Quotes About Meaning

It is impossible to analyze "the meaning of life" in the abstract, or in general, or for some mythical and perfectly rational being. Only by knowing the kinds of beings that we actually are, with the complex mental and emotional architecture that we happen to possess, can anyone even begin to ask about what would count as a meaningful life

Design is a word that's come to mean so much that it's also a word that has come to mean nothing.

There is nothing new under the sun. The only meaningful question is who gets to hold the reflective lens." Passion

The whole paper was you." "Shit don't write itself." "This one story, who was the source?" "Same source I always used. Middle third of a joint." I smiled.

Feeling deeply is a virtue, Bev. It allows life to take on meaning and at some point your joy will be even greater than if you'd simply drifted with the currents.

life amounts, above all else, to the recruiting of witnesses.

We find, over time, the deepness of a thing. And if we fail to find it, then we invent it, to show ourselves we are not shallow.

Non era solo la questione di mia sorella; era più di così, era l'intero corso degli eventi, la miseria del corpo e del desiderio, le decisioni che si prendono e sulle quali non si può tornare, il senso stesso che si sceglie di dare a quella cosa che chiamiamo, forse a torto, la nostra vita.

Though I thought there weren't any words any more, only fucking signifiers. And since texts have no objective univocal meaning, I feel sure that when I call you a bunch of moronic cunts you will be able to decode that sequence of sequential signifiers with the appropriate emancipated subjectivity.

a cynic is only a term used by an idealist to describe a realist.

There are such moments in a life. Solitary seconds on which the reality of what life means pivots and turns from a dead end toward a road of untrodden grass that stretches on forever.

That's stupid," said Benny. "That's people," said the supervisor.

What terrified her most was the thought that staying alive had become nothing more than a habit. That was it. A reflex action without further or deeper purpose.

You crazy or something?" growled Zucco. "It's come up in therapy.

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." -Abraham Lincoln

signify an intention that I should become any more

Not too many professions out there that value forgetfulness. Prostitution, maybe. Politics, of course.

if money does not necessarily increase life satisfaction, what does?

I felt lack of inspiration. What is it at the end I was trying to achieve? Is it a promotion? Is it validation? Is it a great piece of work on TV? It kind of lost its meaning.

You don't want to be killed. I don't either. But wouldn't you rather die once than die every day of your life?

Maturing into a viable adulthood is partly about discipline, but it is also about luck. Aldous Huxley famously wrote that experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you. That is profoundly correct. Our life experience is not one event after the other but a series of opportunities to grow by making sense of what is meaningful and what isn't. Some do that better than others.

Chess is about the experience of passion, intimacy and caring but not in the way we typically use these terms. The game reveals implicit meanings in the idea of love by offering a shift in perspective and context. The point is that metaphors don't function merely as comparisons but more as translations, recreations or re-presentations.

Religion survives because it answers three questions that every reflective person must ask. Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live?

Science will explain how but not why. It talks about what is, not what ought to be. Science is descriptive, not prescriptive it can tell us about causes but it cannot tell us about purposes. Indeed, science disavows purposes.