Quotes About Meaning

He was driven to use the prerogatives of his profession, to act the parson.

Your soul, dear Lucy! I hate the word now, because of all the cant with which superstition has wrapped it round. But we have souls, and I see you ruining yours. I cannot bear it.

To them Howards End was a house; they could not know that to her it had been a spirit, for which she sought a spiritual heir.

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.

Indeed, he was sensitive rather than responsive. In every remark he found a meaning, but not always the true meaning, and his life, though vivid, was largely a dream.

Her life, he saw, was without meaning. To what purpose was her diplomacy, her insincerity, her continued repression of vigour? Did they make any one better or happier? Did they even bring happiness to herself? Harriet with her gloomy peevish creed, Lilia with her clutches after pleasure, were after all more divine than this well-ordered, active, useless machine.

Yes, Bush spouted a bunch of religious crap, but at least he didn't believe in it. Give the man a beer. Sometimes hypocrisy is better than faith.

We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we've established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile.

The man of character, sensitive to the meaning of what he is doing, will know how to discover the ethical paths in the maze of possible behavior." - Earl Warren

If thinking wants to think God, then it must endeavor to tell stories.

No atheism simply falls from heaven.

Humans are incapable of functioning and living together without a good story to bind them and keep a certain set of values intact. That's why the lack of a story in neoliberalism, the lack of meaning and cause, can be unbearable for the human mind.

I wanted to be like her because she mattered.

Even if it all ultimately means nothing, you've got to play the game not only for yourself but for the people you love.

Maybe life didn't make sense but then it was our business, I guess, to impose meaning on it.

because no matter how we try to explain it—through religion or randomness, it doesn't matter—existence just doesn't seem to make any sense.

I had a philosophy instructor at the U of I say that the only question that mattered in all of philosophy was Verlaine's "Why are we born to suffer and die?

Life has no meaning but what we give it. I wish a few more of ye would give it a little.

Life has no meaning but what we give it. I wish a few more of ye would give it a little.- Elminster of Shadowdale

I don't know what the life force is and don't have any use for religion. I do know that in the war business, the light you have grows a little weaker each time you deal in death.

a page is not a four sided white void in which to practice zeroness.

Everything created in the world should be seen in the context of existing for God's glory.

if you can control the stories a culture tells about itself, you can control who they are.

What we put in and leave out of our stories tells us something about who we are.