Quotes About Meaning

While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and sharing motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.

The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

what's the matter? he asked nothing what do you want me to do for you? i want you to be old. ten years older. twenty years older what she meant was: i want you to be weak. as weak as i am.

But then he told himself: What does it really mean to be useful? Today's world, just as it is, contains the sum of the utility of all people of all times. Which implies: The highest morality consists in being useless.

The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.

He was repelled by the pettiness that reduced life to mere existence and that turned men into half-men. He wanted to lay his life on a balance, the other side of which was weighted with death. He wanted to make his every action, every day, yes, every hour and minute worthy of being measured against the ultimate, which is death.

Through the air floated only important words, and Flajsman said to himself that love has but one true measure, and that is death. At the end of true love is death, and only the love that ends in death is love.

Everyone is wrong about the future. Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know the present? Is he in a position to make any judgment about it? Certainly not. For how can a person with no knowledge of the future understand the meaning of the present? If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred?

Missions are stupid, Tereza. I have no mission. No one has. And it's a terrific relief to realize you're free, free of all missions.

We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?

Dictionary of Misunderstood Words

The meaning did not precede the dream; the dream preceded the meaning. So the way to read the tale is to let the imagination carry one along. Not, above all, as a rebus to be decoded.

Even a life of suffering has a mysterious value. Even a life on the threshold of death is a thing of splendor. Anyone who has not looked death in the face does not know this, but I know it ...

Missão, Tereza, é uma palavra idiota. Eu não tenho missão. Ninguém tem missão. E é um alívio enorme perceber que somos livres, que não temos missão.

Ä°nsan hiçbir ÅŸeyi, hiçbir kimseyi ciddiye alamay?nca yaÅŸamak ne kadar da hüzün verici!

It takes so little, a tiny puff of air, for things to shift imperceptibly and whatever it was that a man was ready to lay down his life for a few seconds earlier, seems suddenly to be sheer nonsense

La insignificancia, amigo mío, es la esencia de la existencia.

Mientras que las personas son jóvenes y la composición musical de su vida está aún en los primeros compases, pueden escribirla juntas e intercambiarse motivos, pero cuando se encuentran y ya son mayores, sus composiciones musicales están más o menos cerradas y cada palabra, cada objeto significa una cosa distinta en la composición de la una y en la de la otra

The entire human species has good reason to go down into the streets and shout 'We are all writers!' For everyone is pained with the thought of disappearing, unheard, and unseen into an indifferent universe and because of that, everyone wants, wither there's still time, to turn himself into a universe of words.

It was only an idea, a sudden flash, but it kept coming back to me, and I couldn't help thinking, why am I alive, what good is there in going on, but it's not true really, I didn't think anything of the sort, I was hardly thinking at all, I just imagined myself no longer alive and suddenly I felt such bliss, such strange bliss that I wanted to laugh and maybe really did begin to laugh.

dictionary with unsaid words

Tutti noi consideriamo impensabile che l'amore della nostra vita possa essere qualcosa di leggero, qualcosa che non ha peso; riteniamo che il nostro amore sia qualcosa che doveva necessariamente essere; che senza di esso la nostra vita non sarebbe stata la nostra vita. Ci sembra che Beethoven, in persona, torvo e scapigliato, suoni al nostro grande amore il suo Es muss sein!

the sadness meant: we are at the last station. The happiness meant: we are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content

The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us. Sabina was unaware of the goal that lay behind her longing to betray. The unbearable lightness of being —was that the goal?