Quotes About Meaning

When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect with them; that is, we invest feelings or emotion in them. That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called cathexis. In his book Peck rightly emphasizes that most of us confuse cathecting with loving.

is particularly distressing that so many recent books on love continue to insist that definitions of love are unnecessary and meaningless. Or worse, the authors suggest love should mean something different to men than it does to women—that the sexes should respect and adapt to our inability to communicate since we do not share the same language. This type of literature is popular because it does not demand a change in fixed ways of thinking about gender roles, culture, or love.

When we begin to experience the sacred in our everyday lives we bring to mundane tasks a quality of concentration and engagement that lifts the spirit.

Having reached a point where I was successfully completing a number of desired goals, I was experiencing both a "void" and undergoing the kind of critical self-examination that brought about a crisis in meaning. It was a time for me to re-vision my life and chart new and different journeys. I think it's very hard for successful black women (and black men) to turn away from achievements, high-status positions with visibility, that may no longer be meeting our growth needs.

We need a map to guide us on our journey to love—starting with the place where we know what we mean when we speak of love.

He [the poet] brings out the inner part of things and presents them to men in such a way that they cannot refuse but must accept it. But how the mere choice and rhythm of words should produce so magical an effect no one has yet been able to comprehend, and least of all the poets themselves.

You scared the wits out of everyone, collapsing like that." "How should I have collapsed?" I joked.

Until the antireligion zealots learn the meaning of the word tolerance, we will continue to experience unnecessary strife.

Everyone knows that there are thirteen stripes to represent the original thirteen colonies and fifty stars, each representing one of the fifty states. But what you may not know is that red represents hardness and valor. White represents purity and innocence. And blue represents perseverance, vigilance, and justice.

si Dios no existe, todo nos está permitido».

I threaten to kill lots of people. But it doesn't actually mean that in a tweet.' 'Mean what?' 'Mean that you actually want to kill them. It's more like "Oh, I disagree with you. Maybe you should think things through more", that sort of thing.

Good, because words are important, Trafford. Clear thinking. Logic. Precision. Above all, understanding. You can understand nothing if words can mean anything.

But these are only words and probably convey only a fraction of their meaning to the hearers. They shudder and it is forgotten.

Christmas is the birth of our Saviour, McCluskey remarked. That must mean something, surely. The bastard never saved me. Maybe he hasn't finished with you yet.

the Revolution had reached that classic mature stage where it existed only for its own sake.

Cos'è che vogliono? Si rendono conto di essere vivi? Come se la prolungata e intensa esposizione alla morte fosse la condizione necessaria per partecipare appieno della propria vita.

Art has to offer something other than stylized despair.

I believe she imbued my body thus, finding every touch enhanced by ambiguity of intention, as if it too required translation, and so each touch branched out, became a variety of touches.

Oh, don't worry, I am perfectly aware of the fantasy involved here, but what we want is almost never exempt from the impossible. That barrier has very little meaning for me these days. Given what's happened, the impossible is just a blind spot that dissolves if we move our heads fast enough. History seems to show that the impossible is probably the most likely thing of all.

If the words of this book are misspelled, but accidentally spell other words correctly, and also accidentally fall into a grammatically coherent arrangement, where coherency is defined as whatever doesn't upset people, it means this book is legally another book, and not this book.

You'll see, you'll come to understand. These big things, these terrible things, are not the important ones. If they were, how could one go on living? No, it is the small, little things that make up a day, that bring fullness and happiness to a life.

In the middle of 'Monicagate', Bill Clinton himself used deconstruction in his own defence. Accused of lying when he had claimed not to have had sexual relations with the young intern, the President replied: 'It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is' – a typically Derridean utterance.

there was no such thing as objective truth and if you think something's good because it speaks to you it is

I wanted to see a pattern in the strands of life. In the end I found one, and it had nothing to do with any god, but with people. With the people we love.