Quotes About Meaning

Do I look like someone who has something to do here on earth?" —That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities.

Ne se suicident que les optimistes qui ne peuvent plus l'être. Les autres, n'ayant aucune raison de vivre, pourquoi en auraient-ils de mourir ?

History: a context in which the capital letters decompose, and with them, the men who imagine and cherish them.

For every discomfort is only an abortive metaphysical experience.

Poem, novel, essay, play—everything seems too long. The writer—it is his function—always says more than he has to say: he swells his thought and swathes it with words.

Si la Historia tuviera una finalidad, que lamentable sería el destino de quienes no hemos hecho nada en la vida. Pero en medio del absurdo general, nos alzamos triunfadores, piltrafas ineficaces, canallas orgullosos de haber tenido razón.

Art is not simply an external ornament donned by the cult to conceal its excessively harsh and austere side; rather the cult has an aesthetic aspect in itself.

A ciência pode perfeitamente nos dizer de que maneira as causas produzem seus efeitos, não que finalidades devem ser buscadas; ela observa, explica, mas não julga: o bem e o mal não existem para ela.

Religion is in a word the system of symbols by means of which society becomes conscious of itself.

What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?

It has been a long time since philosophers have read men's souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we must not be surprised if they no longer matter much to us.

Action: Tell your husband how much you love him.   Today's Wisdom: Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now. —CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

Love is such an objective thing. I mean, I can say I love my family, or I love my Diet Coke. So I guess, in different ways, yeah, I do believe in love.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those we have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these things.

A Word is Dead A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day.

I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.

Hope is the thing which makes a life meaningful.

As an end and finality of life love has its deeper meaning, for it sinks below the surfaces of casual emotion, of feeling, of happiness, to profound realities. Beyond possession, and personality and play--not against them--love penetrates to realms that intuition finds ultimately real. It seeks identity with being; it wants divine approach.

Spending your life concentrating on death is like watching a whole movie and thinking only about the credits that are going to roll at the end. It's a mistake of emphasis.

Beauty must be more than an accident.

As, therefore, nature knows nothing of good intentions, rewarding and punishing not motives but actions; as things are what they are, describe them as we may, and their consequences will be what they will be.

There are for all men moments when the need for some general point of view becomes insistent; when neither labor, nor care, nor pleasure, nor idleness, nor habit will stop a man from asking how he is to regard the universe of reality, how he is to think of it as a whole, how he is to think of his own relation to it.

I watched Francis, chatting to a glamorous woman who simply oozed Dream Parisienne style. Her long dark hair was tied up in a chignon, her dark green silk dress followed the elegant curves of her body. Francis would always chat up women, but he didn't mean anything by it. I could appreciate that now.

Either the world is at fault, or we're looking for meaning in the wrong places.