Quotes About Meaning

A man who is privileged in this respect leads two lives, a personal and an intellectual life; and the latter gradually comes to be looked upon as the true one, and the former as merely a means to it.

Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim.

The ill or impaired may, in the sense of fulfilling life, be far more free than healthy people.

Stories have to repair the damage that illness has done to the ill person's sense of where she is in life, and where she may be going. Stories are a way of redrawing maps and finding new destinations.

If you are happy in a dream, Ammu, does that count? Estha asked. Does what count? The happiness does it count?. She knew exactly what he meant, her son with his spoiled puff. Because the truth is, that only what counts, counts.....If you eat fish in a dream, does it count? Does it mean you've eaten fish?

I really worry about these political people that have no personal life. If there's nothing that's lovely, and if there's nothing that's just ephemeral, that you can just lie on the floor and bust a gut laughing at, then what's the point?

Rahel's toy wristwatch had the time painted on it. Ten to two. One of her ambitions was to own a watch on which she could change the time whenever she wanted to (which according to her was what Time was meant for in the first place).

Neither question nor answer was meant as anything more than a polite preamble to conversation.

And once again, only the Small Things were said. The Big Things lurked unsaid inside.

To whom did it matter? Did those to whom it mattered matter?

If you're happy in a dream, does that count? The happiness - does it count?

It was human history, masquerading as God's Purpose, revealing herself to an under-age audience.

To fuel yet another war this time against Iraq by cynically manipulating people's grief, by packaging it for TV specials sponsored by corporations selling detergent and running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain it of meaning. What we are seeing now is a vulgar display of the business of grief, the commerce of grief, the pillaging of even the most private human feelings for political purpose. It is a terrible, violent thing for a State to do to its people.

And once again, only the Small Things were said. The Big Things lurked unsaid inside. (165)

be free to die irresponsibly, without notice and for no reason.

Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.

Poetry can be tedious. Too many words to say a simple thing.

Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life may be empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves. Unlike your experiencing self—which is absorbed in the moment—your remembering self is attempting to recognize not only the peaks of joy and valleys of misery but also how the story works out as a whole.

The only way death is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater: a family, a community, a society.

Somehow, instead of holding on to the lifelong identity that was slipping away from him, he managed to redefine it. He moved his line in the sand. This is what it means to have autonomy—you may not control life's circumstances, but getting to be the author of your life means getting to control what you do with them.

For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute

We've been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive.

In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all of its moments—which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep.

we all require devotion to something more than ourselves for our lives to be endurable.