Top 100 On Meaning Quotes
#1. What silly little things sometimes take on meaning in life, suddenly, out of nowhere. And you know they're little nothings, and you laugh at them, but all the same, you go on feeling them, you can't stop ...
Sarah Ruhl
#2. Meaning is always a latecomer. Beauty and music seduce us first; later ashamed of our own sensuality, we insist on meaning.
Clive Barker
#3. You encounter, at its core, a subjective Reality, one based on meaning and value reflective of your own Self, not an objective universe, cold, particle-based and indifferent as science projects.
Thomas Daniel Nehrer
#4. I think when you're dying you start looking for important things in the corners. You can't let anything that seems even semi-important pass, because it passes forever. Things take on meaning.
Chris Crutcher
#5. My interest is in how meaning is communicated via language, and I believe the shape, positioning, even the color of the language has an effect on meaning.
Mark Z. Danielewski
#6. A book is like a piece of rope; it takes on meaning only in connection with the things it holds together.
Norman Cousins
#7. Life takes on meaning when you become motivated, set goals and charge after them in an unstoppable manner.
Les Brown
#8. In the same way, the world is not the sum of all the things that are in it. It is the infinitely complex network of connections among them. As in the meanings of words, things take on meaning only in relationship to each other.
Paul Auster
#9. Much time is spent on meaning while precious little time wasted has none!
M.B.JONES
#11. Our lives take on meaning to the degree that our love and our actions are the same.
Bob Harris
#12. I have to pick myself up every day and say, 'The show must go on,' meaning life as I know it must go on, whatever the obstacle is, I know I can handle it, and I can get through it.
Jennie Garth
#13. And then it happened. It was a detail, no more than that. A detail to which you pay no attention at first. That takes on meaning only later. In retrospect.
Herman Koch
#14. When will I have sufficient leisure/wealth to sit on hay-bale watching moon rise, while in luxurious mansion family sleeps? At that time, will have chance to reflect deeply on meaning of life etc., etc. Have a feeling and have always had a feeling that this and other good things will happen for us!
Anonymous
#15. Standing alone, photographs promise an understanding they cannot deliver. In the company of words, they take on meaning, but they slough off one meaning and take on another with alarming ease.
Susan Sontag
#16. If everyone is a hero, then disasters and atrocities lose their meaning. It's only when certain people are heroes and others are not that these tragedies and disasters that mankind faces take on meaning.
Gao Xingjian
#17. Cinema for me only has meaning when it has a relationship with what I see outside on the street.
Jacques Audiard
#18. My focus on silence is to be understood as an intrinsic part of the body's search for meaning amongst the noisy assaults of everyday life ... What quilts have brought to the viewing of art generally is this intervening layer of silence, of collected thought and concerted attention.
Radka Donnell
#19. God, it's like reality's completely shifted on me. I used to think I was standing on such solid ground. If I wanted something badly enough, I just worked like hell for it. Now I can't decide what to do, which move to make. All the things I counted on aren't there for me anymore.
Tess Gerritsen
#20. Do not reflect on the meaning of the word; thinking and reflecting must cease, as all mystical writers insist. Simply "sound" the word silently, letting go of all feelings and thoughts.
Willigis Jager
#21. The field as a whole is defined as a system of deviations on different levels and nothing, either in the institutions or in the agents, the acts or discourses they produce, has meaning except relationally, by virtue of the interplay of oppositions and distinctions.
Pierre Bourdieu
#22. Spiritual seekers particularly are on a quest to understand life; we want to examine our own lives and find meaning in what we do and who we are ... We find meaning in the seeking itself. Every step along the way is the Way ...
Surya Das
#23. I hadn't grasped how days could be at once long and short. Long, no doubt, as periods to live through, but so distended that they ended up by overlapping on each other. In fact, I never thought of days as such; only the words 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' still kept some meaning.
Albert Camus
#24. On the other hand, the concept owes its meaning and its justification exclusively to the totality of the sense impressions which we associate with it.
Albert Einstein
#25. If we focus on the minuses, we go down the spiral. But if we are able to focus on the pluses, we can become stronger and put more meaning into our life.
