"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Purpose Of Life Is Not
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
About this quote
Despite widespread attribution to Emerson, Quote Investigator traced this saying to humorist and teacher Leo Rosten, who used a close variant in a 1962 address at the National Book Awards and published a version in The Rotarian in September 1965: "The purpose of life is not to be happy — but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all." The misattribution to Emerson first appeared in a 1988 career-advice book with no source given.
Source
Attributed, paraphrased from various essays
