Quotes About Meaning

It feels like cheap sex and spurious art to me, the spiritual equivalent of junk food; it may look like an éclair, but it's really a Twinkie.

every man must die. I do not think about it. It is what we do in life that matters.

The experience of speaking from the heart and being taken seriously builds the psychic architecture that supports the capacity to bear life.

Knowing the truth has meaning only as a first step to living the truth day by day.

if there is no God, and life is a chance product of blind material forces, what purpose does human life have? Is it just a chemical accident on a rock flying through the cold, empty reaches of space?

When people commit themselves to a certain vision of reality, it becomes their ultimate explainer. It serves to interpret the universe for them, to guide their moral decisions, to give meaning and purpose to life, and all the other functions normally associated with a religion.

Humans are not self-existent, self-sufficient, or self-defining. They did not create themselves. They are finite, dependent, contingent beings. As a result, they will always look outside themselves for their ultimate identity and meaning. They will define human nature by its relationship to the divine—however they define divinity. Those who do not get their identity from a transcendent Creator will get it from something in creation.

Nearly all that we call human history … [is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy." C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

if everything is historically relative, then so is the idea of historicism itself.

The biblical worldview fulfills both the requirements of human reason and the yearnings of the human spirit.

Today religion appeals almost solely to the needs of the private sphere—needs for personal meaning, social bonding, family sup-port, emotional nurturing, practical living, and so on. In this climate, almost inevitably, churches come to speak the language of psychological needs, focusing primarily on the therapeutic functions of religion. Whereas religion used to be connected to group identity and a sense of belonging, it is now almost solely a search for an authentic inner life.

Christianity is the key that fits the lock of the universe.

In every decision we make, we are not just deciding what we want to do. We are expressing our view of the purpose of human life.

The Bible teaches that, without God, people are morally lost. But they are also intellectually lost because they are trying to live within the limits of a worldview that is too cramped and narrow to account for their own humanity. They are forced to place their entire hope for dignity and meaning in an upper-story realm that they themselves regard as irrational and unknowable—nothing but necessary falsehoods.

The English word know is a translation of the Hebrew yada, which means to know by experience.

The problem is that many people treat morality as a list of rules. But in reality, every moral system rests on a worldview. In every decision we make, we are not just deciding what we want to do. We are expressing our view of the purpose of human life. In the words of theologian Stanley Hauerwas, a moral act "cannot be seen as just an isolated act, but involves fundamental options about the nature and significance of life itself.

I never really knew her," I said. "But you loved her," Ida answered, and again I wasn't sure if she meant that as an accusation or comfort. Was it less important or more important to know someone than to love them?

According to Swedenborg, all human experience was only a reflection of a larger spiritual one. The human soul was what gave meaning and expression to the concrete world.

My dear sister... His dear sister. Those words - how oddly they affected me

what was her life about? Did she mean nothing?

The universe is always speaking to us. ... Sending us little messages, causing coincidences and serendipities, reminding us to stop, to look around, to believe in something else, something more.

Even here, even as we suffer, life is still worth living....

Each of us realized, with a clarity that is hard to describe, that the only crucial thing in life is the chance to love and be loved.

Today valueless Clues are meant for future use.