The meaning of life is revealed at once to the one who is ready to submit to that which will be revealed to him, and hides from the one who has already decided beforehand that he will only accept a meaning of life that will not disrupt the way of life he is used to and loves.
“What am I? What should I do? What can I believe in and what can I hope for? This is what everything in philosophy boils down to,” says the philosopher Lichtenberg. Of these questions, the chief one is the one in the middle. If a human being learns what he must do, then he will know everything he needs to know.
On how to save clothes from the moth, metal from rust, potato from rot, and so forth, my opinion may change, but on how to save the soul from rotting I have nothing to learn, I need only do that, which I know.
— Thoreau
Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose.
— Carlyle
Woe to those who see without knowing what it is they are looking at, who stand without knowing what it is they are standing upon.
— The Talmud
Unhappy are the people who do not know the meaning of their lives, and meanwhile, the conviction that it cannot be known is so widespread that people are even proud of not wanting to know it, as if that were wisdom.
— Pascal
A man is sitting in a prison without knowing the nature of his sentence. He has just one hour left to find this out, and, if he learns that he has been sentenced to death, then this hour will be enough for him to petition to get his sentence revoked. Is he really not going to use this hour to find out what his sentence is and spend it on playing a game of cards? That would make no sense. And yet, that is exactly how people behave when they do not think about God and about eternity.
— Pascal
Every bird knows where to make its nest. Knowing where to nest, it shows that it knows its purpose. Is it really possible that the human being, the most intelligent of all the creatures, cannot know that which the bird knows: the purpose of his life?
— Chinese wisdom
The true purpose of life is either impossible to comprehend—if you seek the purpose of the universe—or it is so simple that it is revealed to halfwits and babies—if you seek the purpose of your own life, i.e. what you should do.
