Quotes About Meaning

Life has addressed a question to me... or conversely, I myself am a question.

the meaning of life is not exhaustively explained by one's business life, nor is the deep desire of the human heart answered by a bank account.

For thousands of years, rites of initiation have been teaching spiritual rebirth; yet, strangely enough, man forgets again and again the meaning of divine procreation.

What we call a symbol is a term, a name, or even a picture that may be familiar in daily life, yet that possesses specific connotations in addition to its conventional and obvious meaning. It implies something vague, unknown, or hidden from us.

Thus a word or an image is symbolic when it implies something more than its obvious and immediate meaning.

So long as a symbol is a living thing, it is the expression for something that cannot be characterized in any other or better way. The symbol is alive only so long as it is pregnant with meaning. But once its meaning has been born out of it, once that expression is found which formulates the thing sought, expected, or divined even better than the hitherto accepted symbol, then the symbol is dead, i.e., it possesses only an historical significance

This is one reason why all religions employ symbolic language or images. But this conscious use of symbols is only one aspect of a psychological fact of great importance: Man also produces symbols unconsciously and spontaneously, in the form of dreams.

In our Western civilization the Cosmic Man has been identified to a great extent with Christ, and in the East with Krishna or with Buddha. In the Old Testament this same symbolic figure turns up as the "Son of Man" and in later Jewish mysticism is called Adam Kadmon. Certain religious movements of late antiquity simply called him Anthropos (the Greek word for man). Like all symbols this image points to an unknowable secret—to the ultimate unknown meaning of human existence.

I could cite many other dreams to the same effect, but these may suffice to show that dreams can be anticipatory and, in that case, must lose their particular meaning if they are treated in a purely causalistic way. These three dreams give clear information about the analytical situation, and it is extremely important for the purposes of therapy that this be rightly understood.

Los antiguos vivían sus signos porque el mundo aún no se les había vuelto real.

rifle to shoot at you?

But a man didn't use a word like that except to demean. And he no doubt meant what he said. It hurt.

I got to experience socialism firsthand. At first, it's seductive. Free health care, free college, all that. But nothing is free. And anything that's free has no value. Zero means zero.

Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field." — Peter Adams

What would release be? Being forgiven? No, never forgiven, never only forgiven.

Or, in the intriguing words of existential philosopher Gabriel Marcel, hope is "a piercing through time … a kind of memory of the future.

Christopher didn't understand that there was a fine line between seeking death and being indifferent to its occurrence.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

Hay momento que definen nuestra existencia, momentos que, si los reconocemos, suponen un giro definitivo en nuestra vida. Como perlas en un hilo, la acumulación de tales momentos, con el tiempo, constituyen la esencia de nuestra existencia, proporcionándonos consuelo cuando nuestro fin se acerca.

If you live only for yourself, you already have chosen to die. And since nothing will cure you, even though on the outside you may appear to have been born and continue living, you will die, you are already dead.

Quando se deseja realmente dizer alguma coisa, as palavras são inúteis. Remexo o cérebro e elas vêm, não raras, mas toneladas. Deixam sempre um gosto de poeira na boca - a poeira do que se tentava expressar, e elas dissolveram. Quanto mais palavras ocorrem para vestir uma idéia, mais essa idéia resiste a ser identificada. As sucessivas roupas sufocam a sua nudez. E todas as palavras são uma grande bolha de sabão, às vezes brilhante, mas circundando o vazio.