Quotes About Meaning

Ein Kunstwerk ist gut, wenn es aus Notwendigkeit entstand.

do not believe that he who is seeking to comfort you lives effortlessly among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much trouble and sadness and remains far behind you. But were it otherwise, he could never have found those words.

How dear will you be to me then, you nights of affliction. Why couldn't I kneel more deeply and accept you, inconsolable sisters, or lose myself more freely in your loosened hair. We spendthrifts of sorrows. How we scan beyond them ahead into sad duration to see if perhaps they might have an end. But they are truly our winter-hardy foliage, the dark green of our life's meaning, one season of our secret year—, not only time—, but also place, settlement, shelter, soil, abode.

Ask yourself, dear Mr. Kappus, whether you really have lost God? Is it not rather, that you have never yet possessed him? For when should that have been? Do you not believe that a child can hold him, him whom men bear only with effort and whose weight compresses the old? Do you believe that anyone who really has him could lose him like a little stone, or do you not think rather that whoever had him could only be lost by him?

A work of art is good if it has grown out of necessity.

In later years it would sometimes happen that I'd wake up at night and see the stars so real in the sky and so meaningful in their course, and couldn't understand how anyone could bring themselves to miss so much of the world.

A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity.

Finally, after weeks of daily resistance, one finds oneself somewhat composed again, even though still a bit confused, and one says to oneself: No, there is not more beauty here than in other places, and all these objects, which have been marveled at by generation after generation, mended and restored by the hands of workmen, mean nothing, are nothing, and have no heart and no value; — but there is much beauty here, because everywhere there is much beauty

Mümkün müdür tüm gerçeklikler onlar için bir anlam ifade etmesin; mümkün müdür hayatlar? boÅŸ odalardaki saatler gibi hiçbirÅŸeye baÄŸlanmadan geçsin?

Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism.

Nothing can touch a work of art less than critical words; all that comes of that are more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things are not as easy to understand and say as we might prefer to believe; most events are inexpressible, happening in a space where no word has ever set foot, and most inexpressible of all are works of art, mysterious existences, whose life continues as ours passes away.

But they are difficult things with which we have been charged; almost everything serious is difficult, and everything is serious.

Sein Sinn ist Zwiespalt. An der Kreuzung zweier Herzwege steht kein Tempel für Apoll.

A piece of art is good if it is born of necessity. This, its source, is its criterion; there is no other.

Forschen Sie jetzt nicht nach den Antworten, die Ihnen nicht gegeben werden können, weil Sie sie nicht leben könnten. Und es handelt sich darum, alles zu leben. Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen. Vielleicht leben Sie dann allmählich, ohne es zu merken, eines fernen Tages in die Antwort hinein.

How we waste our afflictions! We study them, stare out beyond them into bleak continuance, hoping to glimpse some end. Whereas they're really our wintering foliage, our dark greens of meaning, one of the seasons of the clandestine year -- ; not only a season --: they're site, settlement, shelter, soil, abode.

when faced with a clash of constitutional principle and a line of unreasoned cases wholly divorced from the text, history, and structure of our founding document, we should not hesitate to resolve the tension in favor of the Constitution's original meaning.

Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question.

But we are all human, I thought, wondering what I meant.

And I defend because in spite of all I find that I love. In order to get some of it down I have to love. I sell you no phony forgiveness, I'm a desperate man – but too much of your life will be lost, its meaning lost, unless you approach it as much through love as through hate. So I approach it through division so I denounce and I defend and I hate and I love.

At best Americans give but a limited attention to history. Too much happens too rapidly, and before we can evaluate it, or exhaust its meaning or pleasure, there is something new to concern us. Ours is the tempo of the motion picture, not that of the still camera, and we waste experience as we wasted the forest.

Do they come to bury the others or to be entombed to give life or to receive it?

I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of all I find that I love. In order to get some of it down I have to love... too much of your life will be lost, its meaning lost, unless you approach it as much through love as through hate.

The work of art is, after all, an act of faith in our ability to communicate symbolically.