Best 1210 quotes in «meaning quotes» category

I am the soul…but is that true?’ she asked herself aloud. ‘What am I actually? I am not the soul, I am beyond the soul and yet I am nothing. I am an empty shell of living cells, where an essence that I’ve learned to recognise as me inhabits.

I am trying to talk about what blue means, or what it means to me, apart from meaning.

I believe in Life. I believe Life to be outside of time, powerful, subtle and spread throughout the universe -- a power something like gravity. There are many such energies. Once we are able to detect life it will boggle our minds for centuries to come. The shear magnitude will rapture many, and destroy others, but we're not there yet. We can say something is alive, or dead, but not if life is there or not. Perhaps because it is too quiet, maybe because it is so loud we can hear nothing else, but mainly -- I believe -- because we haven't bothered to listen yet. -- , from the Black Dog

I can quote a million people but in the end it only comes down to one thing "Faith

I climb the mountain, and for a moment leave the world far below, I need, we all need, those moments, that we might recharge the Spiritual battery which the world would so eagerly drain to the point of ruin.

I create lies for people in order for them to find something true about themselves. I teach people that lies are doors that opens up to truth. Either you accept the lie, or you run away from it, thus, eliminating the meaning behind it, and what is could have accomplished.

I could strip words of their meaning and listen for hours.

I decided to give up meaningless sex, but then I remembered that everything is meaningless.

I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of all I find that I love. In order to get some of it down I have to love... too much of your life will be lost, its meaning lost, unless you approach it as much through love as through hate.

I did not know I was on a search for passionate aliveness. I only knew I was lonely and lost and that something was drawing me deeper beneath the surface of my life in search of meaning. There is a hunger in people to go to those deep depths; to know that our lives are sacred; that our hearts are truly capable of love. It is a yearning to be all the we can be. A longing for what is real.

I didn't,,," You start to say, I didn't mean to, and stop. Because you never mean it, and it never matters in the end.

I don't care what anyone says, the stars give you hope on a dark and gloomy night.

I don't know anything anymore. Is that normal? Is it normal to notice the enormity of everything and just go blank?

I don't know what I mean, but I know I believe it.

I don't know what you mean, but I know that you mean it. (attrib: 'Edward', Appendix 2)

I don't know whether it was Bukowski who said "Find what you love and let it kill you." But I have found what I love. I love writing & telling stories. And I am letting it kil me!

I don't need to go anywhere, I just need to sit quietly with God for a time. Kind of like a cell phone, turn it off, plug it in, and let it charge.

I don’t understand what has happened. But that is has happened—that I know. It is a framed moment, not a story, but something much smaller, a spark of meaning I will return to all my life. The DNA of identity. What, much later, I learn is a vignette, a photo frayed at the edges, its old silver frame stowed in the dark attic of the mind.

I don't tell you this story today in order to encourage all of you in the class of '04 to find careers in the music business, but rather to suggest what the next decade of your lives is likely to be about, and that is, trying to ensure that you don't wake up at 32 or 35 or 40 tenured to a life that happened to you when you weren't paying strict attention, either because the money was good, or it made your parents proud, or because you were unlucky enough to discover an aptitude for the very thing that bores you to tears, or for any of the other semi-valid reasons people marshal to justify allowing the true passion of their lives to leak away. If you're lucky, you may have more than one chance to get things right, but second and third chances, like second and third marriages, can be dicey propositions, and they don't come with guarantees.... The question then is this: How does a person keep from living the wrong life?

If ever there was a dwelling worthy of the Creator, it would be... in a truly Thankful heart.

If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

I envision a world in which the vast majority of us are actively striving toward our potential as human beings by spending our lives serving others through mediums we are most passionate.

If 'dead' matter has reared up this curious landscape of fiddling crickets, song sparrows, and wondering men, it must be plain even to the most devoted materialists that the matter of which he speaks contains amazing, if not dreadful, powers, and may not impossibly be, as Thomas Hardy has suggested, 'but one mask of many worn by the Great Face behind.

I felt a great need to tell him how I was surrounded, overwhelmed, by things of unknown or dubious meaning, things that weren't commensurate to me in any way.

If all we are going to do is go through the motions of life: eat, sleep, get married, have children, work, retire and then die...then it's true, life doesn't mean anything. But if we strive to make our life full of meaning and fulfil our purpose, then it all makes sense.

I feel that 'Thank you' is about the best prayer that anyone could say. A sincere prayer of Thanks expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.

If Ever You Feel Down, Remember, 100Trillion Cells Make Up Your Body and ALL each of them cares About is You. Our body is made up of about 100,000 Billions of cells (100 Trillion)... all living working and sacrificing themselves completely for the exclusive benefit, well-being, and survival of the whole (which is you). We are each of us a universe unto ourselves. To put 100 Trillion in perspective... Jeremy Harper counted from one to one million in about 3 months. He did NOTHING but count, eat, and sleep (minimal). During this time; he didn't leave his home nor even shave. And that's only one MILLION, so if you ignore the fact that pronunciation takes much, much longer on ever larger numbers (more than a minute each), counting to 100 Trillion would take more than 25 Million years. It's awe inspiring to think that 100 Trillion cells (worlds) are counting ON me also, my decisions determine (to a large degree) whether they are allowed to continue living and experiencing in this life or not. Knowing all of this, who could realistically say that there are no miracles. We each have over 100 Trillion miracles working FOR us and depending ON us each and every second of every day. So when praying, I must always keep in mind that each word is in behalf of 100 Trillion worlds. OUR Father Who Art in Heaven...

If I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?

If I could count the infinity of you I’d place each second within your soul, and lay my breath between the stars that form your heart and whole.

