Quotes About Meaning

And isn't the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty?

And I keep thinking too of the more conventional wisdom: namely, that the pursuit of pure beauty is a trap, a fast track to bitterness and sorrow, that beauty has to be wedded to something more meaningful.

does it make any sense at all to know that it ends badly for all of us, even the happiest of us, and that we all lose everything that matters in the end -- and yet to know as well, despite all this, as cruelly as the game is stacked, that it's possible to play it with a kind of joy? To try to make some meaning out of all this seems unbelievably quaint.

We have art in order not to die from the truth. — NIETZSCHE

And if what they say is true--if every great painting is really a self-portrait--what, if anything, is Fabritius saying about himself?

how can I see so clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet—for me, anyway—all that's worth living for lies in that charm?

But Beauty—unless she is wed to something more meaningful—is always superficial.

I was jarred - a little spooked as well - at so blatant a reference to something referred to, by mutual agreement, almost exclusively with codes, catchwords, a hundred different euphemisms. It was the most important night of my life, he said calmly. It enabled me to do what I've always wanted most. Which is? To live without thinking.

But Beauty—unless she is wed to something more meaningful—is always superficial. It

There wasn't a single meaning. There were many meanings. It was a riddle expanding out and out and out.

And I'm hoping there's some larger truth about suffering here, or at least my understanding of it – although I've come to realize that the only truths that matter to me are the ones I don't, and can't, understand. What's

so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime.

And this is either a completely disastrous question or the most sensible one I've ever asked in all my life.

Penso che in questo caso dovremmo chiamarla ironia della sorte, più che divina provvidenza. Sì, ma perché vuoi darle un nome? E se fossero la stessa cosa?

Worry! What a waste of time. All the holy books were right. Clearly 'worry' was the mark of a primitive and spiritually unevolved person. What was that line from Yeats, about the bemused Chinese sages? All things fall and are built again. Ancient glittering eyes. This was wisdom. People had been raging and weeping and destroying things for centuries and wailing about their puny individual lives, when—what was the point? All this useless sorrow?

You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life

Why am I made the way I am? Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way: how can I see so clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet—for me, anyway—all that's worth living for lies in that charm?

Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only-if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn't it? And isn't the whole point of things-beautiful things-that they connect you to some larger beauty?

Then on the opposite page a different ad, for digital cameras, scrawled in artsy letters and signed Joan Miró: You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life

And isn't the whole point of things-beautiful things-that they connect you to some larger beauty

When I disagreed—strenuously—and asked what was wrong with focusing one's entire attention on only two things, if those two things were Art and Beauty, Laforgue replied: "There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty—unless she is wed to something more meaningful—is always superficial.

Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only-- if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn't it? And isn't the whole point of things--beautiful things--that they connect you to come larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another?...

We do not create meaning out of a text; rather, we seek to find the meaning that is already there.

You must do in life those things that most satisfy. Otherwise, what is it all for?