Quotes About Meaning

Everything, dreaming and all, has got a soul in it, or else it's worth nothing, and we don't care a bit about it. Some of our thoughts are worth nothing, because they've got no soul in them.

You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water — an inch deep and then the mud.

Either there is a God, and that God the perfect heart of truth and loveliness, or all poetry and art is but an unsown, unplanted, rootless flower, crowning a somewhat symmetrical heap of stones. The man who sees no beauty in its petals, finds no perfume in its breath, may well accord it the parentage of the stones; the man whose heart swells beholding it will be ready to think it has roots that reach below them.

You say you didn't mean any harm: did you mean any good, Curdie?

The true name is one which expresses the character, the nature, the being, the meaning, of the person who bears it. It is the man's own symbol,--his soul's picture, in a word,--the sign which belongs to him and to no one else. Who can give a man this, his own name? God alone. For no one but God sees what the man is, or even, seeing what he is, could express in a name-word the sum and harmony of what he sees.

The true name is one which expresses the character, the nature, the being, the meaning, of the person who bears it. It is the man's own symbol,--his soul's picture, in a word,--the sign which belongs to him and to no one else. Who can give a man this, his own name? God alone. For no one but God sees what the man is, or even, seeing what he is, could express in a name-word the sum and harmony of what he sees. ... Such a name cannot be given until the man IS the name.

When a man tries to live by bread and not by the word that comes out of that heart of God, he may think he lives, but he begins to die or is dead.

The honour is to be a servant of men, whom God thought worth making, worth allowing to sin, and worth helping out of it at such a cost.

If a dream reveal a principle, that principle is a revelation, and the dream is neither more NOR LESS valuable than a waking thought that does the same.

Here lies David Elginbrod Have mercy on my soul, dear God, As I would ye if I were God And ye were David Elginbrod.

Justice demands your punishment, because justice demands, and will have, the destruction of sin.

Let a man think and care ever so little about God, He does not therefore exist without God. God is here with him, upholding, warming, delighting, teaching him - making life a good thing to him. God gives him Himself, though he knows it not.

With him all is simplicity of purpose and meaning and effort and end-namely, that we should be as he is, think the same thoughts, mean the same things, possess the same blessedness. It is so plain that any one may see it, every one ought to see it, every one shall see it. It must be so. He is utterly true and good to us, nor shall anything withstand his will.

Who invented music? Some one must have made the delight of it possible! With his own share in its joy he had had nothing to do! Was Chance its grand inventor, its great ingenieur? Why or how should Chance love loveliness that was not, and make it be, that others might love it? Could it be a deaf God, or a being that did not care and would not listen, that invented music? No; music did not come of itself, neither could the source of it be devoid of music!

alas, how little can language say without seeming to say something wrong!

Gone then will be all anxiety as to what his neighbour may think about him. It is enough that God thinks about him. To be something to God—is not that praise enough? To be a thing that God cares for and would have complete for himself, because it is worth caring for—is not that life enough?

Therefore I have been training him for a work that must soon be done. I was near losing him, and had to send my pigeon. Had he not shot it, that would have been better; but he repented, and that shall be as good in the end.

Why, you don't seem even to know the good of the things you are constantly doing. Now don't mistake me. I don't mean you are good for doing them. It is a good thing to eat your breakfast, but you don't fancy it's very good of you to do it. The thing is good, not you.

A name is one of those things one can give away and keep all the same.

There are some who, if you propose to examine into anything, immediately set you down as an unbeliever in that thing. A man who wants to find out what the Bible really means, is, by those who do not believe in it a tenth part as much as he, set down as an unbeliever in the Bible; whereas it is a proof of the very strongest probability to the contrary.

What is life about, Dr. Watson, if it is not about literature? To my mind, all else is a distraction. I should happily idle away the rest of my days in the company of a good book.

The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable...In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

Beauty is meaningless until it is shared.

The words kept coming back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity.