Quotes About Meaning

The books I liked became a Bible from which I drew advice and support; they created a kind of communion between myself and those twin souls which existed somewhere out of reach.

To exist genuinely is not to deny this spontaneous movement of my transcendence, but only to refuse to lose myself in it.

Le nihiliste a raison de penser que le monde no possède aucune justification et que lui-même n'est rien; mais il oublie qu'il lui appartient de justifier le monde et de se faire exister valablement.

I got the desire to write very young, at fourteen or fifteen years of age … I endured the world which was given to me sometimes with joy, often with revolt or boredom; I wanted to make it mine in order to justify it in some way. So I thought I had everything to say: the whole world, life, everything. In my youthful, adolescent diaries, at eighteen, nineteen years old, this leitmotif appears over and over: I will say everything, I have everything to say.

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, and compassion.

A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless.

There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.

Chaque être crie en silence pour être lu autrement.

Existence is not an end in itself but merely the framework upon which all good, both real and imagined, may be built.

Nothing is so beautiful and wonderful, nothing is so continually fresh and surprising, so full of sweet and perpetual ecstacy, as the good. No desert is so dreary, monotonous, and boring as evil. This is the truth about authentic good and evil. With fictional good and evil it is the other way round. Fictional good is boring and flat, while fictional evil is varied and intriguing, attractive, profound, and full of charm.

Le triomphe de l'art est de conduire à autre chose que soi.

God alone is capable of loving God. We can only consent to give up our own feelings so as to allow free passage in our soul for this love. That is the meaning of denying oneself. We are created for this consent, and for this alone.

If we apply to the present the point of that desire within us which corresponds to finality, it pierces right through to the eternal.

The fact of dying for what is strong robs death of its bitterness—and at the same time of all its value.

Ceux qui ont dit jusqu'ici que les applications sont le but de la science voulaient dire que la vérité ne vaut pas la peine d'être cherchée et que le succès seul importe ;

What we love is perfect joy itself. When we know this, even hope becomes superfluous, it no longer has any meaning. The only thing left to hope for is the grace not to be disobedient here below. The rest is the affair of God alone and does not concern us.

Las mismas palabras [por ejemplo, un hombre dice a su mujer, te amo] pueden ser triviales o extraordinarias según la forma en que se digan. Y esa forma depende de la profundidad de la región en el ser de un hombre de donde procedan, sin que la voluntad pueda hacer nada. Y, por un maravilloso acuerdo, alcanzan la misma región en quien las escucha. De tal modo, el que escucha puede discernir, si tiene alguna capacidad de discernimiento, cuál es el valor de las palabras.

To say that the world is not worth anything, that this life is of no value and to give evil as the proof is absurd, for if these things are worthless what does evil take from us?

No existe elección de remedios. Solamente existe uno, uno solo. Una sola cosa hace soportable la monotonía, una luz de eternidad: es la belleza.

Those who believe they have discerned the particular designs of Providence resemble professors who give themselves to what they call 'explication of the text' at the expense of a beautiful poem.

Il faut avoir eu par la joie la révélation de la réalité pour trouver la réalité dans la souffrance. Autrement la vie n'est qu'un rêve plus ou moins mauvais. Il faut parvenir à trouver une réalité plus pleine encore dans la souffrance qui est néant et vide. De même il faut aimer beaucoup la vie pour aimer encore davantage la mort.

To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.

We need to be cautious in using language in a pejorative way. Words ending in -ism and -ist seem to lend themselves to emotive rather than descriptive use.

there are no new heresies, it seems, only old ones masquerading as new.