Top 100 Quotes About Meaning
#1. in a world in which everything is available, nothing has any meaning. Meaning
Aldous Huxley
#2. Don't listen to anyone's advice. Listen to your baby ... There are so many books, doctors, and well-meaning friends and family. We like to say, 'You don't need a book. Your baby is a book. Just pick it up and read it.'
Mayim Bialik
#3. I would say that our patients never really despair because of any suffering in itself! Instead, their despair stems in each instance from a doubt as to whether suffering is meaningful. Man is ready and willing to shoulder any suffering as soon and as long as he can see a meaning in it.
Viktor E. Frankl
#4. Obama wants people, as many people as he can get, covered by the government, exchanges, however you want to phrase it, and the more the better, and the sooner, the better, making it impossible to take it away. Meaning, making it impossible to repeal Obamacare.
Rush Limbaugh
#5. I accept that there are multitudes seeking God, seeking meaning, and so on, but if they reject atheism, I would rather they became modern-day Catholics or Jews than that they became Muslims.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
#6. Coincidence. But the eagerness to find meaning in such coincidences is love.
Brian Morton
#8. Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn't change.
Antonin Scalia
#10. Justice is only what a "culture," meaning a shifting majority of people, say it is, with a dollop of respect for "human rights" spread on top, without intellectual foundation, and without any connection with virtue and duty.
Anthony Esolen
#11. Be able to describe anything visual, such as a street scene, in words that convey your meaning.
Marilyn Vos Savant
#12. Predestination and freedom were apparently identical. He could no longer see any meaning in the many arguments he had heard on this subject.
C.S. Lewis
#13. Finding meaning, like losing meaning, involves pleasure as well as pain. But then losing meaning, like finding it, does too, as the best nonsense reminds us.
Lewis Carroll
#15. Within the chaos of our shame and disappointment and rage there is meaning, and within that meaning is the possibility of rescue.
Cheryl Strayed
#16. Humility adds lessons to our pain and suffering, turning the seemingly senseless into meaning.
Bryant McGill
#17. The more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel.
Andy Warhol
#18. And in a flash I understood the meaning of sex. It is a craving of mingling of consciousness, whose symbol is the mingling of bodies. Every time a man and a woman slake their thirst in the strange waters of the other's identity, they glimpse the immensity of their freedom.
Colin Wilson
#19. Xmas Trivia: Before it became a major shopping holiday, Christmas is believed to have had a "religious" meaning.
Andy Borowitz
#20. If you wait for love to give your life meaning, you will go through life without both
Linda Poindexter
#21. I don't know what they call Hollywood anymore. The whole meaning of the town has changed.
Claire Trevor
#22. There is language going on out there- the language of the wild. Roars, snorts, trumpets, squeals, whoops, and chirps all have meaning derived over eons of expression ... We have yet to become fluent in the language -and music- of the wild.
Boyd Norton
#23. Nature and training (in any sport or art) can teach us all the spiritual laws I describe in another book, The Laws of Spirit. But now I'm happy to share these four purposes of life that lend meaning and direction to anyone's life, especially those in transition, going through changes.
Dan Millman
#24. Most important pursuit in history: the search for meaning.
John Green
#25. You see, there is no more purpose or meaning in the world than you put into it.
Hans Reichenbach
#26. Most consumers are simultaneously neophilic, curious to discover new things, and deeply neophobic, afraid of anything that is too new. The best hit makers are gifted at creating moments of meaning by marrying new and old, anxiety and understanding. They are architects of familiar surprises.
Derek Thompson
#27. This the Master said; and he turned me around Himself, and not trusting my own hands, He covered my eyes with his own. For those of you who are educated, understand the hidden meaning Of the strange words that follow!
Dante Alighieri
#28. The recession is over. This phrase has been used twice a year since 1973 by government leaders throughout the West. Its meaning is unclear. See: Depression.
John Ralston Saul
#29. Poetry by its very nature is subversive ... It turns words inside out, confounds meaning, changes black and white to ambiguous shades of gray. Never trust a poet.
Cristina Garcia
#30. You don't need to raise taxes on rich people, because they create capitalization and investment. But you need to tax speculation - meaning capital gains.
Carlos Slim
#31. I think it is an important question of our lives - what is the meaning of literature to us as humans.
Robert Dessaix
#32. Life is not inherently meaningful. We make meaning happen through the attention and care we express through our actions.
Donna Farhi
#33. If justice perishes, human life on Earth has lost its meaning.
Immanuel Kant
#34. My daughter is a good, caring, compassionate person. To me that's the true meaning of success, even though the marriages didn't work out. My success with my daughter is all that matters.
Charlene Tilton
#35. Sometimes the best course in the search for the meaning of life is to busy yourself until you forget that you don't know the meaning of life
Amanda Hocking
#36. Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a meaning to his life and enable him to find a place for himself in the universe.
