wild, so deep in us—to knowWhence our lives come and where they go.” - Matthew Arnold

8. “Thus, you see, he arrived at the same end, via supposed duty, that he was previously pledged to via interest. I fancy a good number of us, when any line of action will promote our own interest, can make ourselves believe that reasons exist which compel us to it as a duty.” - Elizabeth Gaskell

9. “A soul needs a purpose to live and so I concluded that my purpose was to kill everyone besides myself. I felt alive.--Gaara” - Masashi Kishimoto

10. “A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.” - Jorge Luis Borges

11. “Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It's hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency.” - David Foster Wallace

12. “Pride makes us long for a solution to things – a solution, a purpose, a final cause; but the better telescopes become, the more stars appear.” - Julian Barnes

13. “Your greatest self has been waiting your whole life; don't make it wait any longer.” - Steve Maraboli

14. “‎"If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.” - William Lane Craig

15. “We may run, walk, stumble. drive, or fly, but let us never lose sight of the reason for the journey, or miss a chance to see a rainbow on the way.” - Gloria Gaither

16. “Cat: Where are you going?Alice: Which way should I go?Cat: That depends on where you are going.Alice: I don’t know.Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.” - Lewis Carroll

17. “...all around George, approaching him, crossing his path from every direction, is the male and female raw material which is fed daily into this factory, along the conveyor-belts of the freeways, to be processed, packaged and placed on the market...What do they think they are up to? Well, there is the official answer; preparing themselves for life which means a job and security in which to raise children to prepare themselves for life which means a job and security in which...Here, in their midst, George feels a sort of vertigo. Oh God, what will become of them all? What chance have they? Ought I yell out to them, right now, here, that it's hopeless?But George knows he can't do that. Because, absurdly, inadequately, in spite of himself almost, he is a representative of hope. And the hope is not false. No. It's just that George is like a man trying to sell a real diamond for a nickel, on the street. The diamond is protected from all but the tiniest few, because the great hurrying majority can never stop to dare to believe that it could conceivably be real.” - Christopher Isherwood

18. “Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose” - Leonardo da Vinci

19. “In the discoveries of science the harmony of the spheres is also now the harmony of life. And as the eerie illumination of science penetrates evermore deeply into the order of nature, the cosmos appears increasingly to be a vast system finely tuned to generate life and organisms of biology very similar, perhaps identical, to ourselves. All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition of traditional natural theology - that the cosmos is a specially designed whole with life and mankind as a fundamental goal and purpose, a whole in which all facets of reality, from the size of galaxies to the thermal capacity of water, have their meaning and explanation in this central fact.Four centuries after the scientific revolution apparently destroyed irretrievably man's special place in the universe, banished Aristotle, and rendered teleological speculation obsolete, the relentless stream of discovery has turned dramatically in favor of teleology and design, and the doctrine of the microcosm is reborn. As I hope the evidence presented in this book has shown, science, which has been for centuries the great ally of atheism and skepticism, has become at last, in the final days of the second millennium, what Newton and many of its early advocates had so fervently wished - the "defender of the anthropocentric faith.” - Michael Denton

20. “I am a fugitive and a vagabond, a sojourner seeking signs.” - Annie Dillard

21. “I have more wisdom than any books ever written in history of times, any scripture ever written which you rhyme but this is not my purpose.” - Santosh Kalwar

22. “It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters,” - Amit Ray

23. “Sometimes it's the same moments that take your breath away that breathe purpose and love back into your life.” - Steve Maraboli

24. “I want to live my life in such a way that when I get out of bed in the morning, the devil says, "aw shit, he's up!” - Steve Maraboli

25. “The question of how to spend my life, of what my life is for, is a question posed only to me, and I can no more delegate the responsibility for answering it than I can delegate the task of dying.” - Anthony T. Kronman

26. “By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.” - Emil Cioran

27. “Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later, he will regret not having left it intact.” - Emil Cioran

28. “The key to a happy life is to have accomplishments to be proud of and purpose to look forward to, and at the moment I had both. How wonderful it was to be me.” - Jeff Lindsay

