Quotes About Meaning

Death is the real inspiring genius or Musagetes of philosophy, and for this reason Socrates defined philosophy as thanatou mélétè (preparation for death; Plato, Phaedo, 81a). Indeed, without death there would hardly have been any philosophizing.

El problema es que cuando vuelves a la vida normal, todas las rutinas, las marcas del día a día parecen mentiras sin sentido. Todo es sospechoso, una trampa para adormecernos, para volver a arroparnos en la plácida inexorabilidad del tiempo.

Nada importa mucho, ¿no? Me refiero a importar de verdad. Sin embargo a veces de pronto, durante apenas un segundo, se te concede la gracia de creer que sí, que importa muchísimo. (Del cuento Perdidos)

well, I guess it is natural when one is dying to sort of sum up what has mattered, what has been beautiful.

Qué era el amor?, se preguntaba Maria, estudiando las líneas limpias de la cara de Dixon mientras dormía. Qué nos impide hacerlo a ninguno de los dos, amar. (Del cuento Bonetes azules)

Sometimes a name seems our most arbitrary possession, and sometimes it seems like the grain in a rock like a sculptor's hunk of Italian marble: Whack it and you might get either your first glimpse of a saint or a pile of rubble.

Creating music implies the desire to give.

I don't think music is a commodity. It can be something that you buy in a supermarket and you throw it away! There's a lot of music you can use in this way, but I'm not interested in that music, even if sometimes it's funny to hear and pleasant to hear. I'm far away from that.

Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.

A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.

As is a tale, so is life not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

Nature impelled men to make sounds with their tongues And they found it useful to give names to things Much for the same reason that we see children now Have recourse to gestures because they cannot speak And point their fingers at things which appear before them.

the fact that if we all blow ourselves to smithereens, at least Pepito has existed, and that is good, the fact that it's just plain good he was in the world,

Few now would associate de-roofing with the police, but the verb 'to detect' originated in detegere —a detective raises the roof, figuratively.

The dogma presents to us two things – God and love. God is love: but what does that mean? ...[I]f I said of an affectionate human being, he is love itself [,] … I must give up the name God, which expressed a special personal being, a subject in distinction from the predicate.

God … has no more significance for religion than a fundamental general principle has for … science[.]

I by no means say … God is nothing, the Trinity is nothing, the Word of God is nothing, … . I only show that they are not that which the illusions of theology make them[.]

Ein Philosoph ist ein Mann, der das Leben mit Fragen so stark belastet, daß es in sich geht: daß es in seine eigene Tiefe hinabsinkt.

Wenn ich mich im Zusammenhang des Universums betrachte, was bin ich?

Today the apologists of socialism are forced to distort facts and to misrepresent the manifest meaning of words when they want to make people believe in the compatibility of socialism and freedom.

The task of the sciences of human action is the comprehension of the meaning and relevance of human action. They apply for this purpose two different epistemological procedures: conception and understanding. Conception is the mental tool of praxeology; understanding is the specific mental tool of history.

Os bens, as mercadorias, as riquezas e todas as demais noções de conduta não são elementos da natureza, mas sim elementos da mente e da conduta humana. Quem deseje entrar neste segundo universo deve abstrair-se do mundo exterior, centrando a sua atenção no significado das ações empreendidas pelos homens

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity

If one understands eternity as timelessness, and not as an unending timespan, then whoever lives in the present lives for all time.