Petra Nemcova
#26. Sometimes we exist long enough to lead the next generation; other times, only to plant a seed and let its resonations of our time here on Earth ripple into new waves.
A.J. Darkholme
#27. And what shall we know of this life on earth after death? The dissolution of our timebound form in eternity brings no loss of meaning. Rather, does the little finger know itself a member of the hand.
Carl Jung
#28. And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.
Ezra Pound
#29. You don't have to search so hard for meaning and destiny. If you focus on keeping yourself clear and in balance and you live from your heart, destiny and your highest-good path will unfold naturally at your feet.
Melody Beattie
#30. You are lovelier than all the roses in the world.
Avijeet Das
#31. It is a scholar's task to find patterns in nature or cycles in history. Initially, it's no different from finding portraits of animals and heroes in the stars. The question is, Have you discovered a preexisting truth? Or have you imposed an arbitrary meaning on whatever it is you're considering?
Mary Doria Russell
#32. Because we are intelligent creatures-meaning that we are freed from instinctive and patterned behavior to a degree unparalleled in the animal kingdom-we are capable of, and dependent on, using rational choice to decide our futures.
Willard Gaylin
#33. I like my whiskey neat and strong just as I like my women. Women who have matured in their minds and bodies; women who have faced the storms of life!
Because my life has always been about the thrill with the raging storms!
Avijeet Das
#34. I wasn't really naked. I simply didn't have any clothes on.
Josephine Baker
#35. And crawling on the planet's face,
some insects called the human race.
Lost in time, and lost in space.
And meaning.
Richard O'Brien
#36. But the sort of - this confusion of permissions, or this idea that pleasure and comfort are the, are really the ultimate goal and meaning of life. I think we're starting to see a generation die ... on the toxicity of that idea.
David Lipsky
#37. You don't need to," he replied. "You're already saved." And he went on to tell me that the original Greek meaning of the word saved meant that a person was whole.
Jane Fonda
#38. I soon realized that a student of English literature who does not know the Bible does not understand a good deal of what is going on in what he reads: the most conscientious student will be continually misconstruing the implications, even the meaning.
Northrop Frye
#39. To me, I think I'm just going to keep focused and forward on what I'm doing, work-wise, rather than searching for any kind of meaning in it.
Joel Edgerton
#40. Everything is connected. We see the signs every moment. There are miracles waiting to happen!
Avijeet Das
#41. The great silent man! Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world,
words with little meaning, actions with little worth,
one loves to reflect on the great Empire of Silence.
Thomas Carlyle
#42. Because the meaning of a story does not lie on its surface, visible and self-defining, does not mean that meaning does not exist. Indeed, the ambiguity of meaning, its inner private quality, may well be part of the writer's vision.
Joyce Carol Oates
#43. All reality seemed to hinge on those infinitesimal bundles of meaning.
Iain M. Banks
#44. Septimus. When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be all alone, on an empty shore.
Thomasina. Then we will dance. Is this a waltz?
Tom Stoppard
#45. In other words, we may, by fixing our attention almost fiercely on the facts actually before us, force them to turn into adventures; force them to give up their meaning and fulfill their mysterious purpose.
G.K. Chesterton
#46. You are embarking on the greatest adventure of your life - to improve your self-image, to create more meaning in your life and in the lives of others. This is your responsibility.
Maxwell Maltz
#47. Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking, loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning.
Elie Wiesel
#48. I tried to speak insipidly, yet everything I said seemed to take on a double meaning.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#49. As Einstein said, God does not play dice with the universe; everything is interconnected and has a meaning. That meaning may remain hidden nearly all the time, but we always know we are close to our true mission on earth when what we are doing is touched with the energy of enthusiasm.
Paulo Coelho
#50. My tattoos, like most people's, were reminders, badges of personal experiences. Yes, I might wear them on my skin for the world to see, but their meaning was a little too personal.
N.R. Walker
#51. What I think is going on is that probably language was entertainment long before it was meaning. It's a kind of tuneless singing.
