This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"We possess a hidden higher self, the spark of divinity within the soul, which reflects this transcendental reality in our lives. By fulfilling certain necessary conditions, such as making ourselves more loving and compassionate, we can clear away the mental and emotional static that separates us from this inner reality, enabling the higher self to assume a central, guiding role in our lives. This awakening - called enlightenment, deliverance, or salvation in the various traditions - is the goal or purpose of human life. When we achieve this complete transformation of consciousness, we awaken from our limited, often painful condition and reconnect with our true nature." - Aldous Leonard Huxley
"Men and women are here for only one purpose, and, for that matter, the most sublime purpose: to try to re-create life in its original form by restoring beauty and order in their individual lives and by continuously striving to achieve the common dream of one world community... We must master and direct our destiny. We are here, therefore, to continue God’s creative work and give to life its true meaning: to arrive at His image and likeness and turn the world into a loving society of men and women." - Archbishop Lakovos, born Demetrios Koukouzis NULL
"As a part of God, that which we are eternally had no beginning nor does it have any end. It is really enough for us to know - that life persists, that it is indeed eternal - and then to get on with the life that we are experiencing in the here and now. We are always greater than what we express, and the purpose of our life is to express more and more of what we eternally are. We do that by living each moment of life as a joyful song of exultation to God... We view each event in our journey as stages of an unfolding spiritual process." - Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
"The true purpose of education is to cherish and unfold the seed of immortality already sown within us; to develop, to their fullest extent, the capacities of every kind with which the god who made us has endowed us." - Anna Jameson
"If you develop your natural gift, there’s no better satisfaction in life, no better purpose... The basic key to having a happy life is to live until you know you’re satisfied." - Angelo Jaspe
"To find out what we presently are and where we are going, we must know what we have been and what others have done; and this, because the humanities are at once the creation and the interpreters of the past, is the great purpose of humanistic scholarship." - Howard Mumford Jones
"All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all ego-hood. Out of these all-uniting depths arises the dream, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral... Death is psychologically as important as birth... Shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is "man" in a higher sense- he is "collective man" - one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic forms of mankind." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
"The problem of our purpose is a religious problem... Our purpose is derived from faith and is imposed onto reality by our own souls. But faith and religious truth themselves are not absolute. They are relative. Thus the answers one gives to questions about the purpose of life must necessarily be relative to a time, a place, a tradition... To know and worship God means, in Baha’ullah’s words, to promote the unity of the human race and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men”... Someday there will be a global society in which humanity will realize its spiritual and moral potential... The destiny of mankind, actually, is the ultimate creation of the world civilization. It is only in the service of such a cause that I find the meaning and purpose of life." - Firuz Kazemzadeh
"The method which begins by doubting in order to philosophize is just as suited to its purpose as making a soldier lie down in a heap in order to teach him to stand upright." - Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
"We cannot consider the people truly educated if they think of education only as the gathering of facts, data and information. The intelligent person is one who has learned how to choose wisely and therefore has a sense of values, a purpose in life and a sense of direction." - J. Martin Klotsche
"The essential function of art... is to become personally enlightened, wise, and whole. Then, as a consequence of the former function, the purpose of this wisdom, the purpose of art, is to make the community enlightened, wise, and whole." - Peter London
"Given a man full of faith, you will have a man tenacious in purpose, absorbed in one grand object, simple in his motives, in whom selfishness has been driven out by the power of a mightier love, and indolence stirred into unwearied energy." - Alexander Maclaren
"The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at un-extraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each even of ordinary life." - Peter Matthiessen
