“The higher demands are in themselves more worthy, even when unfulfilled, than lower ones completely fulfilled.”

Original: Die höheren Forderungen sind an sich schon schätzenswerter, auch unerfüllt, als niedrige, ganz erfüllte. — The value of an aspiration can lie in its height even when complete achievement remains beyond reach. · Maxims and Reflections (German)

• Ambition
• Perfection
• Purpose

“Each one of us is a needed part of His great plan. Let each soul say: He has need of me or I would not be.”

A strong affirmation of individual worth and belonging · Essay, Thought Force

• Belonging
• Faith
• Purpose

“Every day was an adventure to her with the hope of accomplishing something over and above mere routine and the pursuit of pleasure.”

Daily life framed as spiritual experiment rather than habit · Foreword, Perpetual Light

• Adventure
• Life
• Purpose

“Each one of us is a needed part of His great plan.”

Affirming the significance of every individual · Essay, Thought Force

• Belonging
• Faith
• Purpose

“If, in an hour of noble elation, I could write a bit of glorified prose that would soften the stern ways of life, and bring to our fevered days some courage, dignity and poise—I should be well-content.”

States his modest hope for what writing might do for ordinary lives · Journal, 1922

• Courage
• Purpose
• Writing

“He has need of me or I would not be. I am here to strengthen the plan.”

A personal affirmation of purpose and usefulness · Essay, Thought Force

• Belonging
• Purpose
• Service

“What am I then in this world if my spirit live not to learn and become better? That is the whole of my destiny; I look to nothing else.”

Treating learning and moral growth as the central purpose of life. · Journal, 1822

• Growth
• Learning
• Purpose

“The ambition for outward success is conditioned by a kind of despair or abandonment of inward ambition.”

Original: L'ambition extérieure a pour condition une sorte de désespoir ou d'abandon de l'ambition intérieure. — External ambition may compensate for the loss of a more personal and inward purpose. · Cahiers (French)

• Achievement
• Ambition
• Purpose

“I have no wish to be happy in the common acceptation of the word; I wish only to be useful and to deserve happiness.”

Defining fulfilment through usefulness and moral worth rather than simple pleasure. · Journal

• Happiness
• Purpose
• Service

“One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be.”

A refusal to treat novelty as a vocation · Letter, as commonly cited

• Modernity
• Poetry
• Purpose

“I will get all the comfort and pleasure possible out of this day, and I will do something to add to the measure of the world's happiness or well-being.”

Combining personal enjoyment with a commitment to contribute to others · Essay, Morning Influences

• Happiness
• Purpose
• Service

“The great aim of these my speculations is to banish vice and ignorance out of the territories of Great Britain.”

The periodical claimed as a civic instrument of manners · The Spectator

• England
• Morality
• Purpose

“If you have a message for the world, nothing and nobody can prevent you from delivering it.”

A strong affirmation of persistence in communicating an important idea · A Woman of the World

• Courage
• Purpose
• Writing

“To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.”

Defining fulfilment through sustained intellectual engagement · Essay, A College Magazine

• Learning
• Purpose
• Work

“There is one thing in this world that must never be forgotten. If you forget everything else and remember that, you need not worry; if you remember everything else and forget that, you have done nothing at all.”

Original: در عالم یک چیز است که آن فراموش کردنی نیست. اگر جمله چیزها را فراموش کنی و آن را فراموش نکنی باک نیست و اگر جمله را به جای آری و یاد داری و آن را فراموش کنی هیچ نکرده باشی. — Rumi frames human life as a single entrusted task, beside which every other achievement is empty. · Fihi Ma Fihi, Discourse 4 (Persian)

• Duty
• Life
• Purpose

“I have always believed that a life devoted entirely to oneself must in the end become unbearably small.”

Arguing for a life enlarged by concern for others. · Journal

• Community
• Purpose
• Self

“The Creator makes no mistakes.”

A succinct expression of her confidence in divine purpose · Essay, Thought Force

• Acceptance
• Faith
• Purpose

“Pray to the Most High God day and night for poetry for living people.”

Original: Proś Boga najwyższego w dzień i w nocy o poezyę dla żywych ludzi. — Poetry is imagined as something spiritually useful to living people rather than merely an ornament. · Letter to his mother, February 1845 (Polish)

• Inspiration
• Poetry
• Purpose

“Nothing can have a better influence towards the revival of poetry than the choosing of great and serious subjects, such as at once amuse the fancy, enlighten the head, and warm the heart.”

Calls for serious subject-matter as the way to restore poetry · Preface to Winter, 1726

• Imagination
• Poetry
• Purpose

“I wish to write a story with enough of interest in its characters and incidents to attract a certain amount of popular attention.”

Explaining his intention to combine popular storytelling with deeper intellectual purposes · Letter to Harriet Beecher Stowe, September 13, 1860

• Purpose
• Readers
• Writing

“Unless you write with purpose, and power, and passionate enjoyment of your art, forgetful of all things save your desire to express yourself, no influence on earth can do more than give you a page.”

Arguing that genuine artistic commitment matters more than literary influence or connections · A Woman of the World, advice to a young writer

• Creativity
• Purpose
• Writing

“Think of yourself as necessary to the great design. It is an inspiring thought.”

Encouraging a sense of personal significance without grandiosity · Essay, Thought Force

• Belonging
• Inspiration
• Purpose

“If anything were dangerous to me now, it would be human happiness, great, immense and wholly human happiness.”

Original: Wiesz ty, droga moja, że jeżeliby mi co teraz było niebezpiecznem, to właśnie szczęście ludzkie, szczęście jakie wielkie, ogromne a zupełnie ludzkie. — He sees comfort and fulfilment as potentially distracting from the difficult path he has chosen. · Letter to his mother, 14 May 1844 (Polish)

• Happiness
• Purpose
• Sacrifice

“Let the ignoble pass, and the noble remain.”

A New Year resolve stripped to one moral cut · Letter signed Fiona to William

• Change
• Purpose
• Virtue