Quotes About Meaning

I get tired of people talking about ''bad words'' and ''bad language''. Bullshit! It's the context that makes them good or bad.

People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point.

We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves.

What a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of divine power against evil- widening the skirts of light and making the struggle woth darkness narrower.

Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable

That is beautiful mysticism, it is a—" "Please not to call it by any name," said Dorothea, putting out her hands entreatingly. "You will say it is Persian, or something geographical. It is my life. I have found it out and cannot part with it.

Are you beginning to dislike slang, then?" said Rosamond with mild gravity. "Only the wrong sort. All choice of words is slang. It marks a class." "There is correct English; that is not slang." "I beg your pardon; correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

Perhaps I feel about you as the artist does about the scene over which his soul has brooded with love: he would tremble to see it confided to other hands; he would never believe that it could bear for another all the meaning and the beauty it bears for him.

Nature has her language, and she is not unveracious; but we don't know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in a hasty reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning.

There are faces which charge with a meaning and pathos not belonging to the single human soul that flutters beneath them, but speaking the joys and sorrows of foregone generations -- eyes that tell of deep love which doubtless has been and is somewhere, but not paired with these eyes -- perhaps paired with pale eyes that can say nothing; just as a national language may be instinct with poetry unfelt by the lips that use it.

The story can be told without many words.

When a tender affection has been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives.

That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil—widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.

He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without reflection. Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.

Direction! I know very well what you mean by direction. When there's a bigger maggot than usual in your head you call it 'direction

our tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before general intentions can be brought to bear.

I used to think I could never bear life if it kept on being the same every day, and I must always be doing things of no consequence and never know anything greater.

was something very new and strange in his life that these few words of trust from a woman should be so much to him.

by their brevity when Dorothea had to

The lines and lights of the human countenance are like other symbols,–not always easy to read without a key.

He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without reflection. Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.