Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

Everyone wants that sense of fulfilling a purpose in some way.

To be truly happy, you need a clear sense of meaning and purpose in life.

True happiness is not made in getting something. True happiness is becoming something. This can be done by being committed to lofty goals. We cannot become something without commitment.

True happiness involves the pursuit of worth goals; without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved.

Where can you find purpose? Like success and happiness, our purpose exists in the present, and we constantly strive toward the future to maintain it. What it is for which we strive is up to each of us. The important thing is that we strive toward something.

But once I acclimated and really used fame for what it was offering me as a tool to serve my life purpose of inspiring and contributing, then it started to get fun again.

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.

My ultimate goal... is for you to live the life you're intended to live.

I'm just interested in carving out a meaningful life.

The word contentment comes from the word content, which is what we hold inside - love, value, a feeling of a life that has meaning or purpose, a cause greater than yourself that you're a part of. These are the things that bring true happiness. As a culture, I think we need to redefine what it means to be happy.

Miserable are the persons who do not have something beyond themselves to search for.

In the end, it's about what you want to be, not what you want to have.

LIFE is WORTH LIVING when you find PURPOSE.

I love my life, because I’ve seen my purpose.

We need both to aspire and accomplish. Without a vision for your life, without a sense of purpose, you will begin to die a slow death.

..there is more to life than just pleasure. We want to achieve our happiness and not just experience it.

My definition of success is "the fulfillment of your soul's purpose."

Happiness is living by inner purpose.

You will find true success and happiness if you have only one goal, there really is only one, and that is this: to fulfill the highest most truthful expression of yourself as a human being. You want to max out your humanity by using your energy to lift yourself up, your family and the people around you. Theologian Howard Thurman said it best. He said, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

If a man can dream, if a man can have goals, he can be happy and he can be alive. If he has no goals he doesn't even have a future.

I hope you live a life you're proud of.

I have only one life, so I want to make sure it's a good one.

I want to find that defining moment that you're satisfied and you've done what you want to do in your life.

If you asked somebody, 'what do you wish for in life?' they wouldn't say 'happiness.' I would have answered 'excitement, knowledge,' God knows - I mean, many, many different things, but certainly not 'happiness'. It seemed like a foreign concept to wish for something that specific and that singular.

I choose to fill my days with what I'm passionate about, and live with purpose.