Quotes About Meaning

It may be objected that the meaning of names can guide us at most only to the opinions, possibly the foolish and groundless opinions, which mankind have formed concerning things, and that as the object of philosophy is truth, not opinion, the philosopher should dismiss words and look into things themselves, to ascertain what questions can be asked and answered in regard to them.

For obvious reasons, the relationship between novelists, the reviewing establishment and critics in general is chronically, and often acutely, edgy. A kind of low-intensity warfare prevails, with outbreaks of savagery. It is partly an ownership issue. Who, other than its creator, is to say what a work of fiction means or is worth? It can take years to write a novel and only a few hours for a critic, or a reviewer rushing for a tight deadline, to trash it.

Why read literature? Because it enriches life in ways that nothing else quite can. It makes us more human.

Restless, he begs for storms, As though in storms there is rest. It

Speaking of photography Baudelaire said: "This industry, by invading the territories of art, has become art's most mortal enemy." And in his own terms of reference Baudelaire was half right; certainly the new medium could not satisfy old standards. The photographer must find new ways to make his meaning clear.

If I cannot have a religion that will lead me to God, and place me en rapport with him, and unfold to my mind the principles of immortality and eternal life, I want nothing to do with it.

The lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Years of bells will condition all but the strongest to a world that no longer offer important work to do. Bells destroy the past and future, rendering every interval the same as any other, as the abstraction of a map renders every living mountain and river the same, even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with significance.

Without clear awareness of the short arc of life, nothing means very much.

Individuality, family, and community are, by definition, expressions of singular organization, never of "one-right-way" thinking on the grand scale. Children and families need some relief from government surveillance and intimidation if original expressions belonging to THEM are to develop. Without these freedom has no meaning.

To understand this Christmas record, you have to understand our ministry.

It's at this point—the purchase—as you may know, that the problem begins. The book is excellent, yes, but the author and the cuisine remain on one side of the page and I on the other. All I get are the recipes. And what I've found—and it's been a painfully long time learning—is that recipes without the author, without the cuisine to which they were once a living, seamless part, die. Or, rather, become no more and no less than any other recipe.

Most of American life is driving somewhere and then driving back wondering why the hell you went.

The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion.

Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life.

We are fated to love one another; we hardly exist outside our love, we are just animals without it, with a birth and a death and constant fear between. Our love has lifted us up, out of the dreadfulness of merely living.

Hay personas que no tienen poesía en sus almas.

Showmanship, that's what it was. What kind of a God would need it?

Where's the romance in life? Tell somebody your epitaph and what do you get? Jokes.

I thought Earth was a fable for the young, spun out around campfires. And I thought Earth beings to be Titanides.

If it's not worth making beautiful," Valiha said, "it's not worth making.

The English language was a delight to them, so illogical and fertile and well-suited to their natural desire to confuse, obfuscate, and generally side-step clear meaning whenever possible.

Yes, but what is it good for? What does it mean?" Her look was full of pity. "If you have to ask that question, you wouldn't understand the answer.

I have nothing to say. And I am saying it. That's poetry.

What is it now, pilgrim… your conscience?