If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you do not already possess.
- Mortimer Adler
The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.
- David Viscott
Is that love? It seems like a pale word, too easily tossed about by people who don't know the meaning of it, who twist it for their own ends. I'm afraid of it now, right up there with clowns, close spaces, and open flames.
- Ann Aguirre
One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.
- Paulo Coelho
The aim of every human being is to understand the meaning of total love.
- Paulo Coelho
She didn't need to understand the meaning of life; it was enough to find someone who did, and then fall asleep in his arms and sleep as a child sleeps, knowing that someone stronger than you is protecting you from all evil and all danger
- Paulo Coelho
Maybe these desert birds could explain to him the meaning of love without ownership.
- Paulo Coelho
To live is to experience things, not sit around pondering the meaning of life.
- Paulo Coelho
Work is a blessing when it helps us to think about what we are doing; but it becomes a curse when its sole use is to stop us thinking about the meaning of life.
- Paulo Coelho
the great aim of every human being is to understand the meaning of total love. Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.
- Paulo Coelho
PAIN was no longer a cause of suffering, but a source of pleasure, Because they were redeeming humanity from its sins. Pain becomes joy, the meaning of life, pleasure.
- Paulo Coelho
People work too hard to figure out the meaning of their lives. Why me, why now. The truth is, sometimes things don't happen to you for a reason. Sometimes it's just about being in the right place at the right time for someone else.
- Jodi Picoult
What is the meaning of the togetherness of the perceiving mind, in that peculiar modification of perceiving which makes it perceive not a star but a tree, and the tree itself, is a problem for philosophy.
- Samuel Alexander
Friendship... is not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.
- Muhammad Ali
Would you?" said Gabriel to Will, hotly. "If it was your family?" His lip curled. "Never mind. It's not as if you know the meaning of loyalty "
"Gabriel." Gideon's voice was a reprimand to his brother. "Do not speak to Will in that manner.
- Cassandra Clare
If faith were rational, it wouldn't be - by definition - faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be...a prudent insurance policy.
- Elizabeth Gilbert
Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy.
- Elizabeth Gilbert
in prosperity prayers seem but a mere medley of words, until misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven!
- Alexandre Dumas
Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough.
- Martin Amis
I get even more nervous singing when everyone's fallen silent, but I really try to communicate the meaning of the lyrics, and there's people there listening to that, and if they're moved by it, then I'm moved as well.
- Namie Amuro
I'm Emma. I'm here to make you see the meaning of your life. Her exalted words were totally conquered by her dragging tone and lack of eye contact.
- Debra Anastasia
I saw that Haller was a genius of suffering and that in the meaning of many sayings of Nietzsche he had created within himself with positive genius a boundless and frightful capacity for pain.
- Hermann Hesse
Philosophers can debate the meaning of life, but you need a Lord who can declare the meaning of life.
- Max Lucado
I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it. I would hope to act with compassion without thinking of personal gain.
- Thomas Aquinas
You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.
- Louis Armstrong
Just say up on the hill is the meaning of life and someone knew it and they wanted everyone else to enjoy it. So they put a red vinyl sofa up there.
- Melina Marchetta
The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.
- W H Auden
I am sure it is everyone's experience, as it has been mine, that any discovery we make about ourselves or the meaning of life is never, like a scientific discovery, a coming upon something entirely new and unsuspected; it is rather, the coming to conscious recognition of something, which we really knew all the time but, because we were unwilling to formulate it correctly, we did not hitherto know we knew.
- W H Auden
Good God! Willloughby, what is the meaning of this? -Marianne Dashwood
- Jane Austen
We can start working with time, if you wish, till you can fly the past and the future. And then you will be ready to begin the most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready to BEGIN to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love
- Richard Bach
Be Prepared... the meaning of the motto is that a scout must prepare himself by previous thinking out and practicing how to act on any accident or emergency so that he is never taken by surprise.
- Robert Badenpowell
Try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting yourself an aim, a goal... an exalted and noble 'to this end.' Perish in pursuit of this and only this
- Friedrich Nietzsche
So long as the spectator has to figure out the meaning of this or that person, or the presuppositions of this or that conflict of inclinations and purposes, he cannot become completely absorbed in the activities and sufferings of the chief characters or feel breathless pity and fear.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
What is the sign of every literary decadence? That life no longer dwells in the whole. The word becomes sovereign and leaps out of the sentence, the sentence reaches out and obscures the meaning of the page, the page gains life at the expense of the wholethe whole is no longer a whole.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
As for me, to love you alone, to make you happy, to do nothing which would contradict your wishes, this is my destiny and the meaning of my life.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
Friendship...is not something you learn in school,but if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship you really haven't learned anything.
- Oscar Wilde
Most importantly, the meaning of spirituality lays the seeds for our destiny and the path we must follow.
- Dennis Banks
For the first time in my life I understood the meaning of the word 'never'. And it's really awful. You say the word a hundred times a day but you don't really know what you're saying until you're faced with a real 'never again'.
- Muriel Barbery
My father used to say: Every bird is one bird, and every book is one book, and every bird and every book is one thing too, under the words and the feathers. He finished with a flourish, as though the meaning of this was self-evident.
- Clive Barker
I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense. Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them; so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer means. So, whatever good meanings are in the book, I'm glad to accept as the meaning of the book.
- Lewis Carroll
Speak English!' said the Eaglet. 'I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and I don't believe you do either!