"Acts are nothing except as they are fruits of a state, except as they indicate what the man is; words are nothing except as they express a mind or purpose." - F. D. Maurice, fully John Frederick Denison "F.D." Maurice
"I look upon enthusiasm, in all other points but that of religion, to be a very necessary turn of mind; as indeed it is a vein which nature seems to have marked with more or less strength, in the tempers of most men. No matter what the object is, whether business, pleasures or the fine arts: whoever pursues them to any purpose must do con amore." -
"All philosophy is divided into these three types. Its purpose is to seek out truth, knowledge and certainty." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"The great and glorious masterpiece of humanity is to know how to live [to] with a purpose." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"Providence has nothing good or high in store for one who does not resolutely aim at something high or good. A purpose is the eternal condition of success." - Theodore T. Munger
"Do things that bring you sense of fulfillment, joy, and purpose, that validate your worth. See your life as your own creation, and strive to make it a positive one." - People with AIDS Coalition NULL
"He who thinks much and to some purpose easily forgets his own experiences but not the thoughts each experience provoked." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"I think that there is a line that begins before our life here, intersects it and continues after we exist. Chance certainly plays a part in our lives, but it is chance with a purpose." - Seiji Ozawa
"To look for a purpose in Life outside Life itself amounts to killing Life. Reason is given by Life, not vice versa. Life is prior to meaning... Human life is joyful interrogation. Any answer is blasphemy." - Raimon Panikkar, fully Raimon Panikkar-Alemany
"A man's happiness requires a great deal more than any material thing. We all find it out sooner or later. If we live our lives thoughtlessly, we defeat our purpose; because our faith in God becomes shattered and there is no greater loss." - Paramananda, fully Swami Paramananda, born Suresh Chandra Guha-Thakurta NULL
"Every thing existing on the physical plain is an exteriorization of a thought which must be balanced through the one who issued the thought and in accordance with that one's responsibility at the conjunction of time, condition and place. This law of thought is Destiny. Thinking is the basic factor in shaping human destiny. The machinery of the law is nature. The purpose of the universe is to make all units of matter conscious of progressively higher degrees." - Harold W. Percival, fully Sir Harold Waldwin Percival
"The basic significance of all difficulty is that it reorients us from the external to the spiritual. the meaning and purpose of the world remain to a large extent inexplicable. but one thing is clear: the purpose of all events is spiritual." - Albert Schweitzer
"To know our purpose for being here, we have to know who we are. To know who we are, we have to know God who created us... Through knowing God’s love, through prayer, we come to find our best self. Each of us has a call. No two of us are alike in our potential for growth and development... Sometimes we find our meaning from our successes. Sometimes suffering is the prelude to understanding, and we realize that eventually, out of darkness, comes light... I chose to try to know God and to find a deeper meaning in life through sharing my life with others, reaching out and being more vulnerable and open to the stranger, the one in need, the depressed and the ill... The specific purpose each one of us discovers along the way, we do have a common purpose. It is to become part of the life of God; to know, love and serve Him; to come to know and love our brothers and sisters; to be energized and made whole by God’s tremendous love for us in this life and the next, a love that binds us all together." - Gilmary Simmons, born Eileen Catherine Simmons
"Ultimately, our purpose is to be so alive, compassionate and creative in our own lives that the whole universe quivers with excitement and enthusiasm and brings forth a new spirit, a new possibility, in our midst. Our purpose is to be both the womb and the midwife for the birthing into our world of a holy spirit filled with new potentials for life and creativity. We exist in order to quicken the creativity and spirit of our world so that new worlds, new wonders, new blessings may emerge... To truly appreciate the meaning of life, we must be prepared to let the meanings we have known stand in the presence of new insights and be transformed. We have no final answers, only the questions that lead to further discoveries, creativity and emergence. We are here that life may discover, know and express itself more abundantly for the blessing and fulfillment of all creation - past, present and potential." - David Spangler
"Our purpose is to live in harmony with those cycles [birth, growth, death and regeneration] to develop our peculiar organs of consciousness and creativity to add to the beauty, love, humor, diversity and general interest of the world." - Starhawk, born Miriam Simos NULL
