"It is the purpose that makes strong the vow; But vows to every purpose must not hold."
Read quote
6 likes
Purpose quotes
Purpose
3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Purpose
Browse quotes that often appear alongside purpose — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Purpose quotes (page 25 of 149)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"What to ourselves in passion we propose, The passion ending, doth the purpose lose."
Read quote
6 likes
"My purpose is, indeed, a horse of that color."
Read quote
6 likes
"The Primrose for a veil had spread The largest of her upright leaves; And thus for purposes benign, A simple flower deceives."
Read quote
6 likes
"Begin each day as if it were on purpose."
Read quote
6 likes
"In our factions, we find meaning, we find purpose, we find life."
Read quote
6 likes
"Somewhere I heard a victorious "Yes" in answer to my question of the existence of ultimate purpose."
Read quote
6 likes
"In proportion as our cares are employed upon the future, they are abstracted from the present, from the only time which we can call our own, and of which, if we neglect the apparent duties to make provision against visionary attacks, we shall certainly counteract our own purpose."
Read quote
6 likes
"As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy."
Read quote
6 likes
"These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes."
Read quote
6 likes
"Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial moment tended to ask themselves questions like 'What is my purpose in life?' very quickly lacked both."
Read quote
6 likes
"It is proved...that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose."
Read quote
6 likes
"Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us to restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wildlife and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method."
Read quote
6 likes
"The purpose of man is in action not thought."
Read quote
6 likes
"This is the eternal law of Nature for a man, my beneficent Exeter-Hall friends; this, that he shall be permitted, encouraged, and if need be, compelled to do what work the Maker of him has intended by the making of him for this world! Not that he should eat pumpkin with never such felicity in the West India Islands is, or can be, the blessedness of our Black friend; but that he should do useful work there, according as the gifts have been bestowed on him for that."
Read quote
6 likes
"Our purpose is to grow up and become love"
Read quote
6 likes
"The provisions we have made [for our government] are such as please ourselves; they answer the substantial purposes of government and of justice, and other purposes than these should not be answered."
Read quote
6 likes
"A purpose is the eternal condition of success."
Read quote
6 likes
"We have long observed that every neurosis has the result, and therefore probably the purpose, of forcing the patient out of real life, of alienating him from actuality."
Read quote
6 likes
"I'm building on purpose. I'm building that tipping point. I'm building that law of diffusion of innovation."
Read quote
6 likes