John Green Quotes

Nothing would mean anything if I didn't live a life of use to others.

I want to be all used up when I die.

I think people get satisfaction from living for a cause that's greater than themselves. They want to leave an imprint. By writing books, I'm trying to do that in a modest way.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

Life is a mission, not a career.

I'm going to a special place when I die, but I want to make sure my life is special while I'm here.

The beginning don't matter. The end don't matter. All that matters is what you do in between...the greatest reward is to know that you did your job when you were here on the planet.

Certainly I believe that God gave us life for happiness, not misery. Humanity, I am sure, will never be made lazy or indifferent by an excess of happiness. Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. Happiness should be a means of accomplishment, like health, not an end in itself.

May I not seem to have lived in vain.

You can not have significance in this life if it is all about you. You get your significance, you find your joy in life through service and sacrifice - it's pure and simple.

I'm just trying to matter and live a good life and make work that means something to somebody.

A man isn't really alive till he has something bigger than himself and his own little happiness, for which he'd gladly die.

To give life a meaning, one must have a purpose larger than self.

Oh Lord, let me not live to be useless.

If I have no children what would be the point of living.

We never can tell how our lives may work to the account of the general good, and we are not wise enough to know if we have fulfilled our mission or not.

It's a really wonderful thing to focus your life on something other than your own personal career and ambition.

It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute... that gives meaning to our lives.

In 'A Confession,' Tolstoy found meaning that he could hold on to, and he lived for another 30 years.

Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.

All of us are born for a reason, but all of us don't discover why. Success in life has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others.

True happiness... is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

At the end of our lives we all ask, 'Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?'