Quotes About Meaning

What is deeply felt is never lost.

It is extremely convenient to have a label for the political and economic viewpoint elaborated in this book. The rightful and proper label is liberalism. Unfortunately, As a supreme, if unintended compliment, the enemies of the system of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate its label,' so that liberalism has, in the United States, come to have a very different meaning than it did in the nineteenth century or does today over much of the Continent of Europe.

That is the fantastic intolerable paradox of my life, that I have gone questing for what I possessed initially -- a belief to invest my days with dignity and meaning, a pattern of behavior through which man might most articulately express his devotion to his fellows.

It would be frightening to think that in all the cosmos, which is so harmonious, so complete and equal to itself, that only human life is happening randomly, that only one's destiny lacks meaning.

Lumina aceasta ascunde altceva. ViaÅ£a întreag? ascunde altceva. AÅŸa cum sunt eu, aÅŸa cum e BiriÅŸ, ascundem, fiecare din noi, altceva. Se afl? ascuns undeva în noi, în adâncul fiinÅ£ei noastre. Altceva.

A religious symbol conveys its message even if it is no longer consciously understood in every part. For a symbol speaks to the whole human being and not only to the intelligence.

The crises of modern man are to a large extent religious ones, insofar as they are an awakening of his awareness to an absence of meaning.

Without conscious rituals of loss and renewal, individuals and societies lose the capacity to experience the sorrows and joy that are essential for feeling fully human. Without them life flattens out, and meaning drains from both living and dying. Soon there is a death of meaning and an increase in meaningless deaths.

Nici o poetica din lume nu atinge perfectiunea si semnificatia celei mai timide flori.

Cred c? cel mai mare p?cat contra umanit??ii este triste?ea disperat? ridicat? ca valoare suprem? a spiritualit??ii

Y es que el signo portador de significación religiosa introduce un elemento absoluto y pone fin a la relatividad y a la confusión. Algo que no pertenece a este mundo se manifiesta de manera apodíctica y, al hacerlo así, señala una orientación o decide una conducta.

Symbolic thinking is not the exclusive privilege of the child, of the poet or of the unbalanced mind: it is consubstantial with human existence, it comes before language and discursive reason. The symbol reveals certain aspects of reality – the deepest aspects – which defy any other means of knowledge. Images, symbols and myths are not irresponsible creations of the psyche; they respond to a need and fulfil a function, that of bringing to light the hidden modalities of being.

The fact is that in most cases an author does not understand all the meaning of his work. Archaic symbolisms re-appear spontaneously...

life cannot be repaired, it can only be recreated through symbolic repetition of the cosmogony

Es wäre entsetzlich, glauben zu müssen, daß in diesem ganzen so harmonishen, vollkommenen und sich selbst immer gleichbleibenden Kosmos nur die menschliche Existenz ein Speil des Zufalls und nur das Schicksal des Menschen völlig sinnlos sei.

To be human is to seek for meaning…

El hombre religioso siente la necesidad de sumergirse periódicamente en ese tiempo sagrado e indestructible. Para él, es el tiempo sagrado lo que hace posible el otro tiempo ordinario, la duración profana en la cual se desarrolla toda existencia humana.

A sanctuary (ca. 6200 B.C.) contained four men's skulls deposited under the bulls' heads fastened to the walls. One wall is decorated with paintings depicting vultures with anthropomorphic legs attacking a decapitated man. This must certainly represent an important mythico-ritual complex, the meaning of which unfortunately escapes us.

For the historian of religions, every manifestation of the sacred is important: every rite, every myth, every belief or divine figure reflects the experience of the sacred and hence implies the notions of being, of meaning, and of truth ... In short, the sacred is an element in the structure of consciousness and not a stage in the history of consciousness.

The 'terror of history,' for me, is the feeling experienced by a man who is no longer religious, who therefore has no hope of finding any ultimate meaning in the drama of history, and who must undergo the crimes of history without grasping the meaning of them.

The sacred does not necessarily imply belief in God or gods or spirits … it is the experience of a reality and the source of an awareness of existing in the world.

Hacerse hombre significa ser religioso

For me, the sacred is always the revelation of the real, an encounter with that which saves us by giving meaning to our existence.

Sensul vie?ii nu e fericirea, ci realiz?rile eroice.