Quotes About Meaning

Biblical exegesis without controls is apt to run away into total subjectivity.

Little Bush says we are at war, but we are not at war because to be at war Congress has to vote for it. He says we are at war on terror, but that is a metaphor, though I doubt if he knows what that means. It's like having a war on dandruff, it's endless and pointless.

In the beginning there was the Word and not the talk, and in the end there won´t be the propaganda but again the Word

Ein Wort Ein Wort, ein Satz -: aus Chiffren steigen erkanntes Leben, jäher Sinn, die Sonne steht, die Sphären schweigen, und alles ballt sich zu ihm hin. Ein Wort - ein Glanz, ein Flug, ein Feuer, ein Flammenwurf, ein Sternenstrich - und wieder Dunkel, ungeheuer, im leeren Raum um Welt und Ich.

The physical threat posed by climate change represents a crisis that is not only material but also profoundly spiritual at its core because it challenges us to think seriously about the future of the human race and what it means to be a human being.

Where will we get the imagination, the courage, and the determination to reconceptualize the meaning and purpose of Work in a society that is becoming increasingly jobless?

The whole meaning of my life, which was jammed until midnight with fifteen different jobs and places, was writing. It took me a long time to know that, but I know it now.

Despite no education, Mrs. Finn always is more in charge of word meanings than I am. She is especially in charge of Good and Bad. My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next.

My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next.

Remembering is organized for significance (not usefulness)

A palavra não foi feita para enfeitar, brilhar como ouro falso. A palavra foi feita para dizer.

Los Angeles seems endlessly held between these extremes: of light and dark - of surface and depth. Of the promise, in brief, of a meaning always hovering on the edge of significance.

Media is a word that has come to mean bad journalism

God created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed -- that is the meaning of evolution.

I don't care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations...I don't think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren't there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?

Why does the life everlasting have to be won at such terrible cost? If the life everlasting is true, why can it be achieved only through death, through grief, and through agony? What kind of God is it who gives us the world and everything in it, and the capabiliiy of loving so fiercely, and then takes it all away?

He (the Emperor) once said of ancient Earth that there were torches, who were the teachers, but also extinguishers, who were the priests.

or refuting, with his guidance, a famous refutation of the existence of time, will be worth it.

And there's no saying what heady potions we won't concoct, what meanings, myths, manias we won't imbibe in order to convince ourselves that reality is not an empty vessel.

The little girl had the making of a poet in her who, being told to be sure of her meaning before she spoke, said, "How can I know what I think till I see what I say?"

Our task is to decipher the meaning of the historical-theological text in biblical narrative, not to reconstruct the original event.

The right hand in Scripture symbolizes power and authority

The deep meaning of any text is a buried treasure; all the riches are waiting under the surface. If we learned there was gold deep under our backyard, nothing would stop us from getting the tools we needed to dig it out. Similarly, in serious Bible study all the treasures and riches of God are waiting to be dug up for our benefit.

This means that when we study the Bible, we should not be satisfied with a cursory reading in which we insert our own meanings into the text. Instead, we must always ask what God intended to say in every passage. But Bible study should not be a tedious duty we have to perform. It is a sacred privilege and a joy.