Quotes About Meaning

You don't rejoice despite absurdity, but because of it. Life is absurd so nothing compels you at all. There is no logic and no necessity. You do what you do out of freedom. You are always free to choose.

Never had so much intelligence meant so little. The conduct of the war had been set by a series of lies that the leaders of the United States told one another and the American people.

It's the pointless things that give your life meaning. Friendship, compassion, art, love. All of them pointless. But they're what keeps life from being meaningless.

Life was something you didn't argue with, because when it came down to it, whether you barracked for God or nothing at all, life was all there was. And death.

In a fallen world marked by human depravity and deep-seated sin, in a world where Hitler and Stalin had recruited millions of followers to commit mass murder, love must harness power and seek justice in order to have moral meaning. Love without power remained impotent, and power without love was bankrupt.

We see a seventeenth-century goblet and think: That is what a seventeenth-century goblet looks like, and isn't it remarkably like/unlike (choose one) goblets today? We tend not to think: What is a goblet doing there? Who made it? Where did it come from? Why did the artist choose to include it instead of something else, a teacup, say, or a glass jar?

Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. —VIKTOR E. FRANKL, Holocaust survivor; author of Man's Search for Meaning

What you do is more important than how you do everything else, and doing something well does not make it important.

The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom. —VIKTOR FRANKL, Auschwitz survivor and founder of Logotherapy, Man's Search for Meaning

People say that what we are seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think this is what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive. —JOSEPH CAMPBELL, The Power of Myth

The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long" "How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love" "9 Learnings from 9 Years of Brain Pickings" Anything about Alan Watts: "Alan Watts has changed my life. I've written about him quite a bit.

The Purpose of Life Is a Life of Purpose." This is Stan's answer to "If you could put a billboard anywhere and write anything on it, what would it say?" It is a quote from Robert Byrne.

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive." –Joseph Campbell

what you do is infinitely more important than how you do it.

Out of more than 4,600 articles on Brain Pickings, what are Maria's starting recommendations? "The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long" "How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love" "9 Learnings from 9 Years of Brain Pickings" Anything about Alan Watts: "Alan Watts has changed my life.

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

NO HAS ENCONTRADO TU OBJETIVO GENERAL, ÚNICO EN LA VIDA? TAL VEZ NO SEA NECESARIO «Olvídate de tener un propósito. Está bien ser feliz sin tenerlo. La persecución de un propósito único ha arruinado muchas vidas.»

One of my favorite quotes is by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children . . . to leave the world a bit better . . . to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; this is to have succeeded.

Still struggling with a sense of purpose or mission? Roughly half a dozen people in this book (e.g., Robert Rodriguez) have suggested the book Start with Why by Simon Sinek.

Ludwig Wittgenstein,

Does your life have a purpose? Are you contributing anything useful to this world, or just shuffling papers, banging on a keyboard, and coming home to a drunken existence on the weekends?

You won't take a bullet for pleasure or power, but you will for meaning.

Most-gifted or recommended books? Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl The Fourth Turning by William Strauss (Also, Generations by William Strauss, which was gifted to Tony by Bill Clinton) Mindset by Carol Dweck (for parenting) As a Man Thinketh by