Quotes About Meaning

Names have a mysterious transforming power. Like a ring on a finger, a name may at first seem merely accidental, committing you to nothing; but before you realize its magical power, it's gotten under your skin, become part of you and your destiny.

A word is nothing unless it has values and an atmosphere, unless you grasp its historical significance.

Without the extension and/or transcendence of self-love, survival is not the kind of survival that sets humans apart from the beasts (and--never forget it--the angels).

En otras palabras, el amor no encuentra su sentido en el ansia de cosas ya hechas, completas y terminadas, sino en el impulso de participar en la construcción de esas cosas. El amor está muy cercano a la trascendencia; es tan sólo otro nombre de impulso creativo, y por lo tanto, está cargado de riesgos, ya que toda creación ignora siempre cuál será su producto final

Después de todo, ¿qué diferencia hay entre vivir y dar explicaciones sobre la vida?

To quote from Le Délabrement de l'Occident of Cornelius Castoriadis, An autonomous society, a truly democratic society, is a society which questions everything that is pre-given and by the same token liberates the creation of new meanings.

La guerra oggi è pace, e la pace è guerra. Le belle e le brutte notizie durano poco, assumono quasi subito un significato ambiguo, perdono chiarezza: e anche se non ci sono guerre o altre calamità, l'industria della paura impedisce che se ne parli in modo non allarmistico. Le belle notizie non fanno più notizia. Le brutte notizie sono, per definizione, le notizie.

el amor no encuentra su sentido en el ansia de cosas ya hechas, completas y terminadas, sino en el impulso a participar en la construcción de esas cosas. El amor está muy cercano a la trascendencia; es tan sólo otro nombre del impulso creativo y, por lo tanto, está cargado de riesgos, ya que toda creación ignora siempre cuál será su producto final.

Los símbolos de decisiones identitarias grabados en el propio cuerpo sugieren, por el contrario, que la identidad que estos implican es, para el sujeto portador, un compromiso más serio y duradero, y no solo un capricho momentáneo. El tatuaje, milagro entre milagros, señala al mismo tiempo la estabilidad (tal vez incluso la irreversibilidad) intencional del compromiso y la libertad de elección que caracteriza la idea de derecho a la autodefinición y a su ejercicio.

el amor no encuentra su sentido en el ansia de cosas ya hechas, completas y terminadas, sino en el impulso a participar en la construcción de esas cosas.

In other words, it is not in craving after ready-made, complete and finished things that love finds its meaning ? but in the urge to participate in the becoming of such things. Love is akin to transcendence; it is but another name for creative drive and as such is fraught with risks, as all creation is never sure where it is going to end.

Postmodernity means the exhilarating freedom to pursue anything, yet mind-boggling uncertainty as to what is worth pursuing and in the name of what one should pursue it.

He hasn't earned your your mercy. Nessy replied, Mercy isn't earned. It's given.

not so much looking for the shape as being available to any shape that may be summoning itself through me from the self not mine but ours.

I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognized by burning. from A Poem is a Walk, Epoch 18 (Fall 1968): 114-19.

No verse of Scripture yields its meaning to lazy people.

I thought about dying. It seemed like the rational thing to kill myself. I thought of my parents. I knew I couldn't do it as long as they were alive. I thought of Rani needing me. I couldn't do it if someone needed me or loved me. Love was the only thing in my life. Everything else had already proven itself hollow and meaningless.

Happy, for instance, once meant luck. Not good luck or bad, just luck. Look what we have done to ourselves. We think we can actually pursue happiness.

If it isn't life and death, it isn't life and death.

was between lives. "What is it?" I asked. "What is it we are longing for?" He thought a minute and said, "There isn't any it. There is just the longing for it." This sounded exactly right. Years later and a little wiser, I know what the longing was for: here is where I belong.

But we're all looking for the place we belong. And what is home, anyway, but what we cobble together out of our changing selves? Maybe there isn't any it, as my friend said, only the longing.

Part of what I've learned is that if it isn't life and death, it isn't life and death.

The only way to contain catastrophe is to cordon it off with dates, but the numbers mean nothing. If I think instead of how much dust would have settled on Rich's bureau, then I can feel it. There is nothing like dust.

But we're all looking for the place we belong. And what is home, anyway, but what we cobble together out of our changing selves? Maybe there isn't any it, as my friend said, only the longing