Quotes About Meaning

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.

"In God We Trust." It is the choicest compliment that has ever been paid us, and the most gratifying to our feelings. It is simple, direct, gracefully phrased: it always sounds well In God We Trust. I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true. And in a measure it is true half the nation trusts in Him. That half has decided it.

In the post-Cold War world flags count and so do other symbols of cultural identity, including crosses, crescents, and even head coverings, because culture counts, and cultural identity is what is most meaningful to most people.

It's a very new, not to mention vulgar, idea that the spectator's experience should be identical to, or even have anything to do with, the artist's

If the situation of a technological society was such that there could be no direct relation between a man's work and his modus vivendi, other than money, at least he must feel that he is directly changing things by his work, shaping things, making things that weren't there before, moving things from one place to another. He must exert energy in his work and see these changes occur with his own eyes. Otherwise he would feel his life was futile.

It's only when all one knows of life is abstracted and used as an underlining statement of significant patterning that you have what is both beautiful and permanent.

We are the ink in which are written other messages that we cannot even understand.

Truth is what's important in the world. But is what's important always the truth?

And on the worlds of five galaxies, now, people delve your imagery and meaning for the answers to the riddles of language, love, and isolation." The three words jumped his sentence like vagabonds on a boxcar.

Why? Well, most textbooks say language is a mechanism for expressing thought, Mocky. But language is thought. Thought is information given form. The form is language. The form of this language is … amazing." "What amazes you?" "Mocky, when you learn another tongue, you learn the way another people see the world, the universe." He nodded. "And as I see into this language, I begin to see … too much." "It sounds very poetical.

But I realized something. About art. And psychiatry. They're both self-perpetuating systems. Like religion. All three of them promise you a sense of inner worth and meaning, and spend a lot of time telling you about the suffering you have to go through to achieve it.

an individual was a type of thing for which symbols were inadequate, and so names were invented.

What do you want to change in the world?" she continued her recitation, looking away. "What do you want to preserve? What is the thing you're searching for? What are you running away from?" "Nothing," he said. "And nothing. And nothing. And…nothing, at least that I know.

Rydra, when I look at the night and stars, it is only a passive act, but you are active even watching, and halo the stars with more luminous flame.

Sometimes you want to say things, and you're missing an idea to make them with, and missing a word to make the idea with. In the beginning was the word. That's how somebody tried to explain it once. Until something is named, it doesn't exist.

Poetry is what is avoided as it is surrounded by translation.

It is a magic book. Words mean things. When you put them together they speak. Yes, sometimes they flatten out and nothing they say is real, and that is one kind of magic. But sometimes a vision will rip up from them and shriek and clank wings clear as the sweat smudge on the paper under your thumb. And that is another kind.

Sometimes you want to say things, and you're missing an idea to make them with, and missing a word to make the idea with. In the beginning was the word. That's how somebody tried to explain it once. Until something is named, it doesn't exist.

But I realized something. About art. And psychiatry. They're both self-perpetuating systems. Like religion. All three of them promise you a sense of inner worth and meaning, and spend a lot of time telling you about the suffering you have to go through to achieve it.

How soon will some few years pass away, and then when the day is ended, and this life's lease expired, what have men of the world's glory, but dreams and thoughts? O happy soul for evermore, who can rightly compare this life with that long-lasting life to come, and can balance the weighty glory of the one with the light golden vanity of the other.

It is not then how much a man may know that is of importance, but the end and purpose for which he knows it (p.299).

In looking at objects of Nature while I am thinking, as at yonder moon dim-glimmering through the dewy window-pane, I seem rather to be seeking, as it were asking for, a symbolical language for something within me that already and forever exists, than observing anything new.

I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance.

The artist must imitate that which is within the thing, that which is active through form and figure, and discourses to us by symbols.