Quotes About Meaning

Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents

from Emerson's journals. In the context, it is written in the past tense; changing the verb to present tense it reads: The poem is a confession of faith. Which is to say, the poem is not an exercise. It is not 'wordplay.' Whatever skill or beauty it has, in contains something beyond language devices, and has a purpose other than itself.

Is a prayer a gift, or a petition, or does it matter? The sunflowers blaze, maybe that's their way. Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.

As a carpenter can make a gibbet as well as an altar, a writer can describe the world as trivial or exquisite, as material or as idea, as senseless or as purposeful. Words are wood.

As I grew older the things I cared about grew fewer, but were more important. ... Things! Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful fire! More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothing - the reason they can fly.

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

So it is if the heart has devoted itself to love, there is not a single inch of emptiness. Gladness gleams all the way to the grave.

People do it, some out of desperation, others out of greed. They steal. The very powerful and clever might steal a whole house, or a million dollars. It's been done. But what does it matter? Love is the one thing the heart craves and love is the one thing you can't steal.

Anyway, this was my delicious walk in the rain. What was it actually about? Think about what it is that music is trying to say. It was something like that.

Understand, I am always trying to figure out what the soul is, and where hidden, and what shape

There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled.

I learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak—to be company.

believe us, they say, it is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world. I beg of you, do not walk by without pausing to attend to this rather ridiculous performance. It could mean something. It could mean everything.

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Meaning 'by way of the anus'. 'Per Annum', with two n's, means 'yearly'. The correct answer to the question, 'What is the birthrate per anum?' is zero (one hopes).

Kinsey wanted Dellenback to film his own staff. There are three ways to read that sentence, all of them true.

You mean like a small silicone breast implant?" I wasn't actually thinking that, but sure.

She replies that lavender was chosen because it's a soothing color.

He's the winningest guy I know, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart, which is the part that comes before the top.

a man may shout the eternal virtues and be unheard forever, but if he babble nonsense in a wilderness it will travel around the world.

As Diana talked openly with my children and me, she made the statement that has defined her forever in my mind: "My boys mean everything to me. They're my life.

If we remember that the German word for holy (selig) is the root of our word silly, we may be forced to make some pertinent connections.

What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination?

Life has more in it than we think; it is all that we have, all that we know.