Quotes About Meaning

After I am dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.

Rem tene, verba sequntur (Keep to the subject, and the words will follow)

I remember arguing that moral greatness had little meaning without action to effect the moral end.

We will need to give you a Muslim name…does Leila suit you?" "I don't deserve this kindness," she whispered. "That you, Muslims, should help a Jew—" "Come now!" Serif said, realizing that she was about to cry. "Jews and Muslims are cousins, the descendants of Abraham. Your new name, do you know it means 'evening' both in Arabic, the language of our Holy Koran, and also in Hebrew, the language of your Torah?

One day, I hope to go back. To my wife, to my girls, but also to the man of moral certainty that I was that day; that innocent man, who knew with such clear confidence exactly what it was that he was meant to do.

The child is father to the man.' How can he be? The words are wild. Suck any sense from that who can: 'The child is father to the man.' No; what the poet did write ran, 'The man is father to the child.' 'The child is father to the man!' How can he be? The words are wild!

Eigenlijk geloof ik niets, en twijfel ik aan alles, zelfs aan U. Maar soms, wanneer ik denk dat Gij waarachtig leeft, dan denk ik, dat Gij Liefde zijt, en eenzaam, en dat, in zelfde wanhoop, Gij mij zoekt, zoals ik U.

De toekomst blijft, dunkt mij, aan de figuratieve kunst, zoals ook in de literatuur de toekomst zal blijven aan het samenhangende verhaal met een begin en een einde -liefst met een conventionele interpunctie- en aan het samenhangende gedicht, beide tot stand gebracht in beheerst en bekwaam taalgebruik, en beide hoe geheimzinnig van inhoud ook, aan de oppervlakte een duidelijk herkenbare mededeling bevattend.

Sooner or later your life is going to flash before your eyes; make sure it's worth watching.

To talk about paintings is not only difficult but perhaps pointless too. You can only express in words what words are capable of expressing-- what language can communicate. Painting has nothing to do with that.

Freud is the father of psychoanalysis. It has no mother.

It was not until much later when, after a deep and satisfying orgasm, I suddenly realised the true meaning of the fairy tale and the nature of the magic kiss of which it speaks.

I cannot think that we are useless or God would not have created us. There is one God looking down on us all. We are all the children of one God. The sun, the darkness, the winds are all listening to what we have to say.

If the sign of the woman is "Be it done unto me," which means readiness to conceive or, when expressed in religious terms, the will to be blessed, then there is always distress when the woman no longer wills to conceive, no longer wills to be blessed. (This does not only apply in the biological sense).

[Of Oakland, California:] There is no there there.

In the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling.

Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.

Why should a sequence of words be anything but a pleasure?

Il peccato, inventato dagli uomini per meritare la pena di vivere, per non essere castigati senza perché.

Happy or unhappy, life is the only treasure which man possesses.

Whether happy or unhappy, life is the only treasure man possesses.

Tu dubiti se ci sia lecito di morire senza necessità: io ti domando se ci è lecito di essere infelici. ( Dialogo di Plotino e di Porfirio )

filosofi in parole e in opere,

In una vita così strema e consunta, la mia ambizione più urgente sarebbe quella di scrivere qualcosa che potesse intitolarsi, proprio letteralmente, De Amicitia. [...] Essere un amico concreto, non so se la mia vita potrà mai proporsi altri scopi. Aspirazione estrema, e chi sa se raggiungibile.