Quotes About Meaning

You don't retire from a job (which may have become stale) but to an activity that is meaningful to you.

Don't aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended  side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.

Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to be happy. Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. Humans are rather in search of of a reason to be happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent in a given situtation.

The Latin word finis has two meanings: the end or the finish, and a goal to reach. A man who could not see the end of his "provisional existence" was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life. He ceased living for the future, in contrast to a man in normal life. Therefore the whole structure of his inner life changed;

man who let himself decline because he could not see any future goal found himself occupied with retrospective thoughts. In a different connection, we have already spoken of the tendency there was to look into the past, to help make the present, with all its horrors, less real. But

Cách má»™t ng??i ch?p nh?n s? ph?n và nh?ng Ä'au kh? c?a mình, cách má»™t ng??i dám v??t qua nh?ng thá»­ thách Ä'ó Ä'em l?i cho ng??i ?y nhi?u cÆ¡ há»™i ?? hi?u ???c ý nghÄ©a sâu xa hÆ¡n c?a cuá»™c s?ng ngay c? trong nh?ng hoàn c?nh kh?c nghi?t nh?t.

M]eaning must not coincide with being; meaning must be ahead of being; meaning sets the pace of being. Existence falters unless it is lived in terms of transcendence toward something beyond itself.

human life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death. I asked the poor creatures who listened to me attentively in the darkness of the hut to face up to the seriousness of our position.

El sentimiento que se convierte en sufrimiento, deja de serlo en cuanto nos formamos una idea clara y precisa del mismo.

Meaning must be found; it cannot be given. And it must be found by oneself, by one's own conscience.

The transitoriness of our existence in no way makes it meaningless. But it does constitute our responsibility; for now everything hinges upon our realizing the transitory possibilities.

U]ltimately it is not up to man to ask about the meaning of his life. Instead, man must be understood as someone who is asked; that is, life itself asks him, and he has to answer—his existence has to respond.

The prisoner who had lost faith in the future—his future—was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental

Meaning is relative inasmuch as it is related to a specific person who is entangled in a specific situation. One could say that meaning differs in two respects: first, from man to man, and second, from day to day—indeed, from hour to hour.

Ä°nsan?n gerçekte ihtiyac? olan, gerilimin olmad??? bir durum deÄŸil kayda deÄŸer bir hedef, özgürce seçilmiÅŸ bir görev uÄŸruna uÄŸraÅŸ ve mücadeledir. Ä°htiyaç duyduÄŸu ÅŸey, ne pahas?na olursa olsun gerilimden kurtulmak deÄŸil, onun taraf?ndan kar??lanmay? bekleyen potansiyel bir anlam?n çaÄŸr?s?d?r.

In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way— in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.

Si no sabes cuál es tu misión en la vida, ya tienes una: encontrarla.

Meaning is missing in the world as described by many a science. This, however, does not imply that the world is void of meaning but only that many a science is blind to it. Meaning is scotomized by many a science.

Reality presents itself always in the form of a specific concrete situation, and since each life situation is unique, it follows that also the meaning of a situation must be unique. Therefore it would not even be possible for meanings to be transmitted through traditions. Only values– which might be defined as universal meanings— can be affected by the decay of traditions… to put it succinctly: the values are dead–long live the meanings.

Ä°ddia ediyorum ki dünyada en kötü koÅŸullarda bile hayatta kalabilmek için hayat?n bir anlam? olduÄŸu bilgisinden daha etkili olabilecek bir ÅŸey yoktur. Nietzchhe`nin ÅŸu sözleri çok ÅŸey söyler: YaÅŸamak için bir nedeni olan her türlü nas?l`a katlanabilir.

O]ne may define values as those meaning-universals which crystallize in the typical situations a society—humanity—has to face.

The more comprehensive the meaning, the less comprehensible it is. Infinite meaning is necessarily beyond the comprehension of a finite being. Here is the point at which science gives up and wisdom takes over.

He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you. Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.

Freedom is part of the story and half of the truth. Being free is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is being responsible. Freedom may degenerate into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.