Every person has a longing to be significant; to make a contribution; to be a part of something noble and purposeful.

The reason why I wear gold – I wear gold for three reasons. One, when Jesus was born, three wise men came from the east: one brought frankincense, one brought myrrh, the other one brought gold. The second reason I wear gold is I can afford it. The third reason I wear it, it’s symbolic of my African heritage.

We’re so immaturely cynical as a culture. We’re not wise enough to look at an institution like marriage and to really things about what it means and what it signifies. It signifies a place where people can tie the ropes of their lives together so that they’re stronger. It signifies a place where people can tell the truth to one another.

I really miss being able to blend in with people.

A gentleman is never rude except on purpose – I can honestly be nasty sober, believe you me.

My view of my role is that together with like-minded men and women, I could help contribute to a bipartisan view of American engagement in the world for another period; I could do my part to overcome this really, in a way, awful period in which we are turning history into personal recriminations, depriving our political system of a serious debate.

It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.

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

Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.

The universe is not indifferent to our existence – it depends on it.

I don’t want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death!

She would have thrived as a grandmother. I know how much she would have contributed to their lives, and I am sad they will miss out on that.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

The only length of life that seems to satisfy the longings of the human heart is life everlasting.

That service is the noblest which is rendered for its own sake.

What I cry out for, like every being, with my whole life and all my earthly passion, is something very different from an equal to cherish: it is a God to adore.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

I never expected anyone to take care of me, but in my wildest dreams and juvenile yearnings, I wanted the house with the picket fence from June Allyson movies. I knew that was yearning like one yearns to fly.

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

It is a joy to be an artist, but it doesn’t mean very much unless that work is somehow useful in some way and contributes to others.

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.

I was lucky to be involved and get to contribute to something that was important, which is empowering people with software.

Everything’s intentional. It’s just filling in the dots.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.

To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

Things don’t have to change the world to be important.

Could I have but a line a century hence crediting a contribution to the advance of peace, I would yield every honor which has been accorded by war.

I used to live with my grandmother. I used to wonder why the other kids in school went home with their mothers and fathers. I wanted to be the guy that got married. I wanted to be the guy with the children and the white picket fence. I never had that.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

To deal with individual human needs at the everyday level can be noble sometimes.

Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me.

Life is not accumulation, it is about contribution.

That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.

Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.

I have so much in my life. I want to be of value to the world.

If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought.

Some people wonder all their lives if they’ve made a difference. The Marines don’t have that problem.

I have done one thing that I think is a contribution: I helped Buddhist science and modern science combine. No other Buddhist has done that. Other lamas, I don’t think they ever pay attention to modern science. Since my childhood, I have a keen interest.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.

I suppose, in a way, this has become part of my soul. It is a symbol of my life. Whatever I have done that really matters, I’ve done wearing it. When the time comes, it will be in this that I journey forth. What greater honor could come to an American, and a soldier?

Where ever I am I always find myself looking out the window wishing I was somewhere else.

We can all be successful and make money, but when we die, that ends. But when you are significant is when you help other people be successful. That lasts many a lifetime.

The names of Dingane and Bambata, Hintsa and Makana, Squngthi and Dalasile, Moshoeshoe and Sekhukhuni, were praised as the glory of the entire African nation. I hoped then that life might offer me the opportunity to serve my people and make my own humble contribution to their freedom struggle.

I’m an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart. I have a very optimistic view of individuals.

Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.

The challenge of work-life balance is without question one of the most significant struggles faced by modern man.

Poland is not East or West. Poland is at the center of European civilization. It has contributed mightily to that civilization. It is doing so today by being magnificently unreconciled to oppression.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

Work alone is noble.

Traditions are a common part of our lives. They can be good, and not all traditions are wrong, but sometimes they can take the joy out of life.

Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.

Lovers often invest their first meetings with retrospective significance, as if to try to conjure the elements of the numinous out of the stubborn witness of the everyday.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.