Terence McKenna
#52. There is a point in every philosophy at which the "conviction" of the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in the words of an ancient mystery: adventavit asinus, / pulcher et fortissimus. (Translation: The ass arrives, beautiful and most brave.)
Friedrich Nietzsche
#53. Making poems was a way of loving things, I had always thought, of preserving them, of living moments twice; or more than that, it was a way of living more fully, of bestowing on experience a richer meaning. But
Garth Greenwell
#54. It will always be the same possibilities, in sum or on the average, that go on repeating themselves until a man comes along who does not value the actuality above idea. It is he who first gives the new possibilities their meaning, their direction, and he awakens them.
Robert Musil
#55. We choose exile as a vantage point; from exile we look back on the rejected
James Wright
#56. Keep on reinventing yourself! Always strive to be a better version of yourself!
Avijeet Das
#57. Art is built on the deepest themes of human meaning: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, love and hate. No other story has incarnated those themes more than the story of Jesus.
John Ortberg
#58. I will say that comic books are not the easiest things to translate to film, number one. Even the most well meaning of filmmakers find what's acceptable on the printed page is very difficult to bring to film.
Mark Hamill
#59. There's so much you can do with laying words on a bed of music. You can completely change their meaning with the type of music or the way they're sung.
P.J. Harvey
#60. Those who pervert the meaning of Our (revealed) verses are not hidden from Us. Therefore, is the one who is thrown in the Fire better than the one who skirts it safely on the Day of Assembly? Do whatever you like, for He's watching everything you do. [40]
Anonymous
#61. Was there any meaning to life or to war, that two men should sit together and jump within seconds of each other and yet never meet on the ground below?
David Kenyon Webster
#62. How do they manage to go on living? ... By loving life. And-in spite of everything-by loving God. By having enough faith to start over again and again; enough faith to risk having our hearts break all over again. That's the true meaning of faith. It's the deepest kind of heroism.
Naomi Ragen
#63. Today we live in a world that judges its achievements by speed and busyness. ... We are so busy making things happen that we have little time left to think about the value of what is happening. We urgently need people who concentrate on the meaning of life rather than simply the speed.
Joan D. Chittister
#64. And yet, I do believe there is ultimately meaning in the chaos, and also in the doldrums. What I resist is not the truth but when people put a pretty bow on scary things instead of saying, 'This is a nightmare. I hate everything. I'm going to go hide in the garage.'
Anne Lamott
#65. In our life there is a single color, as on an artist palette which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.
Marc Chagall
#66. A person of character seeks true happiness in living a life of purpose and meaning, placing a higher value on significance than success.
Michael Josephson
#67. The night is the balm for the wounded souls of the world.
Avijeet Das
#68. When you have a dream and are committed to achieving it, your life takes on new meaning. By unfolding a dream, you discover what makes you happy and brings you joy.
Lynn A. Robinson
#69. The chances of finding out what's really going on in the universe are so remote, the only thing to do is hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied.
Douglas Adams
#70. Realize that by hurting your own characters, you are not a sadist. You are not deliberately hurting your loved ones merely to watch them suffer. You're giving a gift. You're helping them grow and develop. Your characters take on deeper meaning to become more alive on your pages. They'll become real.
James Chartrand
#71. Humor is a petal on the flower of hope, and hope blossoms on the vine of faith. They have faith in each other and faith that life has meaning, and from this faith comes their indefatigable good humor, which is their greatest gift to each other - and to me.
Dean Koontz
#72. In a certain way, it's the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.
David Byrne
#73. A Singularitarian is someone who understands the Singularity and has reflected on its meaning for his or her own life.
Ray Kurzweil
#74. Placing too much emphasis on a yes/no diagnosis, meaning you either have a disease or you don't, can lead even the most well-meaning physicians to miss underlying causes and early warning signs of illness.
Mark Hyman
#75. I'm just saying if you want to reach large audiences, then rely on professionals, meaning people who are in the industry and are trained for it, rather than just idiot savants.
Barry Diller
#76. We are monumentally distracted by a pervasive technological culture that appears to have a life of its own, one that insists on our full attention, continually seducing us and pulling us away from the opportunity to experience directly the true meaning of our own lives.
