Quotes About Meaning

Cultures are defensive constructions against chaos, designed to reduce the impact of randomness on experience.

Purpose gives direction to one's efforts, but it does not necessarily make life easier. Goals can lead into all sorts of trouble, at which point one gets tempted to give them up and find some less demanding script by which to order one's actions. The price one pays for changing goals whenever opposition threatens is that while one may achieve a more pleasant and comfortable life, it is likely that it will end up empty and void of meaning.

The meaning of life is meaning: whatever it is, wherever it comes from, a unified purpose is what gives meaning to life.

we develop a set of our own. The most important step in emancipating oneself from social controls is the ability to find rewards in the events of each moment. If a person learns to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself, the burden of social controls automatically falls from one's shoulders.

Yet, the elders said, at times the world became too predictable and the challenge began to go out of life. Without challenge, life had no meaning.

The price one pays for changing goals whenever opposition threatens is that while one may achieve a more pleasant and comfortable life, it is likely that it will end up empty and void of meaning. The

The most important step in emancipating oneself from social controls is the ability to find rewards in the events of each moment. If a person learns to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself, the burden of social controls automatically

People who learn to enjoy their work, who do not waste their free time, end up feeling that their lives as a whole have become much more worthwhile. "The future," wrote C. K. Brightbill, "will belong not only to the educated man, but to the man who is educated to use his leisure wisely.

Although, as we have seen, people generally long to leave their places of work and get home, ready to put their hard-earned free time to good use, all too often they have no idea what to do there.

Even the most highly respected physicist, artist, or politician becomes a hollow bore and ceases to enjoy life if all he can interest himself in is his limited role in the universe. 4.

Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychologist, summarized it beautifully in the preface to his book Man's Search for Meaning: "Don't aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.

Without challenge, life had no meaning.

Purpose gives direction to one's efforts, but it does not necessarily make life easier. Goals can lead into all sorts of trouble, at which point one gets tempted to give them up and find some less demanding script by which to order one's actions. The price one pays for changing goals whenever opposition threatens is that while one may achieve a more pleasant and comfortable life, it is likely that it will end up empty and void of meaning. The

But if one assumes that people have a choice in how they respond to external events, in what meaning they attribute to suffering, then one can interpret the constructive response as normal and the neurotic one as a failure to rise to the challenge, as a breakdown in the ability to flow.

Si realmente queremos vivir, sería mejor que empezáramos de una vez a intentarlo; Si no queremos, no importa, pero sería mejor que empezáramos a morir.

Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives… most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity… [and] when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.

How to avoid the danger of polarizing life into work that is meaningless because it is unfree, and leisure that is meaningless because it has no purpose?

Most events in consciousness are built from culturally defined contents as well as from personal meanings developed throughout an individual's life. Thus, two persons can never be expected to have the same experience, and the farther apart in time and place they are, the more the details of the two experiences will differ.

If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try; If we don't, it doesn't matter, but we'd better start to die.

success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue...as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.

It is how we choose what we do, and how we approach it, that will determine whether the sum of our days adds up to a formless blur, or to something resembling a work of art.

As a man I had to provide my own purpose in life, and probably nothing is more difficult. It is easier to beget children and to thrust the responsibility on them while washing one's own hands.

These days, most people know the Holy Grail from books like The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail, or from Monty Python. What we've lost in these pop culture transformations of the Grail is what made it holy in the first place. That original meaning is what this book seeks to unfold.

downs. Healthy people learn how to live with both. They enjoy the good but aren't devastated by the bad. Joy means appreciating the positive experiences in life but finding meaning in the tough times as well. It means living lightly and realistically, no matter what happens.