“Happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy – it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.”

Life requires of man spiritual elasticity, so that he may temper his efforts to the chances that are offered.

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her own life.

We cannot, after all, judge a biography by its length, by the number of pages in it; we must judge by the richness of the contents…Sometimes the ‘unfinisheds’ are among the most beautiful symphonies.

It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.

Man’s last freedom is his freedom to choose how he will react in any given situation

It said to me, ‘I am here — I am here — I am life, eternal life.’

The more one forgives himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.

Man can only find meaning for his existence in something outside himself.

It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

Man’s search for meaning is the chief motivation of his life.

View your life from your funeral, looking back at your life experiences, what have you accomplished? What would you have wanted to accomplish but didn’t? What were the happy moments? What were the sad? What would you do again, and what you wouldn’t

The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing

It is the pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.

We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life.

Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.

The only thing that matters is that you set a goal and you just dream, live, and fly.

I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Before I was ever in my teens, I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up. My goal was to be the greatest athlete that ever lived.

In some lost fold of the past, we wanted to be lions and we’re no more than castrated cats

The main goal of divine Providence in [allowing] the discovery of these tribes and lands . . . is . . . the conversion and well-being of souls, and to this goal everything temporal must necessarily be subordinated and directed.

I am passionate about exploring the confluence of environmental and human health. I believe that the goals of conservation must constantly revisit a stated purpose.

When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.

So at the end of the day, our number 1 goal, our top priority, is to motivate American youngsters to reject the abuse of illegal drugs, tobacco and alcohol. All three of them are illegal behaviors.