A Quote by J. G. Holland

Childhood may do without a grand purpose, but manhood cannot.

J. G. Holland

Quote Topics

Cannot Childhood Grand Manhood May Purpose Without

Quote Author

J. G. Holland
American - Novelist
July 24, 1819 - October 12, 1881

We may live without poetry, music and art; We may live without conscience, and live without heart; We may live without friends; we may live without books; But civilized man cannot live without cooks. . . . He may live without books,-what is knowledge but grieving? He may live without hope,-what is hope but deceiving? He may live without love,-what is passion but pining? But where is the man that can live without dining?

Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton

The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests. The primary purpose is to praise, to sing, to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and man cannot live without a song. Prayer may not save us. But prayer may make us worthy of being saved.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble finger, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain,--which it is the pride of utmost age to recover.

John Ruskin

Imagining living in a universe without purpose may prepare us to better face reality head on. I cannot see that this is such a bad thing.

Lawrence M. Krauss

What is now happening to the people of the East as of the West is like what happens to every individual when he passes from childhood to adolescence and from youth to manhood. He loses what had hitherto guided his life and lives without direction, not having found a new standard suitable to his age, and so he invents all sorts of occupations, cares, distractions, and stupefactions to divert his attention from the misery and senselessness of his life. Such a condition may last a long time.

Leo Tolstoy

Pain serves a purpose. Without it you are in danger. What you cannot feel you cannot take care of.

Rebecca Solnit

The childhood of today is the manhood of tomorrow

William Wordsworth

THE PATH OF PEACE is exceedingly vast, reflecting the grand design of the hidden and manifest worlds. A warrior is a living shrine of the divine, one who serves that grand purpose.

Morihei Ueshiba

People need a sense of purpose. Gross margins are not the stuff of which dreams are made. And even without going so far as to talk of dreams, you cannot inspire people to take action, create or motivate without instilling a sense of purpose, especially when times are difficult.

Jean Pascal

Man cannot live without some knowledge of the purpose of life. If he can find no purpose in life he creates one in the inevitability of death.

Chester Himes

A happy childhood is the pledge of a ripe manhood.

Amos Bronson Alcott

Genius is the power of carrying the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Love makes its record in deeper colors as we grow out of childhood into manhood.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It's also hard for people to contend with the difficult possibility that we are simply overadvanced fungi and bacteria hurtling through a galaxy in cold, meaningless space. But just because our existence may have arisen unintentionally and without purpose doesn't preclude meaning or purpose from emerging as a result of our interaction and collaboration. Meaning may not be a precondition for humanity as much as a by-product of it.