Quotes About Significance

London is—after Athens and Rome—the third most influential city in history.

I refuse to ask of the past more meaning than it can give to the present.

You know, the name is about 3 percent of what matters. But sometimes, 3 percent is the difference between winning and losing.

For a moment the words did not register. Grace just stood there, unable to move. It wasn't that she hadn't heard him—she had—but his words were so out of context, so out of place coming from this stranger's lips, that her brain could not really comprehend the significance. At

Declarations of love or loss were meaningless to her. It was like playing catch with yourself. It had to go two ways.

Awesome is the word one uses for Eleanor Roosevelt, Mt. Kilimanjaro, and pitching a no-hit no-run ballgame. Not available for the crappy cheese quesadilla you had this afternoon, nor for anybody who Dances with the Stars. With or without a wooden leg.)

He was a very nice person. History has no record of him. There is a moral in that, somewhere.

Most of us think we're more important than we really are, Charlie. The universe isn't watching. It mostly, for the most part, doesn't care.

When you really understand that God will accept you on the basis of what Christ did, you don't have to prove to the world how important you really are.

I found myself wondering what life would be if Jem were different, even from what he was now; what I would do if Atticus did not feel the necessity of my presence, help and advice. Why, he couldn't get along a day without me. Even Calpurnia couldn't get along unless I was there. They needed me.

It seems quixotic today, with jet airplanes and overdoses of Nembutal, that a man would go through a war for something so insignificant as his state.

I said, you and Jem were very special to me—you were my dream-children, but as Kipling said, that's another story . . . call on me tomorrow, and you'll find me a grave man.

I hope the world will little note nor long remember what you are saying here.

For both of us, it had simply been too enormous an experience. We shared it by not talking about it . Does this make any sense?

Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.

For a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny or silly. From something like that or it doesn't begin at all.

The sun sliced through the windshield, sealing me in light. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth on my eyelids. Sunlight traveled a long distance to reach this planet; an infinitesimal portion of that sunlight was enough to warm my eyelids. I was moved. That something as insignificant as an eyelid had its place in the workings on the universe, that the cosmic order did not overlook this momentary fact.

Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life and it'd lose even its imperfection.

Sometimes we don't need words. Rather, it's words that need us. If we were no longer here, words would lose their whole function. They would end up as words that are never spoken, and words that aren't spoken are no longer words.

Does G get angry because it follows F in the alphabet? Does page 68 in a book start a revolution because it follows 67?

What if I've forgotten the most important thing?

You know what I think? she says. That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper.

The little things are important, Mr. Wind-Up Bird

A question wells up inside me, a question so big it blocks my throat and makes it hard to breathe. Somehow I swallow it back, finally choosing another. Are memories such an important thing? It depends, she replies, and closes her eyes. In some cases, they're the most important thing there is.