29. “It is common to represent a title, but inspiring to represent a purpose.” - T.F. Hodge

30. “What are you prepared to give for your dream? If it is not everything...stop pipe dreaming.” - T.F. Hodge

31. “Men are not generally sufficiently aware of the distinction between the law of God and his purpose; they are apt to suppose, that as the temper of the sinner is contrary to the one, so the outrages of the sinner are able to defeat the other; than which nothing can be more false.” - John Witherspoon

32. “To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.” - Samuel Beckett

33. “What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?''I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.” - Stanisław Lem

34. “God created me—and you—to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion—namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life.” - John Piper

35. “If we could push ajar the gates of life,And stand within, and all God's workings see,We could interpret all this doubt and strife,And for each mystery could find a key.But not today. Then be content, poor heart!God's plans, like lilies pure and white, unfold:We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart--Time will reveal the calyxes of gold.” - Mary Riley Smith

36. “Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.” - Rumi

37. “To me it seems that too many young women of this time share the same creed. 'Live, laugh, love, be nothing but happy, experience everything, et cetera et cetera.' How monotonous, how useless this becomes. What about the honors of Joan of Arc, Beauvoir, Stowe, Xena, Princess Leia, or women that would truly fight for something other than just their own emotions?” - Criss Jami

38. “Do it because it's right, not because it's right for your resume.” - Howard Behar

39. “One must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm alive and it's not my fault, which means I must somehow go on living the best I can, without bothering anybody, until I die.''But what makes you live? With such thoughts, you'll sit without moving, without undertaking anything...''Life won't leave one alone as it is.” - Leo Tolstoy

40. “I am sure now that life is not what it is purported to be and that nature, in the canny words of the Scotch theologue, 'is not as natural as it looks.” - Loren Eiseley

41. “I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literature—not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sideways, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life had been made and not happened.” - Norman Maclean

42. “Because I don't think God trusts just anybody with so much heartache. The world has not yet seen what God can do with a man who gives both halves of a broken heart to him. And I don't doubt that a man like that can change the world...or at least a little part of it.” - Chris Fabry

43. “God is a God of purpose. He doesn't wake-up and start dabbling into things; He doesn't practice trial and error. His ways are sure, they may be low but they are always sure.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

44. “Learn to say no to demands, requests, invitations, and activities that leave you with no time for yourself. Until I learned to say no, and mean it, I was always overloaded by stress. You may feel guilty and selfish at first for guarding your down- time, but you’ll soon find that you are a much nicer, more present, more productive person in each instance you do choose to say yes.” - Holly Mosier

45. “The most important reason for your “no” is that you need your downtime so you won’t behave like a jerk because you’re depleted. And you don’t want to battle an appetite spiked by the stress of overcommitment. But that’s your secret; others don’t need that information. So just smile, say no, thank you, and keep moving.” - Holly Mosier

46. “Being truly happy in life involves you feeling more in control of the direction your life is going.” - Deborah Day

47. “Your purpose is your why.” - Deborah Day

48. “A wise teacher learns in the midst of teaching; a wise student teaches in the midst of learning.” - Mollie Marti

49. “Lineage, personality, and environment may shape you, but they do not define your full potential.” - Mollie Marti

50. “The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

51. “Jesus has prepared the way and has made following our destiny possible, whereas we are helpless by ourselves. We can find and fulfill our purpose by responding to the clear, simple call of Jesus Christ: "Follow Me." He is the doorway to fulfilling our destiny, where our divine design and God-ordained purpose live in perfect harmony.” - Swindoll Charles R.

