Finding Your Purpose Quotes

“You don't have to know where you're going to get exactly where you need to go.”
― Marilyn A. Hepburn

“It’s is not just a question of doing what you love for a living. It is a matter of doing what you love with love. Then your life and all lives will be transformed.”
― Rasheed Ogunlaru

“No amount of black girl magic, no repeated proclamations of our worth can fully treat the wound – although acknowledging its persistence is a beginning. The ultimate remedy, as I see it is supernatural. I look daily toward heaven for restoration, for spiritual healing. My true identity isn’t rooted in our history, grievous and glorious as it is. It is grounded in my designation as a Child of God, the Daughter of the Great Physician. In His care I find my cure.

My hope for you is the same one I carry for myself. I pray that amid the heartache of our ancestry you can grant yourself the grace so seldom extended to us. I pray that you can pass that compassion on to your children and to their children so that it slathers comfort on our sore spots. I pray that, as a people, we can give ourselves a soft place to land. I pray even as we rightly express our fury as being regarded as sub-human, that we don’t dwell in that space. That we don’t allow anger to poison our spirits. That we embrace love as our One True Antidote. I hope, too, that you recognize your specialness, the distinctiveness the Creator has imbued us with. I see you as clearly as history has, and in unison with it, I nod. I know that swivel in your hips, that fervor in your testimony, that ebullience in your stride, that flair in your song. The fact that others are constantly trying to diminish you, ever attempting to dismiss your talents even as they mimic you, is proof of your uniqueness! No one bothers to undermine you unless they recognize your brilliance.

More than anything, I pray that you can carve out a purpose for yourself, a calling beyond your own survival, a sweet offering to the world. You gain a life by giving yours away. Not everyone is meant to raise a picket sign, and yet each of us can choose a path of impact. Rearing your children with affection and warmth is a form of activism. Honoring your word impeccably is a way to raise your voice. Performing your job with excellence, with your chin high and your standards higher is as powerful as any protest march. Sowing into the lives of young people is a worthy crusade. That is what it means to leave this world of ours more lit up than we found it. It’s also what it means to lead a magnificent life, even if an unlikely one.”
― Cicely Tyson, Just as I Am

“Your job is to do your job with all your heart to the best of your ability. Life will go it’s own merry way at it’s own pace. But if you do then you – and life – will be the richer for you being here.”
― Rasheed Ogunlaru

“Amidst the whole peril in the world, here’s why you’re still alive–to find your purpose. Your purpose will ignite hope in others.”
― Chinonye J. Chidolue

“You are more on track than you feel, even if you don't feel it - especially if you don't feel it. For the further you get off track, the closer you are to abandoning the wrong path and [finding] the right one.”
― Rebecca Campbell, Light is the New Black: A Guide to Answering Your Soul's Callings and Working Your Light

“What's your favorite flavor of shit sandwich?”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“Try everything until you find your thing. Once you do, focus on your thing and ignore everything else.”
― Geoffrey Ocaya

“It felt like the drunken part of falling in love, the erratic and uncompromising compulsion that made you do dumb shit and your best shit at the same time. She had to stop herself from running. She had to stop herself from crying or screaming or both. It felt as if she were underwater and at the end of her oxygen, with the surface, where she could finally take a deep breath and live, just above. She wanted to live. She wanted to live full-on, to the hilt, with every cell.”
― Cherie Dimaline, VenCo