Quotes About Meaning

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

He was interested in the sudden friendship between two women so apparently dissimilar as Miss Bartlett and Miss Lavish. They were always in each other's company, with Lucy a slighted third. Miss Lavish he believed he understood, but Miss Bartlett might reveal unknown depths of strangeness, though not, perhaps, of meaning.

A story tells us what happened, but a plot tells us why

Io amo la Morte... non per morbosità, ma perché spiega. Mi mostra la vanità del Denaro. Morte e Denaro sono gli eterni nemici. Non Morte e Vita. Non importa quello che c'è dietro la Morte, signor Bast, ma stia certo che il poeta, il musicista e il vagabondo saranno in essa più felici dell'uomo che non ha mai imparato a dire: io sono io.

but it seemed iniquitous that anyone should mispronounce the name of the man who was more to him than all the world

The term Judeo-Christianity does nothing but muddle two things that need to be distinguished, probably the intent of the word from the beginning.

Is there some esoteric meaning behind the titles?

all questions of interpretation are, in the end, questions about application,

If there were no God, we would have to invent one to keep people sane."*

When they go fishing, it is not really fish they are after. It is a philosophic meditation.

Your father is the first person to tell me that I am lovely who seemed to mean it. The only people who've told me that before were ones who think they're supposed to flatter a princess' 'I think you're lovely,' murmured Eadric. 'Only because you love me,' I said. 'Hmm,' he said, kissing me before I could say anything else.

What the foul fiend is the meaning of all this?

One Egyptian word for sculptor was actually 'He-who-keeps-alive.

I remember holding her in my arms and absolving God of meaninglessness.

If you let yourself go I am sure you are sensible. . . . You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By understanding George you may learn to understand yourself.

Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today, and when you say of a thing that 'nothing hangs on it,' it sounds like blasphemy. There's never any knowing—(how am I to put it?)—which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won't have things hanging on it for ever.

You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.

Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man.

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

But that some sonatas of Beethoven are written tragic no one can gainsay; yet they can triumph or despair as the player decides, and Lucy had decided that they should triumph.

My conviction," says the mystic, "gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it," and they had agreed that there was something beyond life's daily grey.

Give me life, with its struggles and victories, with its failures and hatreds, with its deep moral meaning and its unknown goal!

This constant reference to genius is another characteristic of the pseudo-scholar. He loves mentioning genius, because the sound of the word exempts him from discovering its meaning.

S]he might yet reveal depths of strangeness, if not of meaning.