52. “Either we are adrift in chaos or we are individuals, created, loved, upheld and placed purposefully, exactly where we are. Can you believe that? Can you trust God for that?” - Elisabeth Elliot

53. “[I]n science we have to be particularly cautious about 'why' questions. When we ask, 'Why?' we usually mean 'How?' If we can answer the latter, that generally suffices for our purposes. For example, we might ask: 'Why is the Earth 93 million miles from the Sun?' but what we really probably mean is, 'How is the Earth 93 million miles from the Sun?' That is, we are interested in what physical processes led to the Earth ending up in its present position. 'Why' implicitly suggests purpose, and when we try to understand the solar system in scientific terms, we do not generally ascribe purpose to it.” - Lawrence M. Krauss

54. “Life without a cause will have no effect.” - Habeeb Akande

55. “Confinement is not a part of your destiny. Your life purpose is to take the totality of your negative experiences, roll them up into one, and use them positively to lay the foundation for your destiny.” - B.L. Brown

56. “Lord, when I feel that what I'm doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it.” - Brennan Manning

57. “Has your soul a special mission? Yes. Your mission is in the inmost recesses of your heart, and you have to find and fulfil it there. There can be no external way for you to fulfil your mission. The deer grows musk in his own body. He smells it and becomes enchanted, and tries to locate its source. He runs and runs, but he cannot find the source. In his endless search, he loses all his energy and finally he dies. But the source he was so desperately searching for was within himself. How could he find it elsewhere?Such is the case with you. Your special mission- which is the fulfilment of your divinity- is not outside you, but within you. Search within. Meditate within. You will discover your mission.” - Sri Chinmoy

58. “Your lack of commitment to being different is what kills you. It is the insanity of doing the same thing every time and expecting a different result that wastes your time.” - Shannon Alder

59. “The problem with this generation is they are so quick to define who they are in the process of searching. It is their need for immediate acceptance that keeps them from exploring further.” - Shannon Alder

60. “Life truly is what you make it. The purpose and meaning of life is the purpose and meaning that you give it.” - Steven Redhead

61. “Giving up everything must mean giving over everything to kingdom purposes, surrendering everything to further the one central cause, loosening our grip on everything. For some of us, this may mean ridding ourselves of most of our possessions. But for all of us it should mean dedicating everything we retain to further the kingdom. (For true disciples, however, it cannot mean hoarding or using kingdom assets self-indulgently.)” - Randy Alcorn

62. “What do I miss, as a human being, if I have never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? The answer is: Nothing. And what do I miss by not knowing Shakespeare? Unless I get my understanding from another source, I simply miss my life. Shall we tell our children that one thing is as good as another-- here a bit of knowledge of physics, and there a bit of knowledge of literature? If we do so, the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, because that normally is the time it takes from the birth of an idea to its full maturity when it fills the minds of a new generation and makes them think by it.Science cannot produce ideas by which we could live.” - E.F. Schumacher

63. “If you are not working towards something, your life will end with nothing.” - Habeeb Akande

64. “Our sole purpose on this earth is to add value to others. It doesn’t make sense to just exist in people's lives or to be a drain on them, does it?” - Rob Liano

65. “Knowing your purpose motivates your life.” - Rick Warren

66. “I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I am going.” - Anna Funder

67. “All of us at one point end face up in a ditch, but only a few will choose to look up at the stars and dream.” - Shannon L. Alder

68. “Lincoln's story confounds those who see depression as a collection of symptoms to be eliminated. But it resonates with those who see suffering as a potential catalyst of emotional growth. "What man actually needs," the psychiatrist Victor Frankl argued,"is not a tension-less state but rather the striving and struggling of a worthwhile goal." Many believe that psychological health comes with the relief of distress. But Frankl proposed that all people-- and particularly those under some emotional weight-- need a purpose that will both draw on their talents and transcend their lives. For Lincoln, this sense of purpose was indeed the key that unlocked the gates of a mental prison. This doesn't mean his suffering went away. In fact, as his life became richer and more satisfying, his melancholy exerted a stronger pull. He now responded to that pull by tying it to his newly defined sense of purpose. From a place of trouble, he looked for meaning. He looked at imperfection and sought redemption.” - Joshua Wolf Shenk

69. “A confident woman wears a smile and has this air of comfortability and pleasantness about her.” - Agu, Jaachynma N.E.

70. “An intelligent woman is a goldmine! She has the ability to learn, reason and understand things better and faster than her contemporaries. She is competent, alert and can reason out stuffs easily.” - Agu, Jaachynma N.E.

71. “A responsible woman doesn’t see opportunities and needs and look the other way pretending not to see them rather she gets to work to ensure things are done properly and her man succeeds in his endeavours.” - Agu, Jaachynma N.E.

