Quotes About Meaning

The spark that one finds for a moment and that becomes dim does not belong to heaven, for in heaven all things are lasting; it must belong to some other place. Love has become a word from the dictionary, a word that is used a thousand times a day, which means nothing. To the one who knows what it means, love means patience, love means endurance, love means tolerance, love means sacrifice, love means service.

Für den Menschen ist es das größte Privileg, zu einem geeigneten Instrument für Gott zu werden, und solange er dies nicht begreift, hat er den wahren Sinn seines Lebens nicht verstanden. Die ganze Tragödie im Leben der Menschen ist ihre Unkenntnis dieser Tatsache. Von dem Moment an wo ein Mensch dies versteht, lebt er das wirkliche Leben. (S. 178)

Metanarratives give meaning to individual events, tying them together in the broadest possible fashion. They help structure all of life around a pre-ordained trajectory of history.

Mulling this over, Vlad wiped her lip gloss from his lips with the back of his hand.Vampires, after all, didn't sparkle.

no, i don't, i told him. i'm not sure that it matters what you care about. maybe it's the caring itself that matters.

Furthermore, once we have a category, we often stop looking outside of the categories for meaning, as our formal system of carrots and sticks exists solely within the categories

In each case, the belief is literally false, but metaphorically true.

we didn't always assume that just doing stuff that someone else is paying you for is of value

I'm all for that suggestion." "Don't grin at me like that. We're both keeling

We are called to plant these seeds in our world: to dare to tell every living soul that they already matter, that their seemingly mundane lives are a slowly unfolding mystery, that their small choices and acts of generosity are vitally important.

What should I be doing right now?" is a question that feels more urgent than ever.

A simple inquiry—"What are we going to do about dinner?"—incites an existential crisis, the 742nd of its kind since your wedding day.

There is something about burying a friend that makes you want to declare what is most important to you in life, and if you're fortunate, that is true love.

The least intelligent person carries the most epic message in their eyes.

So what are your poems about? They're about ... how nothing is about, they're not about about. --Heather McHugh, 20-200 on 747

There's always more to the story, Catriona," She replied. "That's the wonderful thing about stories.

Happiness is about doing something good in this world," She says finally. "It comes to finding what you we're meant to do, and doing it.

Laurie Faria Stolarz

Not much of what I value in our lives is easy.

That's what all stories want. They want to get out, get told, get heard. Otherwise, what's the point of stories?

just to be with you. That's what you do for me. You simply outweigh everything else. That's how love should be, I guess. I guess, that's what love means.

Not much of what I value in our lives is easy. But there's not much of it I'd trade for easy either, I don't think.

That's what all stories want. They want to get out, get told, get heard. Otherwise, what's the point of stories? They want to help little boys go to sleep. They want to help stubborn mamas fall in love with dads. They want to teach people things and make them laugh and cry.

Poems are surmountable. They have rhymes and rhythms to help you make meaning. They're short enough. . . to read and reread until you've made some sense of them. Short stories are a different ballgame. You read them and understand the words completely. You know what happens in each sentence. You follow the dialogue and action. at the end, you know exactly what's happened. And also you have no idea.