Quotes About Meaning

The question is what is the question?

As for the Homeland, it had another meaning which had nothing to do with geographical place. It concerned not where you lived but how you lived, for, in effect, it defined a way of thinking, of looking at things.

A kind of joy came upon him, as if borne in on a summer breeze. He dimly recalled that he had been thinking of failure-as if it mattered. It seemed to him now that such thoughts were mean, unworthy of what his life had been.

Between the brutality that would sacrifice a single innocent life to a fear without a name, and the enlightenment that would sacrifice thousands of lives to a fear that we have named, I have found little to choose.

he said no more and hoped that his silence was less compromising than were his explanations.

He had come to that moment in his age when there occurred to him, with increasing intensity, a question of such overwhelming simplicity that he had no means to face it. He found himself wondering if his life were worth the living; if it had ever been. It was a question, he suspected, that came to all men at one time or another; he wondered if it came to them with such impersonal force as it came to him. The

He felt vaguely that he would be leaving something behind, something that might have been precious to him, had he been able to know what it was.

If I were asked to answer, in one sentence, the question 'What was Wittgenstein's biggest contribution to philosophy', I should answer 'His asking of the question "Can one play chess without the Queen?

Your Tim is so unmistakably a healthy extravert type. Mens stulta in corpore sano, and all that." "Exactly," she agreed.

When people live their lives by their beliefs objective reality is almost irrelevant. 'That's

Some quotations," said Zellaby, "are greatly improved by lack of context.

Knowing makes all the difference... It's the difference between just trying to keep alive, and having something to live for

I don't want to be overly dramatic about it, but I think people more and more wonder, is this living, or are we just going through the motions? What's happening? Is everything being leached out of life? Is the whole texture and values and everything kind of draining away?

To symbolize is to express time consciousness, for the symbol embodies the structure of time

In the best stories that sense comes through: it is what it is.

But I did not go back to sleep. I stayed awake and I thought: We all live with people—and places—and things—that we have given great weight to. But we are weightless, in the end.

I have also paid some attention to what language can tell us. Messages perish as they are uttered, but language itself is remarkably durable. Sometimes it preserves useful clues to a more abstract and thought-oriented part of the human past than material artifacts do.

It is so hard trying to say what you mean.

I love the story of a thing. I love a thing for what it means a thousand times more than for what it's worth.

That is all I want in life: for this pain to seem purposeful.

What right had she to oppose him? Yet it was he who had given her freedom. The word was meaningless unless in its light each one lived up to his highest and his best.

Homes should mean something to us humans. They are a basic instinct. A home, with a life that centers only on food and sleep, is not really a home, it's a house. Beauty and graciousness, joy of living, being used in every part, these are the things that make a house a home. (chapter header quote from Popular Home Decorations, 1940)

Homes should mean something to us humans. They are a basic instinct. A home, with a life that centers only on food and sleep, is not really a home, it's a house. Beauty and graciousness, joy of living, being used in every part, these are the things that make a house a home.

I mean, pain really should count for something, don't you think? Considering how much it hurts.