# On the Meaning of Life  ## Metadata - Author: [[Will Durant]] - Full Title: On the Meaning of Life - Category: #books ## Highlights - We smile at the Puritan today, but it may be just the virtues of the Puritan that will be needed -- or are needed now -- when crisis comes: the same stern self-discipline, the same stoic capacity to suffer and persevere, which made nearly all the strong characters in modern history. ([Location 1526](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005B1AJC2&location=1526)) - “Be a whole or join a whole,” said Goethe. If we think of ourselves as part of a living (no merely theoretical) group, we shall find life a little fuller, perhaps even more significant. For to give life a meaning one must have a purpose larger than one’s self, and more enduring than one’s life. ([Location 1578](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005B1AJC2&location=1578)) - do not know to what great end Destiny leads us, nor do I care very much. Long before that end, I shall have played my part, spoken my lines, and passed on. How I play that part is all that concerns me. In the knowledge that I am an inalienable part of this great, wonderful, upward movement called life, and that nothing, neither pestilence, nor physical affliction, nor depression -- nor prison -- can take away from me my part, lies my consolation, my inspiration, and my treasure. ([Location 1746](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005B1AJC2&location=1746))