If I die very young, hear this: I was never anything but a kid playing. I was a heathen like the sun and the water, I had the universal religion only people don’t have. I was happy because I didn’t ask for anything at all, Or tried to find anything, And I didn’t find any more explanation Than the word explanation having no meaning at all.

If I let the past and my goals be the only thing that drives me in life, I will never know the meaning of being happy.

I find myself thinking back to something I saw on the local news about a year ago. A teen football player had died in a car accident. The cameras showed all his friends after the funeral—these big hulking guys, all in tears, saying, “I loved him. We all loved him so much.” I started crying, too, and I wondered if these guys had told the football player they loved him while he was alive, or whether it was only with death that this strange word, love, could be used. I vowed then and there that I would never hesitate to speak up to the people I loved. They deserved to know they gave meaning to my life. They deserved to know I thought the world of them.

If I can write just one poem that will turn the minds of a few to a more decent outlook...what does it matter if I compose a bad line or lose my reputation as a craftsman?...I used to think it very important to write only good poetry. Over and over I worked it to make it as flawless as I could. What does it matter now, when men are dying for their hopes and their ideals? If I live or die as a poet it won't matter, but anyone who believes in democracy and freedom and love and culture and peace ought to be busy now. He cannot wait for the tomorrow.

If I must have regrets, I Pray that all of them are for fearlessly jumping in with both feet, rather than for having never sampled the water at all.

If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, And Spring came the day after tomorrow, I would die peacefully, because it came the day after tomorrow. If that’s its time, when else should it come? I like it that everything is real and everything is right; And I like that it would be like this even if I didn’t like it. And so, if I die now, I die peacefully Because everything is real and everything is right.

I find my greatest Power when I am Kind.

If integrity is doing the right thing when nobody is watching, and there is never a private moment, integrity becomes impossible. What are we left with?

If nothing lasts then everything has meaning. If everything dies that means we actually live.

If one adds a word to a blank sheet of paper but it's left on its own it means nothing. If it’s joined by another word it could start to gather momentum. Now if several words are placed together creating meaning and then sprinkled with soul one could have developed purpose. Look into that purpose and you may find the writer.

If science wants to be truthful, What science is more truthful than the science of things without science? I close my eyes and the hard earth where I’m lying Has a reality so real even my back feels it. I don’t need reason — I have shoulderblades.

If Spiritual perfection was easy everyone would do it. The beauty of this life is that wherever you are is where you're supposed to be. As you live this experience making your best choices according to the light you've been given, it is accounted as righteousness. You are where you are and I am where I am, and I feel certain that each of us is doing the very best we can with the light we've been given. There is a huge difference between believing something and knowing it. Failing at a belief is quite normal, and failing in a knowing is not possible. We are here to make mistakes. Guilt, regret, shame, etc... Slow our Spiritual growth. The only thing that is real is God's ways, and they are beyond our scope of understanding, so all we can do is our best, and God will never ask more.

If Thecla had symbolized love of which I felt myself undeserving, as I know now that she did, then did her symbolic force disappear when I locked the door of her cell behind me? That would be like saying that the writing of this book, over which I have labored for so many watches, will vanish in a blur of vermillion when I close it for the last time and dispatch it to the eternal library maintained by the old Ultan. The great question then, that I pondered as I watched the floating island with longing eyes and chafed at my bonds and cursed the hetman in my heart, is that of determining what these symbols mean in and of themselves. We are like children who look at print and see a serpent in the last letter but one, and a sword in the last.

If there was a place called "Good Enough Land" I would be its king.

If there is no meaning in it," said the King, "that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any. And yet I don't know.

If this constant sliding and hiding of meaning were true of conscious life, then we would of course never be able to speak coherently at all. If the whole of language were present to me when I spoke, then I would not be able to articulate anything at all. The ego, or consciousness, can therefore only work by repressing this turbulent activity, provisionally nailing down words on to meanings. Every now and then a word from the unconscious which I do not want insinuates itself into my discourse, and this is the famous Freudian slip of the tongue or parapraxis. But for Lacan all our discourse is in a sense a slip of the tongue: if the process of language is as slippery and ambiguous as he suggests, we can never mean precisely what we say and never say precisely what we mean. Meaning is always in some sense an approximation, a near-miss, a part-failure, mixing non-sense and non-communication into sense and dialogue.

If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this—the absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage—such events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality—to draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are “raw files.” But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero’s personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him.

If we are able to convey ‘meaning’ to things and to actions, we may dominate part of the obscure world of ignorance. When we try to give sense to our life, we can come to ‘awareness’ and fill some of the numerous black holes of witlessness in our thinking. We may, then, defy and dam the existential void, down the stretch. ("Not without my shadow")

If we cannot leave something tangible behind – such as a gene or a poem – perhaps it is enough if we just make the world a little better? You can help somebody, and that somebody will subsequently help somebody else, and you thereby contribute to the overall improvement of the world, and constitute a small link in the great chain of kindness. Maybe you serve as a mentor for a difficult but brilliant child, who goes on to be a doctor who saves the lives of hundreds? Maybe you help an old lady cross the street, and brighten up an hour of her life? Though it has its merits, the great chain of kindness is a bit like the great chain of turtles – it is far from clear where its meaning comes from. A wise old man was asked what he learned about the meaning of life. ‘Well,’ he answered, ‘I have learned that I am here on earth in order to help other people. What I still haven’t figured out is why the other people are here.

If we let them, our festering wounds will steer our life more than our growing convictions. It may take longer to find deep convictions if we are fixated on avoiding pain instead of finding something worth enduring pain for. Running away from where we think we want to be least is different than running towards where we want to be most.

If you cannot create a meaning, the things you see will always look meaningless to you!