Quotes About Significance

It is that happy stretch of time when the lovers set to chronicling their passion. When no glance, no tone of voice is so fleeting but it shines with significance. When each moment, each perception is brought out with care, unfolded like a precious gem from its layers of the softest tissue paper and laid in front of the beloved — turned this way and that, examined, considered.

Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.

A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one's life. There is an urge to say, 'I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.

We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.

He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor.

There is an Arabic saying that the soul travels at the pace of a camel. While most of us are led by the strict demands of timetables and diaries, our soul, the seat of the heart, trails nostalgically behind, burdened by the weight of memory. If every love affair adds a certain weight to the camel's load, then we can expect the soul to slow according to the significance of love's burden.

Judged against eternity, how little of what agitates us makes any difference.

There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.

Once we are involved in a relationship, there is no longer any such thing as a minor detail.

I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.

A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It's almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.

I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success, The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam's scheme of things. The thing is, I said finally, he won the Nobel Prize. Well, she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, Im not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat.

It is not just the history of the Hawaiian islands but the significance of the ordinary people whose lives - many quite extraordinary - make up that history.

No response is a response.

En la eternidad las demoras no importan, pero en el tiempo son ciertamente trágicas». (T-5.VI.1:3).

It's always his big day these days. He hardly has a small one.

Masterpieces should be kept for High Holidays of the Spirit"—for our own personal Christmases and Easters, not for any old Wednesday.

No one will ever forget that night, and what it meant for this country. But I will never forget the man and what he meant to me.

There is no coincidence. Only the illusion of coincidence.

Quality, it seems, is a necessary, but insufficient attribute for success.

Many atheists might proudly proclaim that our lives have no ultimate meaning, yet the business of finding significance in one's life is perhaps the most important part of being human. When we drift into a life without meaning, we soon become a pack of symptoms and pathologies; and without any feeling of significance, many choose to end their lives altogether.

Death is, and must be, deeply emotional. To intentionally cause death is to engender a form of intimacy, one that we're not used to thinking about. To kill without emotion and without respect, or to ignore the intimacy inherent in the act, is to rob it of its dignity, and to rob the life that you are ending of its significance. By robbing death and life of significance we reduce ourselves to the machines Descartes dreamed about. And we deny our own significance.

It is about realising that in every human being is a frightened beast, seeking survival and significance, and knowing very well that humans can outgrow this beast as they empathise with others. This process of outgrowing the beast is the process of discovering God.

every human being is a frightened beast, seeking survival and significance, and knowing very well that humans can outgrow this beast as they empathise with others. This process of outgrowing the beast is the process of discovering God.