Meaning of Life Quotes About What Makes Life Matter

The Conduct of Life, essay II, “Power,” Project Gutenberg #39827. “Life is a search after power” appears at the opening of Emerson’s prose discussion after the verse epigraph and introduces his account of capacity, agency and human influence. It remains nineteenth-century Transcendentalist conduct-of-life philosophy rather than an empirical law of motivation or success.

The Madman, parable of the pomegranate; one voice insists that life without future possibility would feel diminished.

Counsels and Maxims, T. Bailey Saunders translation, in a discussion of fortune and apparent stability.

Middlemarch, Book VIII, Chapter LXXII, Project Gutenberg #145. Dorothea asks what people live for if not to make life less difficult for one another while arguing that Lydgate’s friends should investigate the calumny against him and support him. It is fictional character dialogue inside the novel’s moral and social drama, not an empirical definition of life’s purpose.

Counsels and Maxims, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10715. The numerical life span reflects Schopenhauer’s nineteenth-century aphoristic framing rather than a modern lifespan rule.

Familiar Studies of Men and Books, essay ‘Henry David Thoreau: His Character and Opinions,’ section V, Project Gutenberg #425, transcribed from the 1896 Chatto & Windus edition. The surrounding paragraph quotes several Thoreau statements, but ‘To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming...’ is Stevenson's own connective judgment before he returns to quoted Thoreau language. It therefore remains Stevenson literary-biographical criticism rather than a Thoreau quotation or a clinical rule about self-development.

Meditations, Book XII, section 20, George Long translation.

The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit, Chapter I, “The Silent, Subtle Building Forces of Mind and Spirit,” Project Gutenberg #28163. Trine opens with moments when people glimpse a life beyond their present one, then develops New Thought and metaphysical claims about latent powers, spirit and “mental and spiritual science.” It is historical religious-metaphysical self-development rhetoric, not modern psychology or neuroscience.

As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7, Jaques; 1919 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by Jack R. Crawford, printed page 42 / Wikisource scan leaf 54. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” opens Jaques’s seven-ages speech after Duke Senior compares human suffering with theatrical pageants. The metaphor remains dramatic character speech about roles and aging, not Shakespeare speaking autobiographically.

The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. The sentence continues by contrasting inner qualities with social reputation.

Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII; Aristotle begins his discussion of friendship by treating it as necessary to a good life.

The Renaissance, Conclusion; Project Gutenberg #2398. The metaphor belongs to Pater’s aesthetic philosophy and should not be reduced to generic productivity advice.

Signs of Change, lecture “Useful Work versus Useless Toil,” beginning on printed page 141, Project Gutenberg #3053. Morris defines the hope that makes work worth doing as hope of rest, useful product and pleasure in the work itself, then summarizes those three elements in the retained sentence. It remains socialist moral and economic argument about labor, not a universal workplace-satisfaction metric.

On the Shortness of Life, Chapter II; Seneca cites the line while arguing that much existence is merely time.

Political Ideals, Chapter I, Project Gutenberg #4776. Russell distinguishes possessive impulses from creative or constructive impulses and then says that the best life gives the largest role to the latter. This remains a 1917 political-philosophy ideal about individual life and institutions, not a current empirical measure of wellbeing or creativity.

The Prophet, “On Work,” Project Gutenberg #58585. Almustafa answers a ploughman’s request to speak of work; after linking work, knowledge and love, he says “Work is love made visible” and develops the statement through craft, bread, wine and song imagery. This remains framed poetic-spiritual discourse, not an empirical workplace or productivity rule.

Signs of Change, lecture “Dawn of a New Epoch”; Project Gutenberg #3053. The sentence occurs inside Morris’s proposed organization of socially useful labor.

On the Shortness of Life, Chapter III; Seneca criticizes reserving wisdom and leisure for very old age.

Poem “Ulysses.”

No Cross, No Crown, Preface, Project Gutenberg #44895. Penn opens by saying that the great business of life is to answer the end for which one lives, immediately defining that end as glorifying God and saving one’s soul. The frozen catalog retains only the opening clause. This is explicitly Quaker Christian devotional exhortation, not a neutral or universal factual definition of life’s purpose.

The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. The claim belongs to Schopenhauer’s philosophical account of personality and subjective experience.

The Power of Truth, “People Who Live in Air-Castles.” The line is a present-action argument within conduct-of-life writing, not a literal denial of memory, planning or future obligations.

Counsels and Maxims, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10715. The following geometric analogy describes life as the resultant of circumstances and aims.

