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• Meaning: The end, purpose, or significance of something. Oxford Dictionary
• Meaning: Implication of a hidden or special significance.  Merriam Webster
• Meaning: A sense of importance or purpose. American Heritage Dictionary
• Meaning is the emotional significance of what we do; the importance we ascribe to something. It’s why we do what we do. Meaning doesn’t just exist on its own, it’s something we create and feel, and it’s closely linked to motivation. Michael Miller
• Meaning is subjective, placing an emphasis on the interior life, feelings, emotions, awareness, consciousness. To ask about the meaning of life is almost to ask an aesthetic question: what will my life evoke, what will it represent? Joshua P. Hochschild
• Purpose,  Fulfilment,  Perception,  Interpretation,  Understanding,   Life is about…

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We all seek meaning in our life

• It is not peace we seek but meaning. Lawrence Durrell
• As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being. Carl Jung
• There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for. Saul Bellow
• Man – a being in search of meaning. Plato

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Meaning gives us energy and purpose

• Our obligation is to give meaning to life, and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life. Elie Wiesel
• Energy management,  Purpose

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Meaning helps us feel that we matter

• Why do we need a sense of meaning? Because we need to feel that we matter, that our suffering and hard work aren’t futile, and that our life has purpose.  Sonja Lyubomirsky
• One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one’s life has meaning, that one is needed in this world.   Hannah Senesh   
• Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level. Ernest Becker
• Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it. . . . What frustrates us and robs our lives of joy is this absence of meaning. . . . Does our being alive matter? Harold S. Kushner

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Meaning helps us to withstand the struggles and pains of life

• What allows us, as human beings, to psychologically survive life on earth, with all of its pain, drama, and challenges, is a sense of purpose and meaning. Barbara de Angelis
• I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning. Haruki Murakami
• He who has the why to live can bear with almost any how.    Friedrich Nietzsche  
• This is the core of the human spirit . . . If we can find something to live for—if we can find some meaning to put at the center of our lives— even the worst kind of suffering becomes bearable. Viktor Frankl
• To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering. Friedrich Nietzsche
• If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering. Viktor E. Frankl
• Life is a battle,  Life is difficult but worthwhile

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Meaning can bring happiness

• To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble. Bill Watterson
• Life is a bliss only if you carefully understand it. Santosh Kalwar
• I define happiness as ‘the overall experience of pleasure and meaning.’ A happy person enjoys positive emotions while perceiving her life as purposeful. The definition does not pertain to a single moment but to a generalized aggregate of one’s experiences: a person can endure emotional pain at times and still be happy overall. Tal Ben- Shahar
• Although hedonic pleasures have their place, it is crucial that we don’t allow them to distract or discourage us from pursuing the deeper sense of well-being that only eudemonic happiness can bring. When we pursue this kind of happiness, we reach beyond ourselves, moving from a mentality of Me toward an appreciation of We. In our experience, this is a process that begins when you find the courage to reexamine your goals and values, the patience to look for the meaning in what you do, and the inner strength necessary to live a life of purpose. Craig & Marc Kielburger
• Happiness

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Meaning bestows great value, even on little things

• The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it. Carl Jung

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Not having a sense of meaning comes at a price

• The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life. Albert Einstein
• More often than people realize, psychological distress is caused by some combination of lack of meaning, lack of social engagement, and lack of spirituality.  Jennifer Hamady
• When a man cannot find meaning, he numbs himself with pleasure. Victor Frankl

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The meanings you choose will have a huge impact on your life

• It’s not the events of our lives that shape us, but our beliefs as to what those events mean. Tony Robbins
• Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives. Tony Robbins
• The only purpose of our lives consists in waking each other up and being there for each other. Johanna Paungger
• You want to change your life? Control the only thing you can control: the meaning you give something. Tony Robbins
• You see, it’s never the environment; it’s never the events of our lives, but the meaning we attach to the events – how we interpret them – that shapes who we are today and who we’ll become tomorrow. Tony Robbins
• How we define things sets a framework for life to unfold. Roz & Ben Zander
• It is not the experiences of your life that determine your outcome. It is the meaning you attach to each experience. Jim Hartness

