Quotes About Meaning

Does any piece of writing speak for itself? Or do we impose certain values and judgements on that text when interpreting it?

we are free to interpret and reinterpret the meaning of our lives.

I would argue that no approach to a text is without method—even what you would call literalism and what I call "vacuous literalism." (In

And then came the insight that irrevocably transformed my sense of how good human life could be. I was feeling boundless love for one of my best friends, and I suddenly realized that if a stranger had walked through the door at that moment, he or she would have been fully included in this love. Love was at bottom impersonal—and deeper than any personal history could justify. Indeed, a transactional form of love—I love you because. . . —now made no sense at all.

Ceaseless change is an unreliable basis for lasting fulfillment. Realizing this, many people begin to wonder whether a deeper source of well-being exists. Is there a form of happiness beyond the mere repetition of pleasure and avoidance of pain?

I invite you to try to think of a source of value that has absolutely nothing to do with the (actual or potential) experience of conscious beings. Take a moment to think about what this would entail: whatever this alternative is, it cannot affect the experience of any creature (in this life or in any other). Put this thing in a box, and what you have in that box is—it would seem, by definition—the least interesting thing in the universe.

viable path to God

it is in believing one thing while intending to communicate another that every lie is born.

Is this what Principal Fontana meant by the phrase 'well-rounded'? It's fucking spherical, Catamounts.

we can't see are the only things that make life worth living.

I don't think that I am happy, but then again, I don't know. Sometimes I get so caught up in the process of living-- of eating, dressing, taking the train to work, that I don't give it enough thought. Maybe happiness is being content. But is it really?

An eye here, lips there, all misplaced and disjointed, all make sense.

The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.

Language is the dress of thought.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

Fiction cannot move so much, but that the attention may be easily transferred; and though it must be allowed that pleasing melancholy be sometimes interrupted by unwelcome levity, yet let it be considered likewise, that melancholy is often not pleasing, and that the disturbance of one man may be the relief of another; that different auditors have different habitudes; and that, upon the whole, all pleasure consists in variety.

AC  (AC) AK, or AKE. Being initials in the names of places, as  Acton, signify an oak, from the Saxon ac, an oak. Gibson's Camden.

To AFFORD  (AFFO'RD)   v.a.[affourrer, affourrager, Fr.]1. To yield or produce; as, the soil affords grain; the trees afford fruits. This seems to be the primitive signification.2. To

Shakespeare regarded more the series of ideas, than of words; and his language, not being designed for the reader's desk, was all that he desired it to be, if it conveyed his meaning to the audience.

ANTIPHRASIS  (ANTI'PHRASIS)   n.s.[from    against, and uq  a form of speech.]The use of words in a sense opposite to their proper meaning. You now find no cause to repent, that you never dipt your hands in the bloody high courts of justice, so called only by antiphrasis.South'sDedication to hisSermons.

There were so many days, so many chapters in my life, and yet when it came down to it, if memories were objects to be saved from a fire, there would be only one or two I'd reach for before leaving the burning house.

Gomers," said Howie, "gomers are what's going on." "You mean old people? We took care of old people too." "Gomers are different," said Eddie. "They didn't exist when you were a tern, 'cause then they used to die. Now they don't." "Ridiculous," said the Leggo emphatically

wasn't dementia a fail-safe and soothing oblivion of the machine to its own decay?