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

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

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.

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

Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.

The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

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

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

Work alone is noble.

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

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.

For my part, I desire to see the time when education – and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry – shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.

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.

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

The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.

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

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

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.

A worthy woman personifies the truly noble and worthwhile attributes of life.

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.

The idea is to try to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

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

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

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

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

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

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

We learned about gratitude and humility – that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean… and we were taught to value everyone’s contribution and treat everyone with respect.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

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

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.

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.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

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

To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.

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?

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

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

My share of the work may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious.

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.

I dote on his very absence.

It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.

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.

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.

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!

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.

There are so many men and women who hold no distinctive positions but whose contribution towards the development of society has been enormous.

I really miss being able to blend in with people.

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

In politics nothing is contemptible.

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.

In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution.

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.

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

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