Quotes About Meaning

How can time be long or short? Time is without length or breadth. The question is, what happened during its passing. And what happened is, our lives have been joined together.

I am interested in what I term gestalts; picture circumstances which bring together disparate images or ideas so as to form new meanings and new configurations.

People get married when they're 18 and spend their whole lives together. I think their greatest fear is that someone will see it as a fling because they were young and it didn't mean anything.

In the creative act, you kind of reach down and look for things that will, when put together, create an emotional effect.

I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!

Love is the only thing that counts. Love is what keeps the star and the human beings and the world turning around. Love is the force that binds the whole universe together.

Whatever had he meant by it? And how dare he mean anything!

It sounded very shallow put that way. Did it matter? Sometimes the human spirit needed the shallows. Sunshine danced on the shallows but was absorbed beyond trace by the depths.

Ah, these double meanings," she said. "Who invented the English language, I wonder? He did not do a stellar job of it, whoever he was.

I will not knowingly empty my life of all meaning. Not just for pleasure. And not for you. It would be a poor exchange indeed.

Love was what made life worth living. Not the pursuit of pleasure, but love. Love, which involved the full spectrum of human emotions.

A Christmas to remember. For the rest of her life. But how would she remember it? With the ache of sadness and loneliness and loss? With sweet nostalgia?

The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.

As you get up in the morning, as you make decisions, as you spend money, make friends, make commitments, you are creating a piece of art called your life.

The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what proceeds it.

Ringo's chuckle got tangled up with a cough. He tossed back a shot, cleared his throat, and said, Politics, from the Latin. Poly , meaning 'many.' Ticks meaning 'bloodsucking little bastards.

Maybe poetry is the only way we can get near the truth of God.… And when the metaphors fail, we think it's God who's failed us!

IF YOU WANT A STORYBOOK ENDING, stop—now—and remember them in that tender moment. Be content to know that they embarked on a series of adventures throughout the West and that they stayed together through thick and thin for forty-five years. But know this as well: If their story ended here, no one would remember them at all. Where a tale begins and where it ends matters. Who tells the story, and why . . . That makes all the difference.

It is a scholar's task to find patterns in nature or cycles in history. Initially, it's no different from finding portraits of animals and heroes in the stars. The question is, Have you discovered a preexisting truth? Or have you imposed an arbitrary meaning on whatever it is you're considering?

The problem with atheism, I find, under these circumstances, is that I have no one to despise but myself. If, however, I choose to believe that God is vicious, then at least I have the solace of hating God.

You've seen what, Emilio conceded, but not why! That's where God is, Anne. In the why of it—in the meaning.

it seemed entirely possible to him that religion and literature and art and music were all merely side effects of a brain structure that comes into the world ready to make language out of noise, sense out of chaos. Our capacity for imposing meaning, he thought, is programmed to unfold the way a butterfly's wings unfold when it escapes the chrysalis, ready to fly. We are biologically driven to create meaning. And if that's so, he asked himself, is the miracle diminished? It

In his own soul, he knew with sudden certainty that it was not rebellion or doubt or even sin that broke God's heart; it was indifference.

A tale begins and where it ends, matters. Who tells the story and why, that makes all the difference.