A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
—Kurt Vonnegut in The Sirens of Titan
The question is not “Can you make a difference?” You already do make a difference. It’s just a matter of what kind of difference you want to make during your life on this planet.
—Julia Butterfly Hill
I think all people would like to feel that they’re a necessary part of life. That they’re necessary in the world, and that life would be poorer if they weren’t in it. When you accomplish something, when you write good poetry, then I think you feel that the world would be slightly different if you weren’t in it. And that, I think, is part of what being needed is about.
—Kenneth Koch
Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life—think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.
—Swami Vivekananda
I don’t think that anything happens by coincidence. No one is here by accident. Everyone who crosses our path has a message for us. Otherwise they would have taken another path, or left earlier or later. The fact that these people are here means that they are here for some reason.
—James Redfield in The Celestine Prophecy
Don’t do it. Don’t go to that job you hate. Do something you love today. Ride a roller coaster. Swim in the ocean. Go to the airport and get on the next flight to anywhere just for the fun of it. Maybe stop a spinning globe with your finger and then plan a trip to that very spot; even if it’s in the middle of the ocean you can go by boat. Eat some type of ethnic food you’ve never even heard of. Stop a stranger and ask her to explain her greatest fears and her secret hopes and aspirations in detail and then tell her you care because she is a human being. Sit down on the sidewalk and make pictures with colorful chalk. Close your eyes and try to see the world with your nose—allow smells to be your vision. Catch up on your sleep. Call an old friend you haven’t seen in years. Roll up your pant legs and walk into the sea. See a foreign film. Feed squirrels. Do anything! Something! Because you start a revolution one decision at a time, with each breath you take. Just don’t go back to that miserable place you go every day.
—Matthew Quick in Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock
Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.
—Walker Evans
If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.
—Albert Camus
Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, secretly all nature seeks God and works toward him.
—Meister Eckhart
You’ve heard of people calling in sick. You may have called in sick a few times yourself. But have you ever thought about calling in well? It’d go like this: You’d get the boss on the line and say, “Listen, I’ve been sick ever since I started working here, but today I’m well and I won’t be in anymore.” Call in well.
—Tom Robbins
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.
—Charles Dickens
Everything on earth [is] beautiful, everything, except what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own human dignity.
—Anton Chekhov
I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.
—Rita Mae Brown
Men have become the tools of their tools.
—Henry David Thoreau
Every action of your life touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
—Edwin Hubbel Chapin