purpose

L'art pour l'art, sans but, car tout but de¤  nature l'art. Mais l'art atteint au but qu'il n'a pas. Art for art's sake, with no purpose, for any purpose perverts art. But art achieves a purpose which is not its own.

—Constant (de Rebecque), (Henri) Benjamin

‚Ah s |¤ , ponerse a escribir otra vez, que¤   vomitivo! ‚Como si todo esto sirviera para algo, como si todo esto fuera a entrar en alguna cabezota, a entretener a alguno de los lectores babosos, ovillados en sus poltronas, frente al sopo¤ n  sopor|¤fero de cada d|¤a! Ah yes, going back to writing, how disgusting! As if all this had some purpose, as if all this would penetrate somethick skull, amusesome drivelling readercurledup in his armchair before the soporific stew of every day!

—Sappho   7c

And we know that all things work together for good to 120 them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

—Bible (NewTestament)

It is only when you get to see and realize what India isöthat she is the strength and the greatness of Englandöthat you feel that every nerve a man may strain, every energy he may put forward, cannot be devoted to a nobler purpose than keeping tight the cords that hold India to ourselves.

—Curzon (of Kedleston), Lord George Nathaniel

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.

—Smith, Adam

The Englishman never enjoys himself except for a noble purpose.

—Herbert, SirA(lan) P(atrick)

The life-efficiency and adaptability of the computer must be questioned. Its judicious use depends upon the availability of its human employers quite literally to keep their own heads, not merely to scrutinize the programming but to reserve for themselves the right of ultimate decision. No automatic system can be intelligently run byautomatonsöor by people who dare not assert human intuition, human autonomy, human purpose.

—Mumford, Lewis

Talk, v.t. To commit an indiscretion without temptation, from an impulse without purpose.

—Bierce, Ambrose Gwinett

Nostre grand et glorieux chef-d'½uvre, c'est vivre a' propos. The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose.

—Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de

In a mind charged with an eager purpose and an unfinished vindictiveness, there is no room for new feelings.

—Eliot, George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans

Nature, as we say, does nothing without some purpose; and for thepurpose of making mana political animal she has endowed him alone among the animals with the power of reasoned speech.

—Aristotle

   I have always had the greatest contempt for novels written with a purpose. Fiction should render, not draw morals. But†I sinned against my gods to the extent of saying that I was goingöto the level of the light vouchsafed meöto write a work that should have for its purpose the obviating of all future wars.

—Ford, Ford Madox originally Ford Hermann Hueffer

   Better passion and death than any more of these'isms'. No more of the old purpose done up in aspic. Better passion and death.

—Lawrence, D(avid) H(erbert)

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

—Tennyson

I look forward to†a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint; its wealth with our wisdom; its power with our purpose.

—Kennedy,John F(itzgerald)

Let it not be said of this Atlantic generation that we left ideals and visions to the past, nor purpose and determination to our adversaries.We have come too far, we have sacrificed too much to disdain the future now.

—Kennedy,John F(itzgerald)

And what you thought you came for Is onlya shell, a husk of meaning From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled If at all. Either you had no purpose Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured And is altered in fulfilment.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)

The purpose of art is the lifelong construction of a state of wonder.

—Gould, Glenn

We were a self-centred army without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom, the second of man's creeds, a purpose so ravenous that it devoured all our strength, a hope so transcendent that ourearlier ambitions faded in its glare.

—Arabia

   Dear husband! I take shame to myself that my purpose was less firm, that my heart lingered so far behind yours in preparing for this great epoch in our lives; that like Lot's wife, I still turned and looked back, and clung with all my strength to the land I was leaving. It was not the hardships of an emigrant's life I dreaded. I could bear mere physical privations philosophically enough; it was the loss of society in which I had moved, the want of congenial minds, of persons engaged in congenial pursuits, that made me so reluctant to respond to my husband's call.

—Moodie, Susanna ne¤  e Strickland

Unsterblichkeit der Individualit a« t verlangen heiÞt eigentlich einen Irrtum ins Unendliche perpetuieren wollen. Denn im Grunde ist doch jede Individualit a« t nur ein spezieller Irrtum, Fehltritt, etwas, das besser nicht w a« re, ja wovon uns zuru«  ckzubringen der eigentliche Zweck des Lebens ist. To desire immortality for theindividual isreally thesame as wanting to perpetuate an error for ever; for at bottom every individuality is really only a special error, a false step, something that it would be better should not be, in fact something from which it isthe real purpose of life to bring us back.

—Schopenhauer, Arthur

It is horrible, yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.

—Doyle, SirArthur Conan

The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb.We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forcedöby what? Bya system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.

—Fromm, Erich

This very night I am going to leave off tobacco! Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realized.

—Lamb, Charles

Scientific discoveryand scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of them without any practical purpose whatsoever in view.

—Planck, Max Karl Ernst