Quotes About Meaning

Ah darling, goodness, I think, never brought any one out. Goodness, when it's real, precisely, rather keeps people IN.

I never know what I mean in my telegrams – especially those I send from America. Clearness is too expensive.

How on the other hand could I make a reference without a new plunge into the hideous obscure?

there were many things - perhaps even too many - New York could give; but this was felt to make no difference in the constant fact that what you had most to do, under the discipline of life, or of death, was really to feel your situation as grave.

Isabel, as she herself grew older, became acquainted with revulsions, with disgusts; there were days when the world looked black and she asked herself with some sharpness what it was that she was pretending to live for.

It has been everything for me to see you.

She hadn't given up yet, and the broken sentence, if she was the last word, would end with a sort of meaning.

May Bartram smiled. "I don't pretend it exactly shows that I'm not living for you. It's my intimacy with you that's in question." He laughed as he saw what she meant. "Yes, but since, as you say, I'm only, so far as people make out, ordinary, you're—aren't you? no more than ordinary either. You help me to pass for a man like another. So if I am, as I understand you, you're not compromised. Is that it?

Mrs. Nettlepoint stared.  "I couldn't do that." On which I was the more amused that I had to explain I was only amused.  "What does it signify now?" "I thought you thought everything signified.  You were so full," she cried, "of signification!" "Yes, but we're further out now, and somehow in mid-ocean everything becomes absolute." "What else can

If you've not good servants you're miserable, Mrs. Touchett serenely said. They're very bad in America, but I've five perfect ones in Florence. I don't see what you want with five, Henrietta couldn't help observing. I don't think I should like to see five persons surrounding me in that menial position. I like them in that position better than in some others, proclaimed Mrs. Touchett with much meaning. Should you like me better if I were your butler, dear? her husband asked.

He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two words — "Do YOU?" — more discrimination than I had ever heard two words contain.

I don't know, however, what right I have to ask a service of you. You're the person in the world who has most right, he answered. I've given you assurances that I've never given any one else.

I don't care who you may be--I don't want to know; it signifies very little to-day.

He had none of that wish to appear deep which is at the bottom of most forms of fatuity; he was perfectly willing to pass for decently superficial; he only aspired to be continuous. When you were not suitably shallow this presented difficulties; but he would have assented to the proposition that you must be as suitable as you can and that a high use of subtlety is in consuming the smoke of your inner fire. THE FIRE WAS THE GREAT THING, NOT THE CHIMNEY.

She took it as if the words were all she had wished; as if they brought her, gave her something that was the compensation of her case.

Ma le riflessioni sono un magro conforto: l'unica consolazione che conti al mondo è non essere stati stupidi, uno stato di grazia del quale, senza dubbio, io non godrò mai.

much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life.

Even the idiot may have a message for us

As long as that spark of passion is missing there is no human significance in the performance.

Art teaches nothing except the significance of life.

Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs.

I do not believe in words, no matter if strung together by the most skillful man: I believe in language, which is something beyond words, something which words give only an adequate illusion of.

Si tuviera la oportunidad de ser Dios, la rechazaría. Si tuviese la oportunidad de ser una estrella, la rechazaría. La oportunidad más maravillosa que ofrece la vida es la de ser humano. Abarca todo el universo. Incluye el conocimiento de la muerte, del que ni siquiera Dios goza.

as Sylvester says, a man who has never been afflicted with a neurosis does not know the meaning of suffering.