Quotes About Meaning

what really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death

No one knows loneliness like an atheist. When an average person feels isolated, he can call through the depths of his soul to One who knows him and sense an answer. An atheist cannot allow himself that luxury, for he has to crush the urge and remind himself of its absurdity.

The question of what kind of a thing a text or poem is now becomes a function neither of what the poet might have intended by its words nor of what the conventions of grammar and meaning might seem to require of them, but rather of the reader's irreducibly subjective experience in her encounter with those words.

Algunas personas dicen que vivir el momento produce cambios en sus percepciones visuales. Ellos ven las imágenes con mayor nitidez; los colores parecen más vibrantes. Sus acciones e incluso aquellas de las personas que lo rodean contienen mayor significado.

Life is more than great sex and a nice car." "Well, yeah. But not a lot more.

Tu es inoubliable. Tu vois ? Même pas besoin de répéter après toi pour dire ça. Et maintenant, est-ce que je peux vous faire l'amour , s'il vous plaît, madame ?

There is a love like no other. A love that requires no conditions. A love that can't be explained or learned. It's a love that gives you a greater purpose. It's a love that can set the rest of your world aside.

It wasn't a "Eureka!" kind of moment—it was the slow realization that the parts of me that had been empty were starting to fill up again. Yet, as gradual as this all was, there was one surreal moment that crystallized it for me—one moment where I suddenly understood what Idol meant to people and what it was doing for me.

There is a love like no other. A love that requires no conditions. A love that can't be explained or learned.  It's a love that gives you a greater purpose. It's a love that can set the rest of your world aside.

Sometimes, life is about what happens before death.

I guess I'm thinking of myself here. I am tired. I am the one who asks, is death only the frozen image we have of the animal's body?...Maybe roadkills are more than they seem. Messages...

Here it's probably worth pointing out that the original meaning of advice was "judgment.

Head's all empty, I don't care,' he'd sing to me, quoting the Grateful Dead, and I'd force a smile, thinking that my head was never empty and that if it ever was, you could be darn sure I'd care.

Still waters run deep, I'd thought. Later, I learned that silence did not necessarily guarantee depth.

When you have excluded the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth," my father called back.

It is in the petty details, not in the great results, that the interest of existence lies.

Strange that Nature's voices all around them — the soft singing of the waters, the whisperings of the river grass, the music of the rushing wind — should not have taught them a truer meaning of life than this. They listened there, through the long days, in silence, waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long and through the solemn night it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not.

Good fiction must be entertaining- but what makes fiction special- and True- is that the realness of a novel allows it to carry a larger message.

That which should distinguish the suffering of believers from unbelievers is the confidence that our suffering is under the control of an all-powerful and all-loving God. Our suffering has meaning and purpose in God's eternal plan, and He brings or allows to come into our lives only that which is for His glory and our good.

As we meandered, she said my name three times: Stargirl? Yes? That was better than TV. It was. Stargirl? Yes? Does the sun do that everyday? Yes. Stargirl? Yes? Everyday is sun day.

Happy. I had not heard that word since Mr. Milgrom spoke it at the last Hanukkah. I asked him the question that had been on my mind since then. Tata, what is happy? He looked at me and at the ceiling and back to me. Did you ever taste an orange? he said.

Killing the pigeons and putting them out of their misery stubbornly refused to mean the same thing. Palmer thought about misery, and it seemed to him that a shotgun was not the only way to end it. When Palmer was miserable, for example, his mother or father would hold him close and wipe his tears. When Palmer's mother or father put him out of his misery, they did not shoot him, they offered him a cookie. Why then on Pigeon Day did the people bring guns instead of cookies?

Emptiness in such a person is not nothing, is not small. It is enormous.

He wonders if Claudia is making snow angels. He wonders if angles are invisible in the snow. He wonders if angels make people in the snow. He wonders of Claudia is an angel…" (p. 191)