Quotes About Meaning

The truth as I see it is that people can both struggle and remain upbeat simultaneously, through even the most soul-testing of challenges. This doesn't mean they're in denial. Rather, it testifies to the remarkable ability of humankind to adapt, to seek meaning and kinship when confronted with adversity.

Love? ... It's at the heart of every story.

Don't say Fili, sister. Say Pili. In Tagalog, pili means to choose. Pino means fine. Pilipino equals 'fine choice.

The most insistently reductive, device-like models of living creatures, models that left their unmistakable mark on Darwinism,relied upon a theology, a supernatural power to provide meaning and purpose.

I don't ever really feel that wearing my wedding ring is what determines me being married or not.

Sometimes I wonder if, instead of falling madly in love, we should aspire to fall sanely in love. But then, what would be the point?

Once you've read too many trashy best-sellers, you begin to look for something with substance, something that attempts to define the universe.

The guilty pleasure defense. In my view if it's guilty, it ain't pleasure.

Sin amor, la humanidad no podría existir un día mas.

We believe ourselves to be motivated by self-interest and yet our lives are devoted to aims which are not our own

be aware of the fact that words, in and by themselves, have no reality, except in terms of the context in which they are used, in terms of the intentions and the character of the one who uses them.

Come potrebbe un uomo prigioniero nella ragnatela della routine ricordarsi che è un uomo, un individuo ben distinto, uno al quale è concessa un'unica occasione di vivere, con speranze e delusioni, dolori e timori, col desiderio di amare e il terrore della solitudine e del nulla?

Only in the love of those who do not serve a purpose, love begins to unfold.

As Simone Weil expressed it so beautifully:The same words can be commonplace or extraordinary according to the manner in which they are spoken. And this manner depends on the depth of the region in a man's being from which they proceed without the will being able to do anything. And by a marvelous agreement they reach the same region in him who hears them. Thus the hearer can discern, if he has any power of discernment, what is the value of the words.

the love for life, and not only the wish to remain alive

Man's brain lives in the twentieth century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself.

What is the goal of living? What is life's meaning for man? But is this really a meaningful question? Is there a reason for wanting to live, and would we rather not live if we had no such reason?

We need such an object of devotion in order to integrate our energies in one direction, to transcend our isolated existence, with all its doubts and insecurities, and to answer our need for a meaning to life.

Only if man masters society and subordinates the economic machine to the purposes of human happiness and only if he actively participates in the social process, can he overcome what now drives him into despair—his aloneness and his feeling of powerlessness. Man does not suffer so much from poverty today as he suffers from the fact that he has become a cog in a large machine, an automaton, that his life has become empty and lost its meaning.

As with all semantic difficulties, the answer can only be arbitrary.

?ovek ?e tragati za uto?ištem u crkvi i religiji, jer ga njegova unutrašnja praznina nagoni da potraži neko sklonište. Me?utim, ispovedanje religije nije isto, što i biti religiozan.

Modern man is starved for life.

the readiness to accept any ideology and any leader, if only he promises excitement and offers a political structure and symbols which allegedly give meaning and order to an individual's life. The despair of the human automaton is fertile soil for the political purposes of Fascism.

the meaning of freedom can be fully understood only on the basis of an analysis of the whole character structure of modern man.