Quotes About Meaning

Truth without the way to truth is dead.

Self-affirmation, for Tillich, is the paradox of "participation in something which transcends the self" (165).

Man is the question he asks about himself, before any question has been formulated. It is, therefore, not surprising that the basic questions were formulated very early in the history of mankind.

Being human means asking the questions of one's own being and living under the impact of the answers given to this question. And, conversely, being human means receiving answers to the questions of one's own being and asking questions under the impact of the answers.

To overcome our sense of loneliness is a life long pursuit. Let us not despair in its pursuit!

The faith which makes the courage of despair possible is the acceptance of the power of being, even in the grip of non-being. Even in the despair about meaning being affirms itself through us. The act of accepting meaninglessness is in itself a meaningful act. It is an act of faith.

God] is the name for that which concerns man ultimately. This does not mean that first there is a being called God and then the demand that man should be ultimately concerned about him. It means that whatever concerns a man ultimately becomes god for him, and, conversely, it means that a man can be concerned ultimately only about that which is god for him.

Le courage d'être s'enracine dans le Dieu qui apparaît quand Dieu a disparu dans l'angoisse du doute.

Spiritual self-affirmation occurs in every moment in which man lives creatively in the various spheres of meaning.

Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the meaning of life.

God is always revived in something or somebody; He cannot be murdered. The story of every atheism is the same.

De moed van het vertrouwen neemt de angst voor het lot even goed als de angst voor de schuld in zich op. Deze moed zegt tot beide: "En toch."Dit is de ware betekenis van de leer der voorzienigheid. Voorzienigheid is geen theorie over zekere handelingen van God, maar het godsdienstig symbool van de moed van het vertrouwen ten aanzien van lot en dood. Want de moed van het vertrouwen zegt zelfs tot de dood: "En toch.

Faith cannot guarantee factual truth. But faith can and must interpret the meaning of facts from the point of view of man's ultimate concern. In doing so it transfers historical truth into the dimension of the truth of faith.

Man's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.

The vitality that can stand the abyss of meaninglessness is aware of a hidden meaning within the destruction of meaning.

Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life." Paul Tillich

The question our century puts before us is: is it possible to regain the lost dimension, the encounter with the Holy, the dimension which cuts through the world of subjectivity and objectivity and goes down to that which is not world but is the Mystery of the Ground of Being.

There is little need of mixing motives; human motives are always mixed, and what matters is what God makes of what the individual does, rather than the motives which lead one to do it.

In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.

Poetry is a separate language, or more specifically, a language within a language.

I have made a similar suggestion for poetry: that one should approach it as pure sonority, reading and rereading it as a sort of music, and should not introduce meanings or intentions into the diction before clearly grasping the system of sounds that every poem must offer on pain of nonexistence.

Ce qui n'est pas ineffable n'a aucune importance.

To summarize a poem or put it into prose is quite simply to misunderstand the essence of an art.

Sentimentul de a fi tot si evidenta de a nu fi nimic.