Echoes

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, honorable, compassionate.

We are here to add what we can to, not to get what we can from, Life.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Just practice good, do good for others, without thinking of making yourself known so that you may gain reward. Really bring benefit to others, gaining nothing for yourself. This is the primary requisite for breaking free of attachments to the Self.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.

Wise men don't need to prove their point; men who need to prove their point aren't wise. The Master has no possessions. The more he does for others, the happier he is. The more he gives to others, the wealthier he is. The Tao nourishes by not forcing. By not dominating, the Master leads.

I believe people work for satisfaction.

I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

The measure of a man's life is the well spending of it, and not the length.

Understand however that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively.

True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, in writing what deserves to be read, and in so living as to make the world happier for our living in it.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be oneself.

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

To account nothing of one’s self, and to think always kindly and highly of others, this is great and perfect wisdom.

I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.

The only real, dignified, human doctrine is the greatest good of all, and this can only be achieved by uttermost self-sacrifice.

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.