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Meaning is a highly personal thing and differs from person to person

• Researchers believe that a genuine sense of meaning in life must be rooted in a person’s own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Blindly embracing someone else’s meaning won’t bring about happiness and growth.  Sonja Lyubomirsky
• There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life. Anaïs Nin

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There is no meaning to anything save the meaning you can give it

• There is no meaning to anything save the meaning you can give it. Life is meaningless. I give you the opportunity to decide what anything and everything means. Choose why it is happening. Decide why. Do not search for life’s meaning of any event. Give it its meaning. Then announce, declare, express and experience who I Choose to Be in relationship to it. Nothing in my world is real. The meaning of everything is the meaning I give it. I am who I say I am, and my experience is what I say it is. Neale Donald Walsch
• Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning. Henry Miller
• Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. Joseph Campbell
• Fact is, as the great teachers tell us, every situation is essentially neutral, and we always have the power to choose the most empowering interpretation of that event—or, of course, the least empowering interpretation. Those moment- to- moment choices essentially determine whether we go through life joyfully or miserably. So, choose wisely. Brian Johnson
• In and of itself, independent of how different people are perceiving it, it has no such nature; it is neutral or blank or empty. In short, it has ‘emptiness,’ and this—according to the deepest books of ancient Tibetan wisdom—is its hidden and ultimate potential. Geshe Michael Roach
• Life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it. It is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it’s as though you aren’t there.  Alan Alda
• Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer. Joseph Campbell

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Meaning is therefore something that you need to create for yourself

• Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded. Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself. Henry David Thoreau
• The meaning that you give an event is the event. Deepak Chopra
• I have given everything I see all the meaning that it has for me. A Course in Miracles
• You will find meaning in life only if you create it. It is a poetry to be composed. It is a song to be sung.  It is a dance to be danced. Osho
• Life is a balanced system of learning and evolution. Whether pleasure or pain; every situation in your life serves a purpose. It is up to us to recognize what that purpose could be. Steve Maraboli
• Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. S. Lewis
• There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person. Anaïs Nin
• As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence. Viktor E. Frankl
• Life is a process of creation

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Meaning is a choice you make

• The meaning of Life is whatever we choose. Jonathan Lockwood Huie
• See life as ugly and painful – if you choose or see it as beautiful and joyful. There is no inherent meaning in life.  We give life its meaning.  It’s our choice.  Jonathan Lockwood Huie
• We get to choose the meaning for our lives. Our lives mean exactly what we say they do – no more, no less.  Each of us chooses their path in life.  Jonathan Lockwood Huie
• Leonard asks me if there’s anything I need to know before he dies, I think about it for a minute, turn to him, say what’s the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that’s an easy one, my son, it’s whatever you want it to be. James Frey
• Choice

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The meaning of events, and whether we see them as positive or negative, lies in our attitude to them

• The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them. Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• Life is the movie you see through your own unique eyes. It makes little difference what’s happening out there. It’s how you take it that counts. Denis Waitley
• What’s happening is merely what’s happening. How you feel about it is another matter. Neale Donald Walsch
• We speak about what the Buddhists have always called ‘emptiness.’ We see, clearly, that nothing that ever happens to us is a good thing or a bad thing from its own side, because—if it were—then everyone else would experience it that way as well.  Geshe Michael Roach
• Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations. Alfred Adler
• Thought itself is harmless, an empty concept until we fill it with meaning. Wayne Dyer
• Attitude

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Therefore, consciously choose a meaning that empowers you

• It’s all invented anyway, so we might as well invent a story or a framework of meaning that enhances our quality of life and the life of those around us. Roz & Ben Zander
• If you’re going to make up things about the future, you may as well come up with a meaning that empowers you—rather than stresses you out. Jonathan Robinson
• Life is determined by how we interpret things so… we might as well choose the most empowering interpretation. Brian Johnson
• Here is an interesting exercise to help you become more aware of how you assign meaning. Whenever you feel unhappy or distressed, ask yourself what meaning you’ve placed on what seems to be causing your suffering. Consider what other meanings you could give this situation that would allow you to be happy… The meanings you give to things have consequences, so choose wisely. Bill Harris
• Saying yes means getting up and acting on your belief that you can create meaning and purpose in whatever life hands you. Susan Jeffers
• Once we see that everything is empty, we can choose to see the “hidden potential” in it—the “highest nature that a thing can have.” That’s a super powerful place to be. Brian Johnson
• Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives. Tony Robbins