Al Gore
#77. All I knew about the word cyberspace when I coined it, was that it seemed like an effective buzzword. It seemed evocative and essentially meaningless. It was suggestive of something, but had no real semantic meaning, even for me, as I saw it emerge on the page.
William Gibson
#79. From nowhere, a word appears: Mesozoic. He can see the word, he can hear the word, but he can't reach the word. He can't attach anything to it. This is happening too much lately, this dissolution of meaning, the entries on his cherished wordlists drifting off into space.
Margaret Atwood
#80. Two buttons had come adrift on her shirt, meaning she was showing more cleavage than was normal for an officer of the law. I don't know if she had children, or planned to, but they would never starve.
Stephen Arnott
#81. Colors add meaning to life,
Some hidden facts they do imbibe.
One color could signify two things,
The onus lies on us,
As to how we take it.
Garima Jain
#82. If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.
Herbert Stein
#83. Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind toward some final resolution, some clear meaning, which it perhaps never finds.
Robert Anderson
#84. A novel related in a dungeon, in the presence of death, cannot have the same meaning, the same consequences, as it would when read on the beach or in a meadow, in the shade of cherry trees.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#85. There had been no more attacks since those on Justin and Nearly Headless Nick, and Madam Pomfrey was pleased to report that the Mandrakes were becoming moody and secretive, meaning that they were fast leaving childhood.
J.K. Rowling
#86. If you can find meaning in the type of running you need todo to stay on this team, chances are you can find meaning in another absurd pastime: Life.
Robert Towne
#87. Your faith in Jesus Christ gives life enduring meaning. Remember you are on a journey to exaltation. Sometimes you have experiences that yield more happiness than others, but it all has purpose with the Lord.
Richard G. Scott
#88. Sooner or later every writer evolves his own definition of a story.
Mine is: A reflection of life plus beginning and end (life seems not to have either) and a meaning.
Mary O'Hara
#89. Humility puts others first because "first" takes on new meaning through the practice of humility.
Bryant McGill
#90. We've established a Washington State Academy of Sciences that will enable us to make decisions based on science about what is right for our state, meaning the quality of our lives will get better.
Christine Gregoire
#91. Life took on quite a special meaning in this early morning solitude.
Henning Mankell
#92. A voice is in the wind I do not know
A meaning on the face of the high hills
Whose utterance I cannot comprehend.
A something is behind them: that is God.
George MacDonald
#93. I grew up on the old EC comic books before the Comics Code in North American and with all sort of good-natured fun. I never had nightmares I think because all of the old horror stuff that I was exposed to was well meaning in a certain sense.
George A. Romero
#94. Oriental DreamWorks did a lot of the surfacing of the village [in Kung Fu Panda 3] and you know all the little paintings on all the gables and everything? They have meaning, and they could do that because they know what that means, we don't necessarily know about that over here.
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
#95. This is the day when people reciprocally offer, and receive, the kindest and the warmest wishes, though, in general, without meaning them on one side, or believing them on the other. They are formed by the head, in compliance with custom, though disavowed by the heart, in consequence of nature.
Lord Chesterfield
#96. Keeping what you have is hard like searching for what you've lost.
Auliq Ice
#97. Life has a peculiar feel when you look back on it that it doesn't have when you're actually living it. It's as though the whole thing were designed to be understood in hindsight, as though you'll never know the meaning of your experiences until you've had enough of them to provide reference.
Donald Miller
#98. In return, Giovanni told me that empathizing Italians say L'ho provato sulla mia pelle, which means 'I have experienced that on my own skin.' Meaning, I have also been burned or scarred in this way, and I know exactly what you're going through.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#99. Everything on the radio is crap ... It's fast food for your ears. It doesn't make you think. It isn't even about anything - not anything real. Don't you think music should say something?
Hannah Harrington
#100. I came to see that man finds meaning in his existence only through the active demonstration of his human self, a cosmos comprising the entire constellation of life's factors: culture, civilization, tradition, history, ideals, facts, physical conditions, one's mental state, the ecology, and so on.
Pramoedya Ananta Toer
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