Quotes About Meaning

In all the modern talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it? Money has become the grand test of virtue.

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing you can do with words is to surrender to them.

For whom, for what, was that bird singing? No mate, no rival was watching it. What made it sit at the edge of the lonely wood and pour its music into nothingness?

It was not the man's brain that was speaking it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words but it was not speech in true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness like the quacking of a duck.

the strange thing is that when a word is well established as a swear word, it seems to lose its original meaning; that is, it loses the thing that made it into a swear word. A word becomes an oath because it means a certain thing, and, because it has become an oath, it ceases to mean that thing.

I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.

Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

He was already dead, he reflected. It seemed to him that it was only now, when he had begun to be able to formulate his thoughts, that he had taken the decisive step. The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. He wrote: Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about.

But though it is unreal, it is not meaningless.

Did not the statement, You do not exist, contain a logical absurdity?

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.

Though it is unreal it is not meaningless

So often like this, in lonely places in the forest, he would come upon something--bird, flower, tree--beautiful beyond all words, if there had been a soul with whom to share it. Beauty is meaningless until it is shared.

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing you can do with words is to surrender them.

She had grasped the inner meaning of the Party's sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party's control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was most important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leader worship.

Socialism does mean justice and liberty when the nonsense is stripped off it.

Era uno de esos ensueños que, a pesar de utilizar toda la escenografía onírica habitual, son una continuación de nuestra vida intelectual y en los que nos damos cuenta de hechos e ideas que siguen teniendo un valor después del despertar.

Bir sonu olmayan ve kimsenin okumayaca??, ama birisi için yaz?lm?? ve bununla biçimlenen bir mektup gibiydi günlük.

Cómo vas a tener un eslogan como el de la libertad es la esclavitud cuando el concepto de libertad no exista? Todo el clima del pensamiento será distinto. En realidad, no habrá pensamiento en el sentido en que ahora lo entendemos. La ortodoxia significa no pensar, no necesitar el pensamiento. Nuestra ortodoxia es la inconsciencia.

After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself.

The stuff that was coming out of his mouth consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.

Curiously, the chiming of the hour seemed to have put new heart into him. He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear.