Quotes About Significance

My Beijing jersey means more to me than any of them.

Everyone's job is important, but no one is indispensable.

It's all so meaningless, we may as well be extraordinary.

Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.

In the Kingdom of God there are no great men, only humble men God has used greatly.

Marriage? It's like asparagus eaten with vinaigrette or hollandaise, a matter of taste but of no importance.

All fine architectural values are human vales, else not valuable.

É irracional desejar a fama póstuma, pois as pessoas que de facto se recordam de nós também morreram e o nosso nome depressa passa a ser conhecido apenas por académicos especialistas e antiquários. Para além disso, de que serve tentar impressionar a posteridade – são pessoas que nunca vamos conhecer. O que valerá a sua opinião?

We bestow meaning rather than discover it.

It is what the unimportant do that really counts and determines the course of history. The greatest forces in the universe are never spectacular. Summer showers are more effective than hurricanes, but they get no publicity. The world would soon die but for the fidelity, loyalty and consecration of those whose names are unhonored and unsung.1

The history of life unfolds over a time span so vast it boggles the imagination. I, for one, can draw no meaning from a million years, let alone a billion, and prefer a geographical metric. Let 1 millimeter, the thickness of a dime, stand for 1 year. Then 1 meter makes a millennium, 1 kilometer 1 million years, and the age of the earth (about 4.5 billion years) spans 4,500 kilometers, a little more than the distance between Miami and Seattle. As

There must be a day or two in a man's life when he is the precise age for something important.

Emotions may be slippery, but they are also by far the most salient aspect of our lives. They give meaning to everything.

Emotions infuse everything with meaning and are the main inspiration of cognition, also in our lives.

Il giorno della mia nascita, i tre personaggi destinati a devastare l'umanità erano già venuti al mondo: Hitler aveva diciotto anni, Stalin ventotto e Mao tredici. Ero cascata nel secolo sbagliato. Il loro.

We know that the difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory is one of relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance. [Astronomy and Cosmology - A Modern Course. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Co]

In the external scheme of things, shining moments are as brief as the twinkling of an eye, yet such twinklings are what eternity is made of -- moments when we human beings can say "I love you," "I'm proud of you," "I forgive you," "I'm grateful for you." That's what eternity is made of: invisible imperishable good stuff.

If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.

The world needs a sense of worth, and it will achieve it only by its people feeling that they are worthwhile.

One of our chief jobs in life, it seems to me, is to realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is–that each of us has something which no one else has–or ever will have–something inside which is unique to all time.

If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.

Whether we're a preschooler or a young teen, a graduating college senior or a retired person, we human beings all want to know that we're acceptable, that our being alive somehow makes a difference in the lives of others.

It is like leaning over the edge of a canyon and feeling the wind whip by. Any illusions about your significance are wiped away; you realize how puny and inconsequential you are. And yet the beauty is so intoxicating that you only crave more. You long to have a bigger heart that could take it all in. That's a taste of what "the fear of the Lord" means.

Generally and understandably we think that if our ministries increase, Jesus' ministry will increase as well. John the Baptist knows better. He apparently believes that it is possible to be so consumed with Christ's increase that one can actually be content to be less significant oneself. This is the mystery of authentic ministry. Who of us can say we have attained this poised self-diminution? It is a goal greatly to be desired.