72. “Ladies, get confident about yourselves, build up your self-worth and esteem, love yourself and be proud of your achievements and your man will adore you for life.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

73. “Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self. A course to plot is a destination to hope for.” - Bryant McGill

74. “... here's what I believe - sometimes God has a Plan B...” - John Geddes A Familiar Rain

75. “...don't be afraid of going by a way you've never gone - that's the way we're all going...” - John Geddes A Familiar Rain

76. “Our days are numbered in the book of days, Most High," Gorgon murmurs as the garden comes once more into view. "That is what gives them sweetness and purpose.” - Libba Bray

77. “When you are walking down the road in Bali and your pass a stranger, the very first question he or she will ask you is, "Where are you going?" The second question is, "Where are you coming from?" To a Westerner, this can seem like a rather invasive inquiry from a perfect stranger, but they're just trying to get an orientation on you, trying to insert you into the grid for the purposes of security and comfort. If you tell them that you don't know where you're going, or that you're just wandering about randomly, you might instigate a bit of distress in the heart of your new Balinese friend. It's far better to pick some kind of specific direction -- anywhere -- just so everybody feels better.The third question a Balinese will almost certainly ask you is, "Are you married?" Again, it's a positioning and orienting inquiry. It's necessary for them to know this, to make sure that you are completely in order in your life. They really want you to say yes. it's such a relief to them when you say yes. If you're single, it's better not to say so directly. And I really recommend that you not mention your divorce at all, if you happen to have had one. It just makes the Balinese so worried. The only thing your solitude proves to them is your perilous dislocation from the grid. If you are a single woman traveling through Bali and somebody asks you, "Are you married?" the best possible answer is: "Not yet." This is a polite way of saying, "No," while indicating your optimistic intentions to get that taken care of just as soon as you can.Even if you are eighty years old, or a lesbian, or a strident feminist, or a nun, or an eighty-year-old strident feminist lesbian nun who has never been married and never intends to get married, the politest possible answer is still: "Not yet.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

78. “Be driven with purpose. Be relentless in your alignment with excellence. Pay no mind to the disimpassioned impotent haters.” - Steve Maraboli

79. “You were born to journey in the direction of your purpose. Anything that halts your progress is contrary to your design.” - Steve Maraboli

80. “As long as he was breathing, God's greatest task for him was not yet finished. His highest purpose in life was still unfulfilled. ... God still had plans for him.” - Karen Kingsbury

81. “New beginnings always had something special—starting at the bottom and making it to the top produced something magical. When you reach your destination, your goal, that’s when it really hits home. Maybe that’s why I felt the way I did. I knew I was just a kid, but eventually I’d become something much more. Eventually I’d be at the top. Someday.” - Alex Rogers

82. “To die trying would be better than to die without purpose.” - Lauren DeStefano

83. “I had had my night of weeping...I had purged myself of useless emotions that terrible night, now every nerve every sinew, every thought was bent on a single purpose” - Elizabeth Peters

84. “When we’re not true to our thoughts and not true to the feelings we have deep inside, we find ourselves unhappy. Be courageous enough to align your life with your feelings, desires, and sense of purpose.” - Steve Maraboli

85. “Most people think confidence lies in an excessive rehearsal. It’s true that man has to prepare, plan and practice before projecting his purposes. But a time must definitely arrive when man has to put an end to learning and rehearsal and start practicing what he spent time learning.” - Israelmore Ayivor

86. “Wasn’t hitting bottom the thing you had to do to knock some sense into yourself? Wasn’t hitting bottom the thing that showed you which way was up?” - Rainbow Rowell

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

88. “Beauty always had a purpose: to be of service to life.” - Nikos Kazantzakis

89. “But we are strong, each in our purpose, and we are all more strong together.” - Bram Stoker

90. “You get caught in being something, being cool or special or whatever, to the point where you don’t even know why you need it; you just think you do” - John Green

91. “How was I able to live alone before, my little everything? Without you I lack self-confidence, passion for work, and enjoyment of life--in short, without you, my life is no life.[Written to his wife, Mileva]” - Albert Einstein