Quotes About Meaning

I've been accused of having a death wish but I think it's life that I wish for, terribly, shamelessly, on any terms whatsoever.

And it was about then, about that time, that I began to find life unsatisfactory as an explanation of itself and was forced to adopt the method of the artist of not explaining but putting the blocks together in some other way that seems more significant to him. Which is a rather fancy way of saying I started writing.

And besides that," her mother continued, "gentlemen find pleasure in the act that ladies do not." She cleared her throat uncomfortably. "Depending on your husband's appetites—" "Appetites?" There would be food?

Their moments together would form a short poem and not a long and lusty novel...

Tú eres la razón de mi existencia -dijo dulcemente-, el motivo de que yo haya nacido.

I—" She shook her head. "Never mind." "What were you going to say?" "It"s nothing." He took both of her hands and tugged her toward him. "It"s not nothing," he murmured. "When it"s you, and when it"s me, it"s never nothing.

As a memoirist, it's your job to impose order and meaning on the chaos of life.

U]ntil feminists work to empower femininity and pry it away from the insipid, inferior meanings that plague it - weakness, helplessness, fragility, passivity, frivolity, and artificiality - those meanings will continue to haunt every person who is female and/or feminine.

A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find someone who's forgotten words so I can have a word with him?8

Do the gods choose what is good because it is good, or is the good good because the gods choose it? If the first option is true, then the good is independent of the gods. But if the second option is true, then the very idea of what is good becomes arbitrary.

What matters is surely that life has a purpose for us, here and now. Whether this purpose was dreamed up by a creator or is assigned or invented by ourselves is not of paramount importance. If we can give life purpose and meaning, there is no obvious reason why this should be considered an inferior kind of meaning to that which could have been given by a creator.

If we pretend or imagine that life's purpose lies outside living itself, we will be searching the stars for what is underneath our feet all the time.

You know what a word means when you know how to use it, not what its definition is. That is why we can understand and use all sorts of words that we struggle to define clearly if we are put on the spot and asked to do so.

the meaning of life is not some kind of answer, which, once learned, is forever possessed. For life to stay meaningful it must continue to contain things of value, and that is an ongoing work in progress. Meaning can vanish: what we once found gave us a reason to exist we can lose or tire of.

The power of art is the power of truth.

What does she do?" "She's a producer." Of course, in Los Angeles this doesn't mean much more than "she's a member of the human race.

I'm not romantic. But I shall think that the heart has other uses, rather than just pumping blood.

Probably our lives are full of symbols which only an unacknowledged sense perceives. Spiritual events assume a material guise, in accordance with some creative principle, but do not insist on recognition. ("Absolute Evil")

Words have meaning, not life or persons or the universe itself," he said. "Our search for certainty rests in our attempts at understanding the history of all individual selves and all civilizations. Beyond that, there is only awe." From a Life Magazine interview in 1988.

The lexicon of language, then, is a finite set of terms that by metaphor is able to stretch out over an infinite set of circumstances, even to creating new circumstances thereby.

And as you read, you are not conscious of the letters or even of the words or even of the syntax or the sentences and punctuation, but only of their meaning. As you listen to an address, phonemes disappear into words and words into sentences and sentences disappear into what they are trying to say, into meaning. To be conscious of the elements of speech is to destroy the intention of the speech.

art's specific and distinctive claim rests on something beyond its immediate potency and that a richer understanding of it involves a sensitivity to its formal properties that goes beyond its immediate emotional effect. A

A true world is a destination; a destination such that to reach it is to enter…a state of 'eternal bliss', a heaven, paradise, or utopia. Hence true world philosophies…give meaning to life by representing it as a journey; a journey towards 'redemption, towards an arrival that will more than make up for the stress and discomfort of the traveling.

Our stories are what we have," Our Good Mother says. "Our stories preserve us. we give them to one another. Our stories have value. Do you understand?