Carl Jung
#37. My father used to say: Every bird is one bird, and every book is one book, and every bird and every book is one thing too, under the words and the feathers. He finished with a flourish, as though the meaning of this was self-evident.
Clive Barker
#38. Through salvation our past has been forgiven, our present is given meaning, and out future is secured.
Rick Warren
#39. A joke is a joke, and people put too much meaning behind it. They react to it in the wrong way. I mean, you can boo or laugh, and that's pretty much what you're supposed to do with jokes. You're not supposed to take it any further than that.
Dave Attell
#40. When you write a song, most of the words you use are in black and white, and then, from time to time, you use one that's in color. These words in color are a part of ourselves, because we give them a meaning. If you like, we give them a third dimension.
Jacques Brel
#41. It is only when we can believe that we are creating the soul that life has any meaning, but when we can believe it - and I do and always have - then there is nothing we do that is without meaning and nothing that we suffer that does not hold the seed of creation in it.
May Sarton
#42. Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.
Jean Baudrillard
#43. The secrets I receive reflect the full spectrum of complicated issues that many of us struggle with every day: Intimacy, trust, meaning, humor, and desire.
Frank Warren
#44. Thus, sociologists place these two factors - pleasure and meaning - among the first factors associated with "subjective well-being.
Frederic Lenoir
#45. The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance - and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.
Oprah Winfrey
#46. Galileo was challenged because he declared a theory to be a fact and argued with the Church about the genuine meaning of the Bible.
Michael Coren
#47. Being in touch with oneself is the meaning of meditation, to be aware of what is going on in your body, in your feelings, in your mind.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#48. Religion is not something separate and apart from ordinary life. It is life - life of every kind viewed from the standpoint of meaning and purpose: life lived in the fuller awareness of its human quality and spiritual significance.
A. Powell Davies
#49. To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit: it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse. To design is to transform prose into poetry.
Paul Rand
#50. He grinned at her, and it felt like there was no space or barrier at all between them, like his smile was happening inside her heart. Without meaning to at all, she smiled back.
Rosamund Hodge
#51. Without action and fruit, all the theology in the world has little meaning.
Francis Chan
#52. I think it's a part of us as human beings that we search outside of ourselves for meaning.
Nick Cave
#53. The meaning of life is to see.
Huineng
#54. I often refer to myself as a radical, reminding people that the word radical comes from the Latin word radix, meaning root. I think we need to get to the roots of problems as we try to solve them. I also like the word anti-capitalist.
Cynthia Kauffman
#55. Meaning 'by way of the anus'. 'Per Annum', with two n's, means 'yearly'. The correct answer to the question, 'What is the birthrate per anum?' is zero (one hopes).
Mary Roach
#56. ...our hostess backed out of the room, grinning vapidly. She had long since forgotten the meaning of a smile, but the physical ability to make the gesture remained. I felt that the grin...would shatter if it were touched and fall to the floor in pieces.
Beryl Markham
#57. Loneliness is the manifestation of the conflict between our desire for meaning and the absence of objective meaning from the universe.
Neel Burton
#58. At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book - that string of confused, alien ciphers - shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.
Alberto Manguel
#59. When indeed does the temporal suffering oppress a man most terribly? Is it not when it seems to him that it has no significance, that it neither secures nor gains anything for him? Is it not when the suffering, as the impatient man expresses it, is without meaning or purpose?
Soren Kierkegaard
#60. I have art. I have music. I have the history, this legacy behind me that I can look up to. This is what I believe in. If you want to call it God or spirituality, that's all up to you. Basically I believe in something that's bigger than myself, and that gives my life meaning.
John Zorn
#61. If we carry this line of argument to its logical conclusion, the meaning of life consists of the flaws in one's conceptions and what one does about them. Life can be seen as a fertile fallacy.
George Soros
#62. And if my mind breaks up In all so many ways I know the meaning of The words, I love you
Cat Stevens
#63. Freedom is completely without meaning unless it is related to necessity, unless it represents victory over necessity.
Jacques Ellul
#64. That reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct.
Solomon Asch
#65. This is my life now. Absurd, but unpredictable. Not absurd because unpredictable but unpredictable because absurd. If I have lost the meaning of my life, I might still find small treasured things among the spilled and pilfered trash.
Joyce Carol Oates
#66. Parents, whether or not we believe in a deity, know that to witness a child's mind searching for meaning is a miracle.
Margaret Kennedy
#67. Am I a weed, carried this way, that way, on a tide that comes twice a day without a meaning?
Virginia Woolf
#68. I think it's because we're looking for the meaning. Where is the meaning? We have mindless jobs, we take frantic vacations, deficit finance trips to the mall to buy more things that we think are going to fill these holes in our lives. Is it any wonder that we've lost our sense of direction?
Matthew McConaughey
#69. I wish to make it clear that 'history' in the sense in which most people speak of it simply does not exist; and this is at least one reason why I say that it has no meaning.