The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. This is a philosophical claim about temperament, not a denial that external circumstances can matter greatly.

Walden; Thoreau contrasts one’s own deliberate track with paths chosen by others.

The Renaissance, Conclusion; Project Gutenberg #2398. The statement belongs to Pater’s aesthetic account of how art affects lived moments.

Plato, Crito, approximately 48b, Socrates speaking with Crito in prison; Benjamin Jowett public-domain English, Gutenberg #1657. The conditional question occurs in the dramatic text after a discussion of justice, public opinion and fear of execution. Socrates is the dramatic speaker; it is not a recorded autobiographical quotation by Plato.

The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. The simile compares a developing intellectual life with a slowly formed work of art.

“The Pulley,” from The Temple (1633), represented by Poetry Foundation. The ending is spoken by God within Herbert’s devotional conceit and expresses Christian theology rather than a medical or psychological explanation of fatigue.

The Renaissance, Conclusion; Project Gutenberg #2398. The line follows an explicit meditation on life’s brevity and precedes Pater’s claims for art and passionate activity.

The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. The following clause recommends pursuits suited to the development of one’s capacities.

My Confession, Leo Wiener translation; the sentence belongs to Tolstoy’s account of accepting a meaning of life he believed was demonstrated in the lives of the people he had studied.

What All The World’s A-Seeking, Part III, “The Unfoldment,” printed page 75 in the represented 1896 page-text witness, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #14312. Trine says “the true joy of existence comes from living to one’s highest” immediately after urging the reader to “live to your highest.” It remains historical New Thought / conduct-of-life counsel rather than a claim that striving automatically removes hardship or produces happiness in every circumstance.

Meditations, Book IV, in George Long’s translation.

Plato, Phaedo, approximately 107c, Socrates addressing his companions after the arguments concerning the soul; Benjamin Jowett English, Gutenberg #1658. This sentence is in the dialogue proper, not the translator introduction. Preserve the surrounding conditional argument about the soul and historical belief in immortality.

Lectures on Art, Lecture IV, Project Gutenberg #19164. Ruskin’s anti-autonomist theory of art is retained as his position rather than a universal definition.

Unto This Last, fourth essay, first published in Cornhill Magazine in 1860 and collected in book form in 1862; Project Gutenberg #36541. This is Ruskin’s normative political-economy argument, not a modern empirical wealth metric.

Paradise Lost (1667), Book I, line 254; retained legacy short extract from the fuller Satan sentence beginning ‘The mind is its own place’ and continuing into line 255. It is the same underlying passage as the longer catalog record, not a separate fifth passage.

The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. The sentence belongs to a philosophical comparison of personality, possessions and reputation, not financial advice.

The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. The wording belongs to Schopenhauer’s contrast between intellectual and ordinary forms of leisure.

Apology 38a; wording varies by translation.

News from Nowhere, narrator William Guest observing Morsom’s community; Project Gutenberg #3261. This is narrative description inside a utopian novel.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 edition, Preface; Wilde distinguishes different ways readers and viewers respond to beauty.

Plato, The Republic, Book I, around 344e, Socrates in dialogue with Thrasymachus. Wording verified in Benjamin Jowett, third edition (1888), transcribed in Gutenberg #55201. This is dialogue speech following Thrasymachus’s defence of injustice, not the translator’s prefatory analysis. Edition-specific wording must be preserved.

Silas Marner; Eliot contrasts the former hoard with Eppie, whose needs and future redirect Silas’s earnings toward hope, relationship, and practical care.

The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Chapter IV; Constance Garnett translation, Project Gutenberg #43302. In Tolstoy’s threefold account of animal, social and divine conceptions of life, the divine conception is governed by love and directed toward God rather than personal enjoyment or social glory.

Enchiridion 17; the longer passage compares human life with playing the role assigned in a drama.

Hopes and Fears for Art, lecture “The Beauty of Life”; Project Gutenberg #3773. This is Morris’s aesthetic-social position, not an empirical necessity claim.

News from Nowhere, Chapter XV, ‘On the Lack of Incentive to Labour in a Communist Society,’ Project Gutenberg #3261. Old Hammond says the society gained happiness through the absence of artificial coercion, ‘the freedom for every man to do what he can do best,’ and slowly learned knowledge of what labour was wanted. It is fictional utopian dialogue and historical-social argument, not Morris autobiography or settled economic science.

Signs of Change, lecture “The Aims of Art”; Project Gutenberg #3053. The passage belongs to Morris’s socialist argument about labor, leisure and art in daily life.