Quotes About Meaning

At minimum, there may be an implication that one of the great challenges for intelligent cultural beings may be to learn to cope with, and perhaps finally accept, a profound and deep sense of uncertainty regarding any larger cosmic sense of meaning and purpose—that such an uncertainty may have to be treated as a kind of empirical question to be possibly addressed over very long time periods as evidence is accumulated, but perhaps without ever obtaining a satisfactory answer.

Coping with the uncertainty of larger cosmic objective meaning may be one of the most profound challenges sufficiently aware beings have to face [...]. Indeed, human beings might be further along in this regard than may be commonly thought—much of the human population seems to able to cope without religion and without a larger sense of cosmic meaning and purpose.

A lack of "external" objective meaning may be unsatisfying to many—caught forever in endless cycles of relativism, a morass of unbearable responsibility for our own meaning and purpose, and perhaps ultimately for that of the universe. But it looks like choice is inescapable. And while choice can sometimes be oppressive and debilitating, it is also liberating and empowering[.]

Yes, we humans are more than merely biological creatures. We appreciate beauty, we struggle with ethical conflicts, and we strive to make sense of our purpose in the universe, asking questions that science cannot answer. And yet, our sense of aesthetics, our moral sensibilities, and our search for meaning may themselves be intricately connected to the fabric of the cosmos.

finding God brings meaning into every moment—I

to be a fiction writer, you also need to be a psychologist (understanding people's personalities and intentions), a philosopher (asking big questions about meaning and human nature), and a poet (breathing life into your words and the spaces between them).

Tryphena?" "It's Greek. Means 'delicate.' Brin came across it the other day somewhere in the Bible,

That's all it was.

For a twist to work, it needs to be (1) unexpected, (2) inevitable, (3) an escalation of what preceded it, and (4) a revelation that adds meaning to what has already occurred.

Flowers are the hieroglyphics of angels. Loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning.

Flow is more than an optimal state of consciousness—one where we feel our best and perform our best—it also appears to be the only practical answer to the question: What is the meaning of life? Flow is what makes life worth living.

Nintendo, a term meaning "leave luck to heaven."!

This is why reading the scriptures as a scientific text can do violence to their purpose. They are designed to connect us subjectively, consciously, and spiritually to richer truths and meaning.

It seemed funny that one day I would go to bed in her arms and the next not feel anything, like a switch had gone off. But no, that wasn't honest either. This had been building for a long time. Our silences were getting longer. Our arguments more frequent. How do you stay with someone when there are no dreams to build? No purpose to accomplish? No meaning? No meaning —that was the monster that drove us away from one another in the end. Always.

God had created the universe as a way of sorting through the great library, finding those books that were most beautiful and meaningful.

How do you stay with someone when there are no dreams to build? No purpose to accomplish? No meaning? No meaning – that was the monster that drove us away from one another in the end. Always.

I read it more carefully than anyone had ever read it. . . . Kahn's book to me is like the Vedas," he explains, citing the centuries-old Indian text. "There's an expression I learned: 'If a man loses his cow, he looks for it in the Vedas.

stuff is wonderful, but having nothing to do can be wonderful, too."??

All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal.

A story with a single ending seems to us a bare and diminished thing, like a tree with a single branch; and each ending seems to us an expression of something that is buried deep within the tale and can be brought to light in that way and no other.

For some of us, there are few terms that induce narcosis quicker than "Christian allegory.

The fire in the belly is essential, otherwise you become Michael Buble - famous and meaningless.

You ask me what it feels like to have wings. I can only tell you the feeling with words. And words have neither feelings nor wings. Words are leaky vessels into which a cargo of meaning and emotion are placed, and when they leave you and reach the farther shore of another mind a considerable portion of that cargo has been lost at sea. Fallen overboard, gone to rot, consumed by vermin, decayed to a state unlike its original form.

Severus said to him, "I have been everything—and gained nothing." Everything and nothing: the remark had stopped Galen cold. In the end, did the material world and the realm of the senses amount to nothing, then? In the end, could it be that everything and nothing were the same?