Karl R. Popper
#70. We don't understand why we're here, no one's giving us an answer, religion is vague, your parents can't help because they're just people, and it's all terrible, and there's no meaning to anything.
Adam Driver
#71. It is possible that the meaning of wisdom in Hebrew indicates aptitude for stratagems and the application of thought in such a way that the stratagems and ruses may be used in achieving either rational or moral virtues, or in achieving skill in a practical art, or in working evil and wickedness.
Maimonides
#72. I'm a bachelor in the old sense of the word, meaning I flirt, I have very many close relationships, but then I come home and like to read my book.
William Ivey Long
#74. If the mind can find no meaning, then the senses give it. Live for this, wretched being that you are.
Anne Rice
#75. I can hear the sizzle of newborn stars, and know anything of meaning, of the fierce magic emerging here. I am witness to flexible eternity, the evolving past, and I know we will live forever, as dust or breath in the face of stars, in the shifting pattern of winds.
Joy Harjo
#76. We yearn for there to be meaning to our lives, balanced with a sense of inner peace & joy.
Allan Lokos
#77. imagination is the image-making faculty of the intellect that helps us discover, process, and creatively express coherent meaning.
Sarah Arthur
#78. Her grandfather's books [ ... ] opened before Ada, a world whose colours were so dazzling that reality paled in comparison and faded away. Boris Godunov, Satan, Athalia, King Lear: they all spoke words charged with meaning; every syllable was inexpressively precious
Irene Nemirovsky
#79. I'm ephemeral as much as I can be, so I started to think about the idea of not working. It's really about a change of attitude. It's not so much about stopping, but about re-thinking the meaning of one's production.
Rirkrit Tiravanija
#80. A spider spinning its web intends, whether conscious of the outcome or not, to catch a fly. That is the meaning of the web.
Edward O. Wilson
#81. Most morally ominous: from the second you choose one event over another, you're shaping the past's meaning.
Mary Karr
#82. The hands can build a structure, but it is the heart that brings forth the meaning to fill it.
L.M. Browning
#83. Can I have my knife back?' Meaning, can I have my knife back. I don't care whether this man seems like he only goes after age appropriate penis; I won't be taking any chances. And I won't be going any farther thank the juvie center parking lot with him either. I put the run in runaway.
Stacey Wallace Benefiel
#84. As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs ... The way I write is who I am, or have become ...
Joan Didion
#85. When economists base their models on their fantasies of an "economic man" motivated only by self-interest, they forget community
the all-important web of meaning we spin around each other
the inescapable context within which anything truly human has taken place.
Cacilda Jetha
#86. When you step further into the story you came to live, not only does the mythic territory open, but the deep self moves and the world of imagination and meaning comes towards you.
Michael Meade
#87. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.
Carl Jung
#88. The greatest lessons to be learned about life, love, purpose, meaning, and priority are to be learned from children.
David Jeremiah
#89. When we talk about having a life of significance and meaning, it's not about fame or money or resources. It's about people and lives and hearts. That's my biggest passion in life.
Tim Tebow
#90. Only the other day I was inquiring of an entire bed of old-fashioned roses, forced to listen to my ramblings on the meaning of the universe as I sat cross-legged in the lotus position in front of them.
Prince Charles
#91. I think that I am here, on this earth, To present a report on it, but to whom I don't know. As if I were sent so that whatever takes place Has meaning because it changes into memory.
Czeslaw Milosz
#92. The meaning of quality in photography's best pictures lies written in the language of vision. That language is learned by chance, not system.
Walker Evans
#93. Whenever you're talking about meaning, basically ... I think a lot of the human experience has to do with trying to understand what things mean, and there's not really any tools to do that unless you're thinking about it in a more spiritual or philosophical realm.
Win Butler
#94. Foundational design principles regarding aesthetics, symbolism and meaning of place were for the old-timer carpenter, simply routine.
Unfortunately, these principles began to lose their footing in the late 1800s, when building practices shifted toward more commercial technologies.
Shannon Taylor Scarlett
#95. [N]obody is a greater schoolgirl in spirit than a cynic. Cynics can not relinquish the rubbish they were taught as children: they hold tight to the belief that the word [sic] has meaning and, when things go wrong for them, they consequently adopt the inverse attitude.
Muriel Barbery
#97. Once written, a classic text is like a bird released from its cage. It develops a life of its own. Its "meaning" is not locked in.
Harvey Cox
#98. I try to leave things as open ended as possible, not too overladen with meaning.
Sam Taylor-Johnson
#99. So many truths have been kept from me. This violent, pointless voyage has been sopping with blood. I feel thick and sick with it. And that is all: contingent and brutal without meaning. There is nothing to be learnt here. No ecstatic forgetting. There is no redemption in the sea.
China Mieville
#100. It was curious what trying to speak English had done lately to his mind; it reminded him of studying poetry in college, words gaining and losing their meaning, overlapping with images, the curious echo of ideas behind the words people used.
Jess Walter
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
