Four Inspiring Quotes On Success, Life, and Finding Meaning

By

Team Mend

In need of some inspiration amidst heartbreak?

Here are a few of our favorite meditations on success, life, and finding meaning.

“Then what is good? The obsessive interest in human affairs, plus a certain amount of compassion and moral conviction, that first made the experience of living something that must be translated into pigment or music or bodily movement or poetry or prose or anything that’s dynamic and expressive—that’s what’s good for you if you’re at all serious in your aims. William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having.”

-Playwright Tennessee Williams on The Catastrophe of Success (truegoodbeautiful.com)

“What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn’t worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. When you can ask the opinions of people whose judgement you respect, what does it add to consider the opinions of people you don’t even know? This is easy advice to give. It’s hard to follow, especially when you’re young. Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like.”

-Engineer Paul Graham on how to do what you love (paulgraham.com)

“But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.”

-Writer David Foster Wallace on living a compassionate life (moreintelligentlife.com)

“To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy but it’s still allowed. And I believe it’s worth the trouble.”

-Artist Bill Watterson on finding your own life’s meaning (zenpencils.com)

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