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When creating a more empowering meaning, it’s often useful to write it

• I always ask myself, ‘Does this interpretation empower me or disempower me? Does this interpretation make me feel weak or strong?’ If you have an inner dialogue that disempowers you, it won’t change until you replace it with a positive, powerful, internal conversation. But some of us are very strong-willed, and our addiction to pain and suffering won’t allow a new interpretation. This is why it’s so important to write things out and look at every single way you might perceive a particular incident. Just the act of writing down the words shakes loose the emotions that are tied to the incident. When we’re willing to have some fun and play with our interpretations we can reexamine our choices. When we bring them out of the darkness and into the light, they can be healed. Debbie Ford
• Write down your barrier thoughts, and then consider ways to reinterpret the situation. In the process, ask yourself questions like… What else could this situation or experience mean? Can anything good come from it? Does it present any opportunities for me? What lessons can I learn and apply to the future? Did I develop any strengths as a result? Sonja Lyubomirsky

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The meaning of life lies in what you make of it

• There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. Dawkins
• Life is meaningless only if we allow it to be. Each of us has the power to give life meaning, to make our time and our bodies and our words into instruments of love and hope. Tom Head

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The meaning of life lies in contributing and serving others

• The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.
• What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful. The Dalai Lama
• The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity. Leo Tolstoy
• Meaning comes from belonging to and serving something beyond yourself and from developing the best within you. Martin Seligman
• Real success means creating a life of meaning through service that fulfills your reason for being here. Oprah Winfrey    
• Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men — above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends. Albert Einstein
• Care less for your harvest than for how it is shared and your life will have meaning and your heart will have peace. Kent Nerburn
• The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit. Nelson Henderson
• The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning. Mitch Albom  
• When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless. John W. Gardner  
• A long, healthy, and happy life is the result of making contributions, of having meaningful projects that are personally exciting and contribute to and bless the lives of others. Hans Selye
• It is not by accident that the happiest people are those who make a conscious effort to live useful lives. Their happiness, of course, is not a shallow exhilaration where life is one continuous intoxicating party. Rather, their happiness is a deep sense of inner peace that comes when they believe their lives have meaning and that they are making a difference for good in the world. Ernest A. Fitzgerald
• It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute, that gives meaning to our lives. Tony Robbins
• No man or woman is an island. To exist just for yourself is meaningless. You can achieve the most satisfaction when you feel related to some greater purpose in life, something greater than yourself. Denis Waitley
• When life has revealed you to yourself as you are, your search becomes how best to serve. Life itself—your work, family, and every interaction—is a chance to serve, to connect, to find meaning in the moment and purpose in the play. Dan Millman
• Meaning is in contribution, in living for something higher than self. Stephen Covey
• The life of the individual has meaning only insofar as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful. Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate.  Albert Einstein
• Contribution,  Service

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The meaning of life lies in choosing to be happy

• What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful. The Dalai Lama
• It’s so easy – this quest – this search for the meaning of life. It’s not a search at all – at least not a physical searching. It’s an allowing – giving ourselves permission to be happy regardless of what may lay in front of us or behind us.  Choosing to be happy is the combination to the padlocked door separating us from all that we can be, do or have.  David Ault
• Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence. Aristotle
• Happiness

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The meaning of life lies in love

