It felt good to have a sense of purpose. It had been a long stretch of whenever since she’d felt she was doing more than just getting through a day.

Charles de Lint, The Cats of Tanglewood Forest

Consider also:

  1. “But if Masonry has not as yet fulfilled its primary purpose and, though engaged in admirable secondary activities, is as yet an initiating instrument of low efficiency, it may be that, with enlarged understanding of its designs, that efficiency may yet become very considerably increased.”
  2. “The name Hiram Abiff signifies in Hebrew ‘the teacher (Guru, or enlightened one) from the Father’: a fact which may help you still further to recognize the concealed purpose of the teaching.”
  3. “According to the rules of magic, I built a terrace with a northern aspect and carted river sand to it. I worked in the breakfast-room at making the talismans which were necessary to my purpose. The sun was streaming into the room, but in vain; there was a darkness which could be felt. The demons, evil forces, had congregated round me so thickly that they were shutting off the light. It was a comforting situation. There could be no more doubt of the efficiency of the operation.”
  4. “I have felt as I have sometimes felt on grey days on the Galway shore, when a faint mist has hung over the grey sea and the grey stones, as if the world might suddenly vanish and leave nothing behind, not even a little dust under one’s feet.”
  5. “But because, for long and for many, Masonry has meant less than this, it has not as yet fulfilled its original purpose of being the efficient initiating instrument it was designed to be; its energies have been diverted from its true instructional purpose into social and philanthropic channels, excellent in their way, but foreign to and accretions upon the primal main intention.”