Quotes About Meaning

Roland Barthes

Wie ein schlechter Konzertsaal ist auch der affektive Raum mit toten Winkeln durchsetzt, in die der Klang nicht mehr hineinreicht. Ist der vollkommene Gesprächspartner, der Freund, also nicht der, der in ihrem Umkreis die größtmögliche Resonanz schafft? Laßt sich Freundschaft nicht als ein Raum totaler Klangfülle beschreiben?

Money, of course, is still needed to survive, but time is what you need to live. So, save what little money you possess to meet basic survival requirements, but spend your time lavishly in order to create the life values that make the fire worth the candle. Dig?

One story, perhaps apocryphal, claims that when Hamilton was asked why the framers omitted the word God from the Constitution, he replied, "We forgot.

His eloquence . . . seemed to require opposition to give it its full force.

I shall conclude [by] saying I wish there was a war. Alex. Hamilton.

Since money meant nothing to them, they had to stress the sentimental value of gifts.

This treasured gift retained a secret meaning for Eliza, for it had been a tacit gesture of solidarity from Washington when her husband was ensnared in the first major sex scandal in American history. The

Till the very end, he saw the producers' outrage against him as shot through with envy and hypocrisy.

It doesn't matter what we call your soul, Daddy Moses said, smiling at me. What matters is where it travels and who it uplifts.

To argue that, in a universe in which there seems to be no purpose, our existence is without meaning or value is unparalleled solipsism, as it suggests that without us the universe is worthless. The greatest gift that science can give us is to allow us to overcome our need to be the center of existence even as we learn to appreciate the wonder of the accident we are privileged to witness.

Whenever one asks "Why?" in science, one actually means "How?". "Why?" is not really a sensible question in science because it usually implies purpose and, as anyone who has been the parent of a small child knows, one can keep on asking "Why?" forever, no matter what the answer to the previous question. Ultimately, the only way to end the conversation seems to be to say "Because!

If the universe doesn't care about us and if we're an accident in a remote corner of the universe, in some sense it makes us more precious. The meaning in our lives is provided by us; we provide our own meaning.

For most people, the central questions of existence ultimately come down to transcendental ones: Why is there a universe at all? Why are we here? Whatever presumptions one might bring to the question Why?, if we understand the how better, why will come into sharper focus.

Why is there a universe at all? Why are we here?

Science fiction invites the writer to grandly explore alternative worlds and pose questions about meaning and destiny. Inventing plausible new realities is what the genre is all about. One starts from a hypothesis and then builds out the logic, adding detail and incident to give substance to imaginary structures. In that respect, science fiction and theology have much in common.

Maybe it was Roumiya's beauty that drove me away, her silent beauty, her eyes that seemed to be looking through everythig and draining it of all meaning.

Deshaced ese verso, quitadle los caireles de la rima, el metro, la cadencia y hasta la idea misma. Aventad las palabras, y si queda algo todavía, eso será la poesía.

Hence 8197. He liked 97 because it was the largest two-digit prime number, and he loved 81 because it was absolutely the only number out of all the literally infinite possibilities whose square root was also the sum of its digits. Square root of eighty-one was nine, and eight and one made nine. No other nontrivial number in the cosmos had that kind of sweet symmetry. Perfect.

The problem with getting your rights abused was that somebody had to witness it for it to mean anything. Somebody had to see it happen.

This gentleman is heading for Mineral County in West Virginia. Near a place called Keyser, not too far from the Maryland line." Which all meant nothing to Reacher, except that West Virginia sounded one step better than regular Virginia.

Like a Zen question: If you put on a show, and nobody comes, have you in fact put on a show at all?

Which is what the phrase means these days, I suppose, now that the whole parturition business has been institutionalized.

His accent was local, and his tone was flat, and the way he said sir was deliberately neutral, as if he was really saying I'm obliged to use this word, but I don't mean it.