• The meaning of life… I think the meaning of life is, I think it’s love. Julie Benz
• In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love. Marc Chagall
• Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. Viktor Frankl
• If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth. Mitsugi Saotome    
• The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning. Mitch Albom
• It is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth. Mitsugi Saotome
• Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us. Marianne Williamson
• The meaning of life is creative love. Not love as an inner feeling, as a private sentimental emotion, but love as a dynamic power moving out in the world and doing something original. Tom Morris
• There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning. Thornton Wilder
• When we understand that man is the only animal who must create meaning, who must open a wedge into neutral nature, we already understand the essence of love. Love is the problem of an animal who must find life, create a dialogue with nature in order to experience his own being. Ernest Becker
• I have learned that you can go anywhere you want to go and do anything you want to do and buy all the things that you want to buy and meet all the people that you want to meet and learn all the things that you desire to learn and if you do all these things but are not madly in love: you have still not begun to live. C. JoyBell C.
• Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another. Thomas Merton
• Love

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The meaning of life lies in compassion

• I don’t know the meaning of life, but I know compassion is the key. Jonathan Lockwood Huie
• Compassion is the ultimate and most meaningful embodiment of emotional maturity. It is through compassion that a person achieves the highest peak and the deepest reach in his or her search for self- fulfillment. Arthur Jersild
• Compassion

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The meaning of life lies in overcoming adversity and challenge

• Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. Joshua J. Marine
• There is sometimes powerful meaning in anguish and trauma. Suffering may bring about posttraumatic growth, including spiritual growth, a timeless perspective on possible life paths, and a sense that life has renewed meaning.  Sonja Lyubomirsky
• I discover the meaning and purpose of life in the process of overcoming difficulties with dignity, courage, and faith. I am on purpose. Darren R. Weissman
• Engaging in activities devoid of difficulty, lounging in risk-free zones, is life without great meaning. Jon M. Huntsman Sr.
• Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods. So let us celebrate the struggle! Swami Sivananda
• Through difficult experiences, life sometimes becomes more meaningful. The Dalai Lama
• Adversity,  Challenge

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The meaning of life lies in having a purpose

• Purpose is what gives life a meaning. Charles Henry Parkhurst
• To give life a meaning, one must have a purpose larger than one’s self. Will Durant
• This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. George Bernard Shaw 
• I believe that nothing that happens to me is meaningless and that it is good for us all that it should be so, even if it runs counter to our own wishes. As I see it, I’m here for some purpose, and I only hope I may fulfill it. Dietrich Bondoeffer 
• Find a purpose to serve, not a lifestyle to live. Criss Jami
• When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it. Clement Stone
• Purpose

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The meaning of life lies in losing yourself in a meaningful project

• Losing yourself in a mission, purpose, project
• The heart of human excellence often begins to beat when you discover a pursuit that absorbs you, frees you, challenges you, or gives you a sense of meaning, joy or passion. Terry Orlick
• A long, healthy, and happy life is the result of making contributions, of having meaningful projects that are personally exciting and contribute to and bless the lives of others. Hans Selye

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The meaning of life lies in the experience of being fully alive

• I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. Joseph Campbell
• People say that what we are all seeking is meaning for life. I think that what we’re really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innnermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive. Joseph Campbell 
• There is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself. Erich Fromm
• Life takes on shape and meaning when a person is able to transcend the barriers of personal survival and become a conduit for its vital energy. Roz & Ben Zander
• If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself. Rick Riordan
• Being fully alive

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The meaning of life lies in doing something worthwhile

• Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwhile. Wilfred T. Grenfell   
• Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself. Antoine de Saint-  Exupery
• A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit. Elton Trueblood
• What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. Viktor Frankl
• Don’t ask what is the meaning of life, but what is life asking of me. Victor Frankl

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The meaning of life lies in following your dreams

• You must go after your wish. As soon as you start to pursue a dream, your life wakes up and everything has meaning. Barbara Sher
• Dare to err and to dream. Deep meaning often lies in childish plays. Johann Friedrich Von Schiller
• Hold on to your dreams for they are, in a sense, the stuff of which reality is made. It is through our dreams that we maintain the possibility of a better, more meaningful life. Leo Buscaglia
• Dreams make you click, juice you, turn you on, excite the living daylights out of you. You cannot wait to get out of bed to continue pursuing your dream. The kind of dream I’m talking about gives meaning to your life. It is the ultimate motivator. Jim Collins
• The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but on significance – and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning. Oprah Winfrey
• Dreams

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The meaning of life lies in the fabric of daily living

• It is while you are patiently toiling at the little tasks of life that the meaning and shape of the great whole of life dawn on you. Phillips Brooks
• The essence of intelligence is skill in extracting meaning from everyday experience.

