Quotes About Meaning

One day I had the paradoxical realization that humanity's search for meaning seduces it back into the world of thought and struggle, while pure sensing returns everything to the flow of Divinity. Suddenly the phrase "come to your senses!" is strikingly clear.

Hill gave her a ring in which were etched the words "Je t'aime." As Sylvanus Thayer, the father of West Point, had said so long ago, all the important things are written in French.

For as 'Wright's Ninth Rule of Writing' states, every story teaches a moral, whether intended by the author or not.

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.

The usefulness of the useless is good news for artists, for art serves no useful purpose. It has to do with changing minds and spirits.

I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry.

I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry as I need it.

Life and Death are just things you do when you're bored. - Fear (is a Man's Best Friend)

With respect to ceremonies, there is some appearance of a change having taken place; but it was only the use of them that was abolished, for their meaning was more fully confirmed. The coming of Christ has taken nothing away even from ceremonies, but, on the contrary, confirms them by exhibiting the truth of shadow.

it is the peculiar privilege of the Church, to know what the   Divine judgments mean, and what is their tendency.

Greeks receives the name of   ethelobreskeia -- the term which Paul here makes use of. He has,   however, an eye to the etymology of the term, for ethelobreskeia   literally denotes a voluntary service, which men choose for themselves   at their own option, without authority from God.

When Calvin protested against allegorizing, he was protesting not against finding a spiritual meaning in a passage, but against finding one that was not there. The

He gave   the tree of life its name, not because it could confer on man that life   with which he had been previously endued, but in order that it might be   a symbol and memorial of the

What is said of the law applies to the whole of Scripture: when it is not directed toward Christ as its one aim, it is tortured badly and twisted.

If I were inclined to compile a whole volume from Augustine, I could easily show my readers, that I need no words but his.

It is, indeed, true for pagans that the greatest blessing is not to be born, and the next, to die immediately.

Many people are in fact living with a diminished sense of meaning, and they struggle to fill the void within them by frantically pursuing power, money, pleasure, thrills, mind-altered states, or the latest psychic fad. Yet these compulsive cravings only serve to reveal the lack of purpose in their lives, poor substitutes for a life built around authentic purpose and genuine meaning.

Art is the triumph over chaos.

The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness.

The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness.

I write to make sense of my life." -John Cheever, quoted in _Cheever - A Life_ (2009) by Blake Bailey

Poetry lies its way to the truth.

To read a poem with no thought in mind but to paraphrase it into a single, simple and usually high-minded prose statement is the destruction of poetry.

You don't have to suffer to be a poet