Quotes About Meaning

And could it be true without other awful things being true as well?

However one must ask not just, is it amusing, is it exciting, but is it a work of art?

Is your father writing a book? said Alison. No. He's existing. Some people live, like the rest of us, like the people in your plays. He just exists.

So art becomes not communication but mystification.

All the effort which he had put into making himself seemed vanity now that there were no more purposes

Sometimes he would have liked to pray, but what is prayer if there is nobody there?

I'd like to to know what it is he's after, I mean, is it an experience or a thought, is it something you'd put in a book, or die for, or die of?

I can decide what to say but not what the words mean which I have said. I can decide what to do but I am not master of the significance of my act.

But he's joking, he doesn't mean it. When Lucas makes a joke he means it.

You understand nothing of—the horror—no wonder you can't write real books—you don't see—the horror—

Words may mislead us (...) since words are often stable while concepts alter (...)

The pointlessness of art is not the pointlessness of a game; it is the pointlessness of human life itself, and form in art is properly the simulation of the self-contained aimlessness of the universe.

Perhaps the reality is in the suffering. But it can't be. Love promises happiness. Art promises happiness. Yet it isn't exactly a promise . . .

And what is love anyway? Love's all over the mountain where the beautiful go to die no doubt, but I cannot attach much meaning to your idea of such a long-lasting love for someone you lost sight of so long ago. Perhaps it's something you've invented now.

Como todavía no hablase, dije: —¿Podríamos ser felices? Honor dijo: —Esto no tiene nada que ver con la felicidad, nada en absoluto. Era cierto. Acepté la promesa de sus palabras. Dije: —No sé si sobreviviré a ello. Honor dijo con una espléndida sonrisa: —¡Tienes que correr el riesgo!

I wonder if this is the end, thought Ducane, and if so what it will all have amounted to. How tawdry and small it has all been.

Perhaps after all not to have been born is best. How near the human soul must be to nothingness if it can be so tossed.

I had been confronted (at last) with a sizeable ordeal labelled with my name. This was not something to be wasted.

Only art explains, and that cannot itself be explained.

How little perhaps can words convey except in the hands of a genius.

Guilt is one way of attaching a meaning to a death. We want to find a meaning. It lessens the pain.

Art is a vain and hollow show, a toy of gross illusions, unless it points beyond itself and moves ever whither it points.

Mortality itself was my philosophical robe.

I want to have things clear,' I said. 'You're offering me a sinecure.' 'I'm not sure what that is,' said Madge, 'but I expect it's that.' 'A sinecure is when you get money for doing nothing,' I said. 'But isn't that exactly what you've always wanted?' said Madge.