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The meaning of life lies in right action and right conduct

• We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfil the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. Viktor Frankl

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The meaning of life lies in doing what you love and are good at and making it matter

• Love your calling with passion, it is the meaning of your life. Auguste Rodin     
• To love what you do and feel that it matters—how could anything else be more fun? Katharine Graham    
• The good life consists in deriving happiness by using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power, or goodness. Martin Seligman
• We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we’ve established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile. Earl Nightingale
• Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig. Malcolm Gladwell
• The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The meaning of life is giving your gift away. David Viscott
• If you want to make the days of your life really matter, then you must love something. Kobi Yamada
• The heart of human excellence often begins to beat when you discover a pursuit that absorbs you, frees you, challenges you, or gives you a sense of meaning, joy or passion. Terry Orlick
• We lose ourselves in the things we love. We find ourselves there, too. Kristin Martz
• Do what you love,  Passion

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The meaning of life lies in the journey itself, not the destination

• I think essentially the meaning of life is probably the journey and not really any one thing or an outcome or a result. Charisma Carpenter
• Life is a journey

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The meaning of life lies in developing and growing the soul

• The progress of our soul is like a perfect poem. It has an infinite idea which, once realised, makes all movements full of meaning and joy. Rabindanath Tagore 
• The meaning of earthly existence lies, not as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• The soul

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The meaning of life lies in personal growth and realising your potential

• Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning. Benjamin Franklin
• To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life. Robert Louis Stevenson
• Things do not happen to you, they happen for you. There is an opportunity for you to grow in every situation. Neale Donald Walsch
• Growth,  Potential

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The meaning of life lies in the values you hold most dear

• The shaping of deeply felt values into meaningful, apposite form, is present in all communities, and will find some means of expressions among all. Dell Hymes
• Values are principles and ideas that bring meaning to the seemingly mundane experience of life. A meaningful life that ultimately brings happiness and pride requires you to respond to temptations as well as challenges with honor, dignity, and courage. Laura Schlesinger

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The meaning of life lies in seeking answers to the unanswered questions

• Life is filled with unanswered questions, but it is the courage to seek those answers that continues to give meaning to life. You can spend your life wallowing in despair, wondering why you were the one who was led towards the road strewn with pain, or you can be grateful that you are strong enough to survive it. D. Stroube
• Questions

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The meaning of life lies in the fact that your life doesn’t last forever

• The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it. Mary Catherine Bateson
• Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person’s life its true meaning. Paulo Coelho
• When you can live forever what do you live for? Stephenie Meyer
• In the proximity of death, the whole concept of ownership stands revealed as ultimately meaningless. Eckhart Tolle
• Without death, our lives would have no meaning. Death frames our end for us and also puts a value on things. Richard J. Leider and David A. Shapiro
• Life and death make a meaningful whole. Etty Hillesum
• Only when you accept that one day you’ll die can you let go and make the best out of life. And that’s the big secret. That’s the miracle. Gabriel Bá
• Life is fleeting,  Impermanence

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The meaning of life lies in giving yourself over to adventure

• Adventure begins with you, personally. It is in the way you look at things.  It is the mental stance you take as you face your day.  It is finding magic in things.  It is talking with people and discovering their inner goodness.  It is the thrill of feeling a part of the life around you.  The attitude of adventure will open things up for you.  The world will become alive with new zest and meaning.  You’ll become more aware of the beauty everywhere.  Nothing will seem unimportant. Everything will be revealed as having pattern and purpose. Wilferd A. Peterson
• Adventure

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Life, itself, is an adventure in finding meaning

• Each day is an adventure in discovering the meaning of life. It is each little thing that you do that day – whether it be spending time with your friends, running in a cross-country meet or just simply staring at the crashing ocean- that holds the key to discovering the meaning of life. I would rather be out enjoying these things than pondering them. We may never really discover the meaning of life, but the knowledge we gain in our quest to discover it is truly more valuable. Jack Canfield

