Quotes About Significance

Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at galaxy's edge, all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. Nothing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all.

Eventually all things are known. And few matter.

T]here is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices, and what anyone does with a willing partner is of no social or cosmic significance.

As for the human case, the generation of men come and go and are in eternity no more than bacteria upon a luminous slide, and the fall of a republic or the rise of an empire—so significant to those involved—are not detectable upon the slide even were there an interested eye to behold that steadily proliferating species which would either end in time or, with luck, become something else, since change is the nature of life, and its hope.

But like so many others nowadays, poor Julian wanted to believe that man's life is profoundly more significant than it is. His sickness was the sickness of our age. We want so much not to be extinguished at the end that we will go to any length to make conjuror-tricks for one another simply to obscure the bitter, secret knowledge that it is our fate not to be.

THESE PIECES ARE WORTH MORE THAN YOU!

We never get accustomed to being less important to other people than they are to us.

No wine can be regarded as unimportant, my friend, since the marriage at Cana.

I tossed up whether I'd see [the critic] or not: I knew too well the pompous phrases of his article, the buried significance he would discover of which I was unaware and the faults I was tired of facing.

Nunca nos acostumbramos a ser menos importantes para los demás de lo que ellos lo son para nosotros.

What will we care for the why and the wherefore?

Recordé el reloj con pulsera de oro de la señorita Keene, minúsculo como el de una muñeca, regalo de sir Keene por sus veintiún años. En su pequeña esfera contenía todas las cifras de las horas, como si todas ellas tuviesen la misma importancia y un deber especial que cumplir.

I would give my life, that's nothing, my soul ... my dear, my dear, try to understand that you are—so important.

Henry was important, but important rather as an elephant is important, from the size of his department; there are some kinds of importance that remain hopelessly damned to unseriousness.

I couldn't help but reflect on the significance of the location favored by Plato. I had considered other possibilities, as readers of my previous books know, but I had to admit that an immense island lying far to the west of Europe across the Atlantic Ocean does sound a lot like America.

No one needs a first edition. Whoever wrote it; even if it was Moses.

There are certain songs, and books, and films that are like points of high ground in the memory. Like they are even larger than your own experiences. They never go away.

She is irrelevant. Irrelevant? No one is irrelevant. There's truth in that. But some are less relevant than others.

was what, she sometimes thought, libraries were for: for men to disappear into and be important in, even though they had disappeared.

And though, indeed, it only happened once, it's gone on happening, the way unique and momentous things do, for ever and ever, as long as there's a memory for them to happen in …

I begin to rant. I'm special, I have needs, I have a job to do—once I get my act together. I'm going to be important.

The significance of the chronometer cannot be overstated. Its effect on the world rivals that of any other invention, including the printing press and the microchip.

How can we think we're so important the world reacts to our whims or decisions or mistakes?

When we live as though we were lords of our own life, capable of meeting our own needs, we are living in the flesh. When we treat people, possessions, or achievements as though they were the source of our worth and significance rather than God, we are living in the flesh. In fact, insofar as we live as though God were not present, moment-by-moment, and as though this wasn't the most important aspect of any present moment, we are living in the flesh.