Does not the latent feeling that much of their striving is to no purpose tend to infuse large quantities of sham into men's work?
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM, A Diary
If you are a philosopher you can do this thing: you can go to the top of a high building, look down upon your fellow-men 300 feet below, and despise them as insects. Like the irresponsible black waterbugs on summer ponds, they crawl and circle and hustle about idiotically without aim or purpose. They do not even move with the admirable intelligence of ants, for ants always know when they are going home. The ant is of a lowly station, but he will often reach home and get his slippers on while you are left at your elevated station.
O. HENRY, "Psyche and the Pskyscraper"
Having purpose and vision during retirement is one of the most important determinants of mental, social, spiritual, and physical well-being in later life.
HAROLD G. KOENIG, Purpose and Power in Retirement
It's only ... when we're stripped of purpose that we know who we are.
SAMUEL R. DELANY, Dhalgren
Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.
BETTE DAVIS, quoted in Witty Words From Wise Women
Nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose — a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
MARY SHELLEY, Frankenstein