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The meaning of life lies in curiosity, wonder and beauty

• Although there may be nothing new under the sun, what is old is new to us and so rich and astonishing that we never tire of it. If we do tire of it, if we lose our curiosity, we have lost something of infinite value, because to a high degree it is curiosity that gives meaning and savour to life. Robertson Davies
• Be open to beauty and excellence. This strategy involves allowing yourself to truly admire an object of beauty or a display of talent, genius or virtue. Strive even to feel reverence and awe. Positive psychologists suggest that people who open themselves to the beauty and excellence around them are more likely to find joy, meaning, and profound connections in their lives. Sonja Lyubomirsky
• The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder. Richard Bach
• Curiosity,  Wonder,  Beauty

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The meaning of life lies in developing our talents and making the world a better place

• Beyond work and love, I would add two other ingredients that give meaning to life. First, to fulfill whatever talents we are born with. However blessed we are by fate with different abilities and strengths, we should try to develop them to the fullest, rather than allow them to atrophy and decay. We all know individuals who did not fulfill the promise they showed in childhood. Many of them became haunted by the image of what they might have become. Instead of blaming fate, I think we should accept ourselves as we are and try to fulfill whatever dreams are within our capability. Second, we should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide. Michio Kaku
• When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, “I used everything you gave me. Erma Bombeck
• Talent,  Making a difference

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Believe that your life is inherently meaningful and then make it so

• Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow. Dorothy Thompson
• Life is meaningless only if we allow it to be. Each of us has the power to give life meaning, to make our time and our bodies and our words into instruments of love and hope. Tom Head
• Faith is not about finding meaning in the world, there may be no such thing — faith is the belief in our capacity to create meaningful lives. Terry Tempest Williams
• Saying yes means getting up and acting on your belief that you can create meaning and purpose in whatever life hands you. Susan Jeffers
• No matter what age you are, or what your circumstances might be, you are special, and you still have something unique to offer. Your life, because of who you are, has meaning. Barbara de Angelis

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Focus only on those things that give your life meaning

• Cut back on commitments that aren’t that meaningful. This way, you can make room for the things that are. Laura Stack
• If you are exceptionally selective and find the few things that matter deeply to you, life acquires a purpose and meaning way beyond what it had previously, when you were somewhat concerned about a large number of issues. Richard Koch
• We believe in saying no to thousands of projects, so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us. Steve Jobs

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Create meaning in your life through creating meaningful goals

• Goals help focus you on areas in both your personal and professional life that are important and meaningful, rather than being guided by what other people want you to be, do, or accomplish. Catherine Pulsifer     
• When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life. Greg Anderson
• When in pursuit of goals that are both pleasurable and meaningful, that yield both present and future benefit, we are enlivening time rather than killing time. Tal Ben-Shahar
• To experience a sense of purpose, the goals we set for ourselves need to be intrinsically meaningful. Tal Ben- Shahar
• Life takes on meaning when you become motivated, set goals and charge after them in an unstoppable manner. Les Brown
• We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we’ve established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. Earl Nightingale
• Working toward a meaningful life goal is one of the most important strategies for becoming lastingly happier. Sonja Lyubomirsky
• Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals. Aristotle
• The meaning of life is not to be found in having lots of money, fame, prestige, or stuff. It’s to be found in living your proper quest of positive achievement. Making a difference in the lives of other people, make a difference for good, create new relationships, new feelings, new structures of goodness in the world by what you do and who you are, and you will feel in that process what we so often seek with such futility in all the wrong places. The right sort of quest can be enjoyed at the deepest possible levels. Tom Morris
• Goal setting

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Do something each day that gives your life meaning

• Every morning plan three things you’ll do on that day: one that gives you pleasure, one that will help put you in the state of flow, and one that will give your life meaning. Marelisa Fabrega

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Reflect deeply on the meaning of things

