“Dad was a philosopher and had what he called his Theory of Purpose, which held that everything in life had a purpose, and unless it achieved that purpose, it was just taking up space on the planet and wasting everybody's time.”

“Everything in life had a purpose, and unless it achieved that purpose, it was just taking up space on the planet and wasting everybody's time.”

“Now for St. Francis nothing was ever in the background. We might say that his mind had no background, except perhaps that divine darkness out of which the divine love had called up every colored creature one by one. He saw everything as dramatic, distinct from its setting, not all of a piece like a picture but in action like a play. A bird went by him like an arrow; something with a story and a purpose, though it was a purpose of life and not a purpose of death. A bush could stop him like a brigand; and indeed he was as ready to welcome the brigand as the bush.”

“Art for art's sake, with no purpose, for any purpose perverts art. But art achieves a purpose which is not its own. (1804)”

“He had got himself a life. Now he had to find a purpose in it.”

“I now see my life, not as a slow shaping of achievment to fit my preconceived purposes, but as the gradual discovery of a purpose which I did not know.”