Did William Shakespeare say "The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away"?

Q: Did William Shakespeare say "The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away"?

No. Shakespeare never wrote this. Quote Investigator finds no substantive evidence tying the line to Shakespeare (or to Picasso, the other common credit), and traces the earliest strong match to psychiatrist and radio host David Viscott's 1993 book Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times: A Book of Meditations. Viscott wrote it in three parts — discover, develop, give away — and the familiar two-clause version is a later, unattributed reshuffle that swaps "meaning" and "purpose" and replaces "discover" with "find."

Who really said it

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away

Not Shakespeare — reworded from David Viscott David Viscott 1938–1996 · American psychiatrist, author & radio host

Both Quote Investigator and Wikiquote independently place this under Viscott, not Shakespeare. In copyright

Shakespeare never wrote this. Quote Investigator ↗ finds no substantive evidence tying the line to Shakespeare (or to Picasso, the other common credit), and traces the earliest strong match to psychiatrist and radio host David Viscott’s 1993 book Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times: A Book of Meditations. Viscott wrote it in three parts — discover, develop, give away — and the familiar two-clause version is a later, unattributed reshuffle that swaps “meaning” and “purpose” and replaces “discover” with “find.”

Last verified 14 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away” David Viscott, Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times: A Book of Meditations (1993). Not Shakespeare; the popular two-clause version is a later, unattributed rewording.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to William Shakespeare. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of David Viscott and his publisher, Contemporary Books (now part of McGraw-Hill)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of David Viscott — American psychiatrist, author & radio host. Theme: "The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the line actually comes from

Work: Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times: A Book of Meditations
Author: David Viscott (1938–1996)
Published: Contemporary Books, 1993
Popular wording: An anonymous later rearrangement — not Viscott’s sentence, and not Shakespeare’s

The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give your gift away. Middle clause cut

This is the three-part original as documented by Quote Investigator and reproduced in collections of Viscott’s quotations. The circulating version keeps the first and last beats, drops the middle one, swaps “meaning” and “purpose,” and changes “discover” to “find.”

Quote Investigator’s full chronology, 1993–2006

The paper trail

1993 — The earliest strong match. David Viscott’s Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times: A Book of Meditations is published by Contemporary Books, containing the three-part saying. Quote Investigator credits Viscott with originating the adage ↗.
1994–1997 — Simplified restatements begin appearing in the press. Quote Investigator’s chronology records instances in the Seattle Times (January 1994 and January 1995), the Atlantic City Press (May 1995), and a February 1997 Chattanooga Times instance attributed to Viscott ↗.
2006 — The wording we know today surfaces: a March 2006 San Francisco Chronicle instance has the words swapped and “find” in place of “discover” ↗. The same year, a two-part version is credited to Joy Golliver in a book epigraph.
Today — The couplet circulates under Shakespeare’s name with no source attached — as on this Goodreads entry ↗, which cites no book. Wikiquote answers it directly in its Misattributed section ↗: “Not by Shakespeare, but from Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times.”

In copyright

Rights here have nothing to do with Shakespeare, whose works are long in the public domain — this line simply is not his. The saying was first published in David Viscott’s Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times in 1993, well after the 1931 threshold, so the text remains in copyright and is not free to reproduce at length. The short two-clause version in circulation is an anonymous rewording of that copyrighted sentence, which gives it no independent public-domain status; brief quotation with attribution to Viscott is the safe course.

Fact-check

Who it gets pinned on

This is a modern self-help line with a modern author, so every famous name attached to it is an invention. Quote Investigator addresses the two biggest ones directly.

William Shakespeare No evidence

Quote Investigator states it has found no substantive evidence ↗ linking the expression to Shakespeare, and Wikiquote files this exact wording under its Misattributed section ↗, naming Viscott's 1993 book as the real source. Shakespeare died in 1616; the line postdates him by roughly 377 years.

Pablo Picasso No evidence

The other common credit, especially on Facebook and Pinterest. Quote Investigator reports no substantive evidence ↗ tying the saying to Picasso either.

Joy Golliver Later credit

Quote Investigator notes that a simplified two-part version was credited to Joy Golliver ↗, an author and lecturer on community service, in a 2006 book epigraph — thirteen years after Viscott's book.

Nobody — it is an anonymous edit Reworded

Even crediting Viscott, the popular two-clause form is not his sentence. His original has three parts and uses “discover”; Quote Investigator's chronology shows the swapped, “find”-based wording appearing by March 2006 ↗. No individual is documented as making the change.

The idea is David Viscott’s, published in 1993; the two-clause wording everyone shares is an anonymous later edit of it — and no part of it is Shakespeare’s ↗.

Context

Why it drifted to Shakespeare

The line has the two things a quote needs to go viral without a source: it is short, and it is kind. It offers a whole theory of a life in two clauses, and it asks nothing of the reader except to feel understood. Viscott, a working psychiatrist writing a book of daily meditations, built it as a three-beat sequence with a middle step that does the unglamorous work — develop it. That middle beat is the part the internet dropped.

What survived is a tidier, more quotable couplet with no author attached, and an unattached couplet drifts upward toward the most famous name available. Shakespeare is the default landing site for any English sentence that sounds wise and has lost its paperwork; Picasso plays the same role for anything about art or gifts. Neither man is credited by any source that predates Viscott.

The middle step — the work of life is to develop it — is the part the internet deleted.

How the wording changed

Viscott’s 1993 original runs in three parts: the purpose of life is to discover your gift, the work of life is to develop it, the meaning of life is to give your gift away.

In the popular version, the middle clause is gone, “meaning” and “purpose” have traded places, and “discover” has become “find.” Quote Investigator’s chronology shows simplified two-part restatements circulating in newspapers from January 1994 onward, with a March 2006 San Francisco Chronicle instance showing the words swapped and “find” in place of “discover.”

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Purpose Kindness

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: The Purpose of Life Is to Discover Your Giftquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation: no substantive evidence for Shakespeare or Picasso, earliest strong match in Viscott's 1993 book, plus a dated citation chronology from 1993 to 2006.

William Shakespeare — Misattributeden.wikiquote.org

Lists this exact wording under Misattributed, stating it is not by Shakespeare but from Viscott's 1993 self-help book.

David Viscotten.wikipedia.org

Biography of the real originator: 1938–1996, UCLA psychiatry professor, talk-radio pioneer, and author of the 1993 meditations book.

Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times (catalog record)books.google.com

Catalog record confirming the book's author, publisher (Contemporary Books) and 1993 publication date.

David Viscott quotationsgoodreads.com

Carries the full three-part original wording credited to Viscott — useful for seeing what the popular version cut.

The same line credited to Shakespearegoodreads.com

A live example of the misattribution: the exact popular wording filed under Shakespeare with no source book cited.

The true originator

The man who actually wrote it

David Viscott

1938–1996 · American psychiatrist, author & radio host

David Viscott was a Boston-trained psychiatrist who moved to Los Angeles in 1979 as a UCLA psychiatry professor and became one of the first people to practice psychiatry on talk radio, beginning at KABC in 1980. He wrote The Making of a Psychiatrist, The Language of Feelings and Emotionally Free, and hosted the syndicated TV show Getting in Touch with Dr. David Viscott. His 1993 meditation collection Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times contains the line that the internet now hands to Shakespeare.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Source

David Viscott, Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times: A Book of Meditations (Contemporary Books, 1993). Earliest strong match documented in Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: The Purpose of Life Is to Discover Your Gift. The Meaning of Life Is to Give Your Gift Away,” 16 June 2014.

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