Quotes About Meaning

A tendancy to melancholy...let it be observed, is a misfortune, not a fault.

In the end, it's not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years

We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.

Make something beautiful of your life.

If one is not a human being, what is one?

The story's what matters; spelling's overrated.

Sometimes all a story needed was one or two people to read or listen to it to make it matter.

The flattening of language is a flattening of meaning. Language which is not taut with a sense of its own significance, which is apologetic in its desire to be acceptable to a modern consciousness, language in other words which submits to its audience, rather than instructing, informing, moving, challenging and even entertaining them, is no longer a language which can carry the freight the Bible requires. It has, in short, lost all authority.

And there are some parts of the King James Bible, particularly in the dense and difficult passages of Paul's Epistles, that are now, and to some extent were then, virtually unintelligible. A famous example is 2 Corinthians 6:11–13: O yee Corinthians, our mouth is open vnto you, our heart is enlarged. Yee are not straitened in vs, but yee are straitened in your owne bowels. Nowe for a recompense in the same, (I speake as vnto my children) be ye also inlarged.

I imagine a soul is a little perfect crystal egg floating in your chest. Somewhere deeper than where they put your heart. Somewhere so deep inside that the doctors can't find it with all their machines and microcameras.

Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and the lightning bug, and people think he was good, right ? Didn't write any decent characters, as far as I can tell, but otherwise fine.

So why the pelican? Said Haskoll. The thief was giving Haskoll a look that said, Man, why NOT the pelican?

Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and the lightning bug, and people think he was good, right? Didn't write any decent girl characters, as far as I can tell, but otherwise fine. The

Walks all ass straw.' 'I beg your pardon?' 'The car. A classic. Ass-straw translates as star, I believe.

Deader than a coffin nail, because a coffin nail is still performing useful work, and so in one sense is as alive as it's ever been. Dead as hope. Dead as our financial affairs. Gone.

Whatever language Death speaks is not ours; and most of us spend no time acquiring the complex grammar, in which every verb is irregular and only the past tense obtains, until it is too late

Strands of his soul were escaping out of his mouth

Man seeks ecstasy and transcendence, and if he cannot find them in church, he will look for them elsewhere.

I remember, but you see, that doesn't work for me. I say life is given meaning by context. There are no individual selves. There are only humans embedded in practices, places, cultures.

Take nothing and no one for granted. Time used to be my friend, and now it's a skittish acquaintance at best. Let life unfold, say what you mean. You can't always think about what you've lost, or what you don't have, or what you didn't get. Because when you do that, you're missing out on the now. You can't know if you'll be here tomorrow or a year from now.

Giacomina had taught her daughter that you must dig constantly for meaning in the sorrow of this life, and that this sorrow must galvanize you, not define you.

Having a purpose is the little secret of the nonpretties. Something to do always beats something to look at.

If you look around to find meaning in everything that happens, you will end up disappointed. Sometimes there aren't reasons behind the terrible things that go on. I ask myself, If I knew all the answers, would it help?

Beware the things of this world that can mean everything or nothing. Ciro