• The worst insult I can inflict on life is that I do not reflect on its meaning. Kedar Joshi
• Break through the surface ideas, truths, laws, whatever it is that we are contemplating, to explore their deeper meaning and implications. John Kehoe
• We are so busy making things happen that we have little time left to think about the value of what is happening. We urgently need people who concentrate on the meaning of life rather than simply the speed. Joan Chittister
• Reflection

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Extract meaning from everyday experiences for this is how wisdom is developed

• The essence of intelligence is skill in extracting meaning from everyday experience.
• If you can find a way to make sense of adversity and draw constructive lessons from it, you can benefit, too. Jonathan Haidt
• We had the experience, but we missed the meaning. S. Elliot
• Wisdom is meaningless until your own experience has given it meaning…and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom. Bergen Evens
• There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home. John Stuart Mill
• Meaning is not what you start with but what you end up with. Peter Elbow
• It is not the experiences of your life that determine your outcome. It is the meaning you attach to each experience. Jim Hartness
• Life becomes significantly more profound when we are able to weave events and experiences together in order to see the bigger picture. Kayla Albert
• We pass through the present with our eyes blindfolded. We are permitted merely to sense and guess at what we are actually experiencing. Only later when the cloth is untied can we glance at the past and find out what we have experienced and what meaning it has. Milan Kundera

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Extract meaning from any pain and suffering you experience…

• The most important thing we can do when we’re hurting, is to find some meaning in it. Pain does teach us something, but we have to be willing to learn from it.  When we do, we emerge as both wiser and stronger. Tim Hansel
• If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering. Viktor Emil Frankl
• To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering. Friedrich Nietzsche
• Pain,  Suffering

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… even if it’s just realising that it is unhappiness that gives happiness its meaning

• The word “happiness” would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. Carl Jung

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Extract meaning from the past

• The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man needs only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning – the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life – a man must reinhabit his past, however dark and life for the future, however uncertain. Rubenfeld

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Encapsulate what gives your life meaning by creating a personal mission statement

• From the perspective of your entire life, what is it that you most care about and what gives meaning to your life? What do you want to be and do in your life? A written mission statement encapsulates what you want to become and achieve. Stephen Covey
• Create a personal mission statement

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Redefine success in terms of what you think is truly meaningful

• Redefine a “meaningful accomplishment.” If being peaceful and loving are amongst your primary goals, then why not redefine your most meaningful accomplishments as being those that support and measure qualities such as kindness and happiness. Richard Carlson
• Success

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Don’t base your meaning of life on money

• What is the role of money in the search for meaning? Is our relationship to it one of the chief factors that keeps us in our prison, or could it also be a tool for breaking out, for awakening to a life filled with intensity of purpose? Jacob Needleman   
• Money cannot buy peace of mind. It cannot heal ruptured relationships, or build meaning into a life that has none.  Richard M. DeVos

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Spirituality and religion can help you find meaning in life …

• Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning and purpose to our lives. Brené Brown
• Spirituality is defined as a “search for the sacred” – that is, a search for meaning in life through something that is larger than the individual self. KI Pargament
• Spiritual seekers particularly are on a quest to understand life; we want to examine our own lives and find meaning in what we do and who we are. … We find meaning in the seeking itself. Every step along the way is the Way… Lama Surya Das
• Religion and spirituality undoubtedly help us to find meaning in life. Why do we need a sense of meaning? Because we need to feel that we matter, that our suffering and our hard work aren’t futile, and that our life has a purpose.  Sonja Lyubomirsky
• Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt. Paul Tillich
• Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of the meaning of our life. Paul Tillich
• Like art, religion is an imaginative and creative effort to find a meaning and value in human life. Karen Armstrong
• Without an understanding of myth or religion, without an understanding of the relationship between destruction and creation, death and rebirth, the individual suffers the mysteries of life as meaningless mayhem alone. Marion Woodman
• As you become multi-sensory, you begin to see yourself as a soul first and a personality second. You begin to experience yourself as more than a body and more than a mind. and the circumstances around you as meaningful and designed for your spiritual growth. Gary Zukav
• Science is clearly one of the most profound methods that humans have yet devised for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning. Ken Wilber
• Spirituality

