Writings and quotes that talk about the meaning of life. Stories that inspire us to give our lives meaning and purpose.

Jordan Peterson | Clinical Psychologist

“The purpose of life is to identify and follow a mode of being that makes life justifiable, even given the radical necessity of suffering.

If you are in a constant sate of placidity, satisfaction, and happiness, then nothing is going to affect you deeply enough - not your own suffering, not the suffering of other people, not injustice or the horrors of the world - so that you become deep. And life without depth is, by definition, shallow and meaningless.

And there's a problem that's associated with that... because life is tragic and because it involves suffering, if your philosophy is shallow and meaningless when you suffer, you'll become resentful, hostile, self-critical, and then you'll become cruel and destructive.

So not only is there a necessity for your own mental health to fortrightly confront the deep questions of life. But if you don't, then you remain a danger to yourself and, more importantly, to others.”

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Oprah Winfrey

“The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but on significance — and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.”

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Manuel Goes To Paradise

For a while, Manuel enjoys the freedom of retirement, not having to get up at a particular time, and being able to use his time to do what he wants. However, he soon falls into depression. He feels useless, excluded from the society he helped to build, abandoned by his grown-up children, incapable of understanding the meaning of life, having never bothered to answer the old, old question: ‘What am I doing here?’

Well, our dear, honest, dedicated Manuel finally dies – something that will happen to all the Manuels, Paulos, Marias, and Mônicas of this world. And here, I will let Henry Drummond, in his brilliant book, The Greatest Thing in the World, describe what happens next:

Since earliest times people have asked the great question: What is the supreme good? You have life before you. You can only live it once. What is the noblest object of desire, the supreme gift to covet?

We have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing in the religious world is faith. That great word has been the keynote for centuries of the popular religion; and we have easily learned to look upon it as the greatest thing in the world. Well, we are wrong. If we have been told that, we may miss the mark. In the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul takes us to Christianity at its source, and there we see, ‘The greatest of these is love.’

It is not an oversight. Paul was speaking of faith just a moment before. He says, ‘And if I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. ’ So far from forgetting, he deliberately contrasts them, ‘Now abideth faith, hope, love’, and without a moment’s hesitation the decision falls, ‘The greatest of these is love.’ In this case, our Manuel is saved at the moment of his death because, despite never having given a meaning to his life, he was capable of loving, of providing for his family, and of doing his work in a dignified manner. Meanwhile, even though his life had a happy ending, his last days on earth were very complicated.

To use a phrase I heard Shimon Peres use at the World Economic Forum in Davos: ‘The optimist and the pessimist both die in the end, but each lives his life in a completely different way.’

Paulo Coelho | Like the Flowing River

The Story of The Pencil

A boy was watching his grandmother write a letter. At one point, he asked:

‘Are you writing a story about what we’ve done? Is it a story about me?’

His grandmother stopped writing her letter and said to her grandson: ‘I am writing about you, actually, but more important than the words is the pencil I’m using. I hope you will be like this pencil when you grow up.’ Intrigued, the boy looked at the pencil. It didn’t seem very special.

‘But it’s just like any other pencil I’ve ever seen!’

‘That depends on how you look at things. It has five qualities which, if you manage to hang on to them, will make you a person who is always at peace with the world.

‘First quality: you are capable of great things, but you must never forget that there is a hand guiding your steps. We call that hand God, and He always guides us according to His will.

‘Second quality: now and then, I have to stop writing and use a sharpener. That makes the pencil suffer a little, but afterwards, he’s much sharper. So you, too, must learn to bear certain pains and sorrows, because they will make you a better person.

‘Third quality: the pencil always allows us to use an eraser to rub out any mistakes. This means that correcting something we did is not necessarily a bad thing; it helps to keep us on the road to justice.

‘Fourth quality: what really matters in a pencil is not its wooden exterior, but the graphite inside. So always pay attention to what is happening inside you.

‘Finally, the pencil’s fifth quality: it always leaves a mark. In just the same way, you should know that everything you do in life will leave a mark, so try to be conscious of that in your every action.’

Paulo Coelho | Like the Flowing River

Ishmael Beah

“In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy and confusion.”

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Abraham Lincoln

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

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Thomas J. Watson

“Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, so go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.”

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J.K. Rowliing

“It is our choices, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

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How One Thing Can Contain Everything

A meeting in the house of a São Paulo-born painter based in New York. We are talking about angels, and about alchemy. At one point, I try to explain to the other guests the alchemical idea that each of us contains the whole universe and that we are, therefore, responsible for its wellbeing. I struggle to find the right words, but cannot come up with a good image that will explain my point of view.

The painter, who has been listening in silence, asks everyone to look out of the window of his studio.

‘What can you see?’ he asks.

‘Astreet in Greenwich Village,’ someone replies.

The painter sticks a piece of paper over the window so that the street can no longer be seen; then, with a penknife, he cuts a small square in the paper.

‘And if someone were to look through there, what would he see?’

‘The same street,’ comes the reply.

The painter cuts several squares in the paper. ‘Just as each of these holes contains within it the whole view of the same street, so each of us contains in our soul the same universe,’ he says.

And all of us applaud the lovely image he has found.

Paulo Coelho | Like the Flowing River

Jordan Peterson

“Allow NECESSITY to drive you forward.”

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Jordan Peterson

“ 'You are not the master of your own house. There are spirits that dwell within you.'

Meaning, you have a will and you can exercise a certain amount of conscious control over your being but there are all sorts of things that occur within you that seem to be beyond you ability to control.

Your dream or impulses, for example. They are so foreign from you that you may think they're not even a part of you. But more subtly, what compeles you? Your interests. Well, where does that come from? You may be asking what is controlling those interests and your impulses?

Well, it's not random! It's driven by the phenomenon that are best considered by sub-personalities - and even that's not the best way to describe it.

You can't make yourself interested in something. Interest manifests itself and grips you. So there's a calling in you, towards what you're compelled by and what you're interested in - and sometimes, that might be very dark and sometimes not - but you're compelled forward by your interest.

So the idea that what moves you away from comfort is something that's beyond you, that you listen to and harken to, that's exactly right.

You might say, well I don't want to call that God. It doesn't matter what you call it, it still is. And if you don't listen to it... you will pay for it like you cannot possibly imagine.”

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Jordan Peterson | Clinical Psychologist

“If you're starting from little, you starting with more possibilities. You always move from something unberable about the present to a better future. And if you don't have that, then you have nothing but threat and negative emotion. Because positive emotions are generated in the conception of the better future and then the evidence that you generate yourself that shows you're moving towards it. That's where the positive emotion and fulfilling meaning of life come from."

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Jordan Peterson

“You wanna be going somewhere that's good enough so that the going is worth the while. You can ask yourself that! You know that life is filled with suffering and insufficiency, deception and evil. Well, what would make the journey worthwhile? What is it that you would be striving to attain? If you ask yourself that, then you will find an answer!”

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Jordan Peterson

"What's good for you? How can you set it up so that it's really good for you and all the side consequences of that is that it's good for other people?

People are often timid about trying to get something that's good for themselves because they think it's selfish or that they don't deserve it. So set it up so that it's plainly obvious that it won't harm the structure of the universe. For you to have what you need and to do it in a way that'll benefit other people - there's no downside to that!"

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Jessica Wildfire

Emotions are criminals you have to interrogate for the truth.

Emotions