"Pleasure, when it is a man's chief purpose, disappoints itself; and the constant application to it palls the faculty of enjoying it, and leaves the sense of our inability for that we wish, with a disrelish of everything else." - Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele
"The current of the world has its boundaries, otherwise it could have no existence, but its purpose is not shown in the boundaries which restrain it, but in its movement, which is toward perfection. The wonder is not that there should be obstacles and sufferings in this world, but that there should be law and order, beauty and joy, goodness and love." -
"The world rolls round for ever like a mill; it grinds out death and life, and good and ill. It has not purpose, heart or mind or will." - James Thomson
"We believe that we are in fact in the image of our Creator. Our response must be to live up to that amazing potential - to give god glory by reflecting His beauty and His love. That is why we are here and that is the purpose of our lives. In that response we enter most fully into relationships with god, our fellow men and women, and we are in harmony with all creation." -
"The purpose of life is life itself. You cannot say there is life and then there is the purpose of life. To do so would be to split Man, to ignore fundamental unity." - Rok Voleslav
"Lo, soul, seest thou not God’s purpose from the first? The earth to be spann’d, connected by network, the races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, the oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near, the lands to be welded together." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"A highly evolved use of intuition is being able to find meaning in symbols and synchronicities. The more we focus on finding meaning for ourselves in “chance occurrences,” the more we increase our intuitive power. Deepening our connection to our current surrounding increases our ability to follow the guidance of our inner purpose." - Carol Adrienne
"Beyond the narrow category of occupation, the purpose of our life is to develop our capacity to love. Our purpose is to create life out of who we are and who we are becoming." - Carol Adrienne
"Do the best you can do with what you’re connected to at that moment. That’s your life’s purpose for that moment. Don’t try to find some absolute best thing. Go in the side door or the back door, and maybe you’ll find what your life purpose is." - Carol Adrienne
"Focus on being grateful… Whatever you focus on with true appreciation and gratitude – you are generating a higher frequency of energy. By living and taking action in a higher frequency (which is also a deeper and richer frequency) you are more aligned with your purpose." - Carol Adrienne
"Let’s imagine a visual image of your “life” as an energetic field. This energetic field attracts to you people, opportunities, and events. Within that field is a central point of purpose around which incoming energy is organized. Affecting and modifying that central point of purpose are energetic sub-fields of beliefs, attitudes, past experiences, expectations, unresolved emotional states, and other unconscious material. At all times, we emit a certain energy pattern based on our physical, emotional and spiritual states. The model of a magnetic force field is intended to suggest that we not only radiate our energy from a centralized self-organizing, indwelling purpose, but that energetic field also attracts in, or magnetizes to itself, those people and things that will help fulfill that purpose." - Carol Adrienne
"Our life purpose is a moving dynamic… If I am halfway awake, I’m cognizant of what I’m supposed to be doing in this moment." - Carol Adrienne
"Our personal question about our life’s purpose may very well be the tip as well as the foundation of the collective iceberg – part of the much larger question of where do we go from here? If we consider these individual longings in light of systems thinking, perhaps we can see them, not as isolated, narcissistic musings, but as equivalent to the DNA of our soul, the generative driver of evolution itself." - Carol Adrienne
"Purpose is about developing relationships. Purpose is about bringing attention and intention into the present moment, moving ahead with new ideas, giving and receiving support, volunteering, mentoring, listening to the imagination and intuition, communicating, taking action based on inner direction and hints from the external, being adaptable, taking responsibility and ending the victim stance forever surrendering to the divine will and working with the lessons developing fluidity, tolerance, compassion, and the ability to love." - Carol Adrienne
"When people feel separated, they try to make things work by concentrating only on their own willpower and trying to control everything. When you remember to align yourself with your own nature and your life purpose, you naturally are in touch with your natural power. When you align yourself with even a single value, like compassion, trust, self-respect, or following through on synchronicities – life becomes more meaningful, often more fun, more hopeful, and you feel resourceful." - Carol Adrienne