meaningful endeavors Quotes

Spend your energy on things that make a difference.

Babies are a nuisance, of course. But so does everything seem to be that is worth while – husbands and books and committees and being loved and everything. We have to choose between barren ease and rich unrest – or rather, one does not choose.

The challenge is what was making it exciting. You don't want to do anything that's too easy or that you know that you can pull off, otherwise it's really not worth doing.

It pays no matter what comes after it, to try and do things, to accomplish things in this life and not merely to have a soft and pleasant time.

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.

I'd rather fail at something important than succeed at something trivial.

The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it's a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers -- of persistence, concentration, and insight -- to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems. make art, think deeply.

What we most need in our lives, though, is something worth doing, worth it because we care.

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

The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement.

That to fly requires chaotic, sometimes even violent passages--becomes a metaphor for all of life's most meaningful endeavors.

Pleasure is a by-product of doing something that is worth doing. Therefore, do not seek pleasure as such. Pleasure comes of seeking something else, and comes by the way.

He who busies himself in mean occupations, produces in the very pains he takes about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is really good

Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off just being good fun.

Nothing is worth doing pointlessly.

Things that are worth doing are never easy.

Enthusiasm releases the drive to carry you over obstacles and adds significance to all you do.

Dreams grow holy put in action; work grows fair through starry dreaming, But where each flows on unmingling, both are fruitless and in vain.

Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.

No matter how small you start, start something that matters.