Purpose

Great minds have purposes; others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.

--Washington Irving

Power undirected by high purpose spells calamity; and high purpose by itself is utterly useless if the power to put it into effect is lacking.

--Theodore Roosevelt

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration.

--James Allen

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

--Thomas Carlyle

Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwhile.

--Sir Wilfred Grenfell, British medical missionary

If I were to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the best I know how--the very best I can: and I mean to keep on doing it to the end. If the end brings me out right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

--Abraham Lincoln