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… but realise that the meaning derived from excessive dogma can be shaky

• Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to death. Salman Rushdie
• Ideology and dogma

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A true sense of meaning comes from beyond the conceptualising mind

• Your true meaning cannot be grasped or captured by words. You can never be equated with any words, because you are prior to words. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life… Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind. Anthony de Mello

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Embrace the meaning of life as the mystery it is

• I don’t know the meaning of life. I don’t know why we are here. I think life is full of anxieties and fears and tears. It has a lot of grief in it, and it can be very grim. And I do not want to be the one who tries to tell somebody else what life is all about. To me it’s a complete mystery. Charles M. Schulz
• As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. … That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life… Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind. Anthony de Mello
• I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here. I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell. Richard Feynman
• The chances of finding out what’s really going on in the universe are so remote, the only thing to do is hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied. Douglas Adams
• Mystery

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Realise the power and significance of meaningful coincidences in your life

• When you live your life with an appreciation of coincidences and their meanings, you connect with the underlying field of infinite possibilities. Deepak Chopra
• This is the ultimate truth of synchrodestiny—that the sum total of the universe is conspiring to create your personal destiny… We cannot even imagine the complex forces behind every event that occurs in our lives. There’s a conspiracy of coincidences that weave the web of karma or destiny and creates an individual’s personal life. Deepak Chopra
• Synchronicity reveals the meaningful connections between the subjective and objective world. Carl Jung 
• As soon as we notice that certain types of events ‘like’ to cluster together at certain times, we begin to understand the Chinese, whose theories of medicine, philosophy, and even building are based on a ‘science’ of meaningful coincidences. Marie Louise von Franz
• Synchronicity

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Don’t let modern culture obstruct your search for meaning

• Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery. It produces “nice” people, not heroes. Peter Kreeft
• We are so busy making things happen that we have little time left to think about the value of what is happening. We urgently need people who concentrate on the meaning of life rather than simply the speed. Joan Chittister
• Many find in sex and economics the meaning of life and the reason of it all. The consequence of this is that the goal of life for many has become a relief of tension. Sachindra Kumar Majumdar

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Here is an exercise to try

• Greater meaning in life comes from having a coherent “life scheme.” Sit back and write, or share with someone, your own life story.  Who are you now, and who were you before?  What future do you imagine for yourself?  What are the obstacles in your path?  What assumptions do you hold about the world and why things are the way they are?  Sonja Lyubomirsky

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Don’t lose yourself in what is not meaningful

• Today we live in a world that judges its achievements by speed and busyness. … We are so busy making things happen that we have little time left to think about the value of what is happening. We urgently need people who concentrate on the meaning of life rather than simply the speed. Joan Chittister
• Many find in sex and economics the meaning of life and the reason of it all. The consequence of this is that the goal of life for many has become a relief of tension. Sachindra Kumar Majumdar
• I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer. Jim Carrey
• When a man cannot find meaning, he numbs himself with pleasure. Victor Frankl
• A man can radically change his life and attain to a deeper meaning, a more perfect integration, a more complete fulfillment, a more total liberty of spirit than are possible in the routines of a purely active existence centered on money- making. Thomas Merton

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Have faith in your ability to create a meaningful life

• Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be… a prudent insurance policy. Elizabeth Gilbert
• Faith is not about finding meaning in the world, there may be no such thing — faith is the belief in our capacity to create meaningful lives. Terry Tempest Williams

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Choose to be happy instead of getting lost in a search for meaning

• It’s so easy – this quest – this search for the meaning of life. It’s not a search at all – at least not a physical searching. It’s an allowing – giving ourselves permission to be happy regardless of what may lay in front of us or behind us. Choosing to be happy is the combination to the padlocked door separating us from all that we can be, do or have.  David Ault
• You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. Albert Camus

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• Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.  Ashleigh Brilliant
• Just when I discovered the meaning of life, they changed it. George Carlin
• I’m killing time while I wait for life to shower me with meaning and happiness.
• If women didn’t exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.  Onassis
• Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad. Norm Papernick

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