Quotes About Meaning

Death shows that the summum bonum of life is to continue living it.

The English word "Almighty" is a bit weak for the Greek term used here: Pantokrator, a rare word, or at least it was before the book of Revelation.

a seven-letter Latin abbreviation that was as widely used in antiquity as "R.I.P." ("Rest in Peace," itself from the Latin requiescat in pace) has been in the modern world. The abbreviation is "n.f. f. n.s. n.c." Translated, it provides a most trenchant summary of the materialist views endorsed and promoted by Epicurus, Lucretius, and their followers: non fui, fui, non sum, non curo—"I was not. I was. I am not. I care not.

Today we are familiar with the funereal abbreviation "RIP" ("Rest in Peace"). Ancient Romans had something comparable, a seven-letter abbreviation that spoke volumes: "I was not; I was; I am not; I care not." The meaning is clear. There was no existence before birth. A person existed only after being born. After death there once more was no existence.

I can't give a full analysis here

One of our driving questions throughout this study will always be what these Christians meant by saying "Jesus is God." As we will see, different Christians meant different things by it.

No,' he said. 'I don't think anyone dies happy...but you could die well.

That, Eddie thought, was an exceedingly clever reply. Roland had said I can't answer . . . but that wasn't the same thing as I don't know. Far from it.

You have forgotten the doctrine of your own church, is it not so? The cross…the bread and wine…the confessional…only symbols. Without faith, the cross is only wood, the bread baked wheat, the wine sour grapes.

The word is only a representation of the meaning; even at its best, writing almost always falls short of full meaning. Given that, why in God's name would you want to make things words by choosing a word which is only cousin to the one you really wanted to use?

you wondered why in the hell the world had been created in the first place. Good things were in short supply, and so much of the rest was downright rancid.

Everything seemed to stand out with a special dearness, and although I never could have said that out loud I didn't think it mattered - maybe that sense of dearness was something I wanted just for myself.

That's really all art is about, I think, and not just pictures—it's the same with books and stories and sculpture and even castles in the sand. Some things call to us, that's all. It's as if the people who made them were speaking inside our heads.

The only two useful art forms are religion and stories.

All of this was well meaning bullshit. But bullshit is still bullshit and will never be mistaken for McDonald's secret sauce.

You fucking drunken waste god wiped snot out of his nose and that was you

Explanations are such cheap poetry. My

It goes back to what I said about Andy wearing his freedom like an invisibility coat, about how he never really developed a prison mentality. His eyes never got that dull look.

All I'm saying is that your happiness is in your hands and those of your nearest and dearest. And if you think I'm going to show up two decades or so down the line to collect your soul in my moldy old pocketbook, you'd better think again. The souls of humans have become poor and transparent things.

When I say truth, I mean beauty.

The body was far smaller than the heart it had held

Ka-mai, yes. Not just a fool, but ka's fool - a fool of destiny.

I don't talk about this much, because it embarrasses me and it sounds pompous, but I still see stories as a great thing, something which not only enhances lives but actually saves them.

if life teaches anything at all, it teaches that there are so many happy endings that the man who believes there is no God needs his rationality called into serious question.