Meaning Quotes

I remember reading about the astounding number of people in this country who die within three years of retiring, which proves to me that if you lose the sense that you are producing or contributing in some way, you literally lose the will to live, and that if you do have a reason to hang on, you will.

Life isn't just about what you can have; it's about what you have to give, what kind of person do you want to be?

Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

How could you communicate with the future? It was impossible. Either the future would resemble the present in which case it would not listen to him, or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless.

Life, and you, and I, and all of us together became for a while interesing to ourselves once more.

The important point is to not just follow your passion but something larger than yourself.

In language clarity is everything.

True art takes note not merely of form but also of what lies behind.

The interest in life does not lie in what people do, nor even in their relations to each other, but largely in the power to communicate with a third party, antagonistic, enigmatic, yet perhaps persuadable, which one may call life in general.

But where is what I started for so long ago? And why is it yet unfound?

The serious problems in life...are never fully solved. If ever they should appear to be so it is a sure sign that something has been lost. The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly.

I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse.

It's not the events of our lives that shape us, but our beliefs as to what those events mean.

... Allow yourself a space of quiet, wherein you can add to your knowledge of the Good and learn to curb your restlessness. Guard also against another kind of error: the folly of those who weary their days in much business, but lack any aim on which their whole effort, nay, their whole thought, is focused.

When you come to think about it, nothing has any meaning, for when there was nobody to think, there was nobody to interpret what happened.

No sacrifice is worth the name unless it is a joy. Sacrifice and a long face go ill together. Sacrifice is 'making sacred'. He must be a poor specimen of humanity who is in need of sympathy for his sacrifice.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.

A dream that is not understood remains a mere occurrence; understood it becomes a living experience.

Death. The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity- and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.

Travelling is like a novel: it's what happens that counts.

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

Ah, Misha, he has a stormy spirit. His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, unsolved doubt. He is one of those who don't want millions, but an answer to their questions.

While the question of who killed President Kennedy is important, the question 'what killed him' is more important.

It's the game of life. Do I win or do I lose? One day they're gonna shut the game down. I gotta have as much fun and go around the board as many times as I can before it's my turn to leave.

Shipping magnate of the 20th century If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.

In every rebellion is to be found the metaphysical demand for unity, the impossibility of capturing it, and the construction of a substitute universe.

I have seen business moguls achieve their ultimate goals but still live in frustration, worry, and fear. What's preventing these successful people for being happy? The answer is they have focused only on achievement and not fulfillment. Extraordinary accomplishment does not guarantee extraordinary joy, happiness, love, and a sense of meaning. These two skill sets feed off each other, and make me believe that success without fulfillment is failure.

What is meant by reality? It would seem to be something very erratic, very undependable - now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now a daffodil in the sun. It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on how one looks at it.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

We often feel sad in the presence of music without words; and often more than that in the presence of music without music.

Even though we may all become extinct, we can still leave our footprint in the sand.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

The value of life itself cannot be estimated.

Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.

An imaginative book renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward, when we arrive atthe precise sense of the author. I think nothing is of any value in books, excepting the transcendental and extraordinary.

that which is eternal within the moment only becomes shallow if spread out in time.

All art is at once surface and symbol.

Why is life so tragic; so like a little strip of pavement over an abyss. I look down; I feel giddy; I wonder how I am ever to walk to the end.

While we are actually subjected to them, the 'moods' and 'spirits' of nature point no morals. Overwhelming gaiety, insupportable grandeur, sombre desolation are flung at you. Make what you can of them, if you must make at all. The only imperative that nature utters is, 'Look. Listen. Attend.

Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.

You've often heard me say - perhaps too often - that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says and it says what it means, nothing less but nothing more.

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.

If this life is not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.

... art approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing. She alone knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live.

I discovered the miracle that all things that sound are music, including the dishes and silverware in the dishwasher, as long as they fulfill the illusion of showing us where life is heading.

There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene.

I could define poetry this way: it is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation.

If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life's morning.

Life is not only merriment,It is desire and determination.

Real success means creating a life of meaning through service that fulfills your reason for being here.

The spirit of rebellion can only exist in a society where a theoretical equality conceals great factual inequalities. The problem of rebellion, therefore, has no meaning except within our own Western society.

For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment's human suffering

Like" and "like" and "like"--but what is the thing that lies beneath the semblance of the thing?

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.