- Lewis Carroll
I don't know the meaning of life. I don't know why we are here. I think life is full of anxieties and fears and tears. It has a lot of grief in it, and it can be very grim. And I do not want to be the one who tries to tell somebody else what life is all about. To me it's a complete mystery.
- Charles M Schulz
She was not to look beyond herself for the meaning of her life.
- Simone De Beauvoir
What I liked in anthropology was its inexhaustible faculty of negation, its relentless definition of man, as though he were no better than God, in terms of what he is not. But my ideas on this subject were always horribly confused, for my knowledge of men was scant and the meaning of being beyond me.
- Samuel Beckett
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
- Albert Camus
I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.
- Albert Camus
Fragments of a vessel which are to be glued together must match one another in the smallest details, although they need not be like one another. In the same way a translation, instead of resembling the meaning of the original, must lovingly and in detail incorporate the original's mode of signification, thus making both the original and the translation recognizable as fragments of a greater language, just as fragments are part of a vessel.
- Walter Benjamin
The meaning of life... I think the meaning of life is, I think it's love.
- Julie Benz
Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.
- Wendell Berry
We can only be enlightened to the meaning of wise words
only and only if life have put and made us requiring them.
- Toba Beta
But I feel truly wowed by the architecture and the meaning of the architecture if you get lost in it and think about the man hours in the smallest little chapel, and the love involved. God it's fantastic.
- Paul Bettany
Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.
- E M Forster
You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.
- E M Forster
If you let yourself go I am sure you are sensible.... You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By understanding George you may learn to understand yourself.
- E M Forster
The meaning of life consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning.
- Niels Bohr
We are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe.
- Jorge Luis Borges
Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.
- Hal Borland
I don't talk things, sir. I talk the meaning of things.
- Ray Bradbury
I don't talk things, sir,' said Faber. 'I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I'm alive.
- Ray Bradbury
He doesn't know the meaning of the word fear, but then again he doesn't know the meaning of most words.
- Bobby Bowden
I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them. And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river and I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.
- Carl Sandburg
You don't know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling? A happy medium is something I wonder if you'll ever learn.
- Madeleine L Engle
They were viewed very much like castles, I suppose: as crumbling, obsolete relics, with no real modern function other than as tourist attractions. But when the skies darkened and the nation called, both reawoke to the meaning of their existence. One shielded our bodies, the other, our souls.
- Max Brooks
To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books.
- Dan Brown
Eventually I came across another passage. This is what it said:
I am not commanding you, but I want to treat the sincerity of your love by comparing it to the earnestness of others.
The words made me choke up again, and just as I was about to cry, the meaning of it suddenly became clear.
God had finally answered me, and I suddenly knew what I had to do.
- Nicholas Sparks
What it's like to be a parent: It's one of the hardest things you'll ever do but in exchange it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love.
- Nicholas Sparks
You are right," he had said. "Love is not the word. No one can love his neighbor. Say, rather, 'Know thy neighbor as thyself." That is, comprehend his hardships and understand his position, deal with his faults as gently as with your own. Do not judge him where you do not judge yourself. Madame, this is the meaning of the word love.
- Pearl S Buck
I have a problem when people say something's real or not real, or normal or abnormal. The meaning of those words for me is very personal and subjective. I've always been confused and never had a clearcut understanding of the meaning of those kinds of words.
- Tim Burton
What is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of any creature? To know the answer to this question means to be religious. You ask: Does it make any sense, then, to pose this question? I answer: The man who regards his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life.
- Albert Einstein
A person's life consists of a collection of events,
the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole,
not because it counts more than the previous ones
but because once they are included in a life,
events are arranged in an order that is not chronological but, rather,
corresponds to an inner architecture.
- Italo Calvino
Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.
- Joseph Campbell
I don't think people are really seeking the meaning of Life. I think we're seeking an experience of being alive...we want to feel the rapture of being alive
- Joseph Campbell
I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.
- Joseph Campbell
A weak King must be what other Kings have been; a strong King is himself, and from then on the meaning of the name of King is changed.
- Orson Scott Card
Perhaps a physicist would know at once why this whole idea was absurd. But then, perhaps a physicist would be so locked into the consensus of his scientific community that it would be harder for him to accept an idea that transformed the meaning of everything he knew. Even if it were true.
- Orson Scott Card
Just when I discovered the meaning of life, they changed it.
- George Carlin
I think essentially the meaning of life is probably the journey and not really any one thing or an outcome or a result.
- Charisma Carpenter
Jennifer now understood the meaning of the cadence: the black and white drawing, the watercolor painting,and the notes. The cadence had at last developed into a concerto for violin, the instrument of gypsies, with a prevailing rhapsodic "leitmotif". The final movement had revealed itself when they were at the gypsy camp. And now it was complete.
- Barbara Casey
Nobody will ever be able to understand the meaning of the measure of his own words.
- Sorin Cerin
Never let the meaning of your love light escape to the dark nothingness of oblivion.
- Sorin Cerin
The meaning of the words is necessary and not their extent.
- Sorin Cerin
For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger
In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.
- Marc Chagall
Science and art,... they seek the truth and the meaning of life, they seek God, [and] the soul, and when they are harnessed to passing needs and activities,... then they only complicate and encumber life.
- Anton Chekhov
Love is two people in love,
who bond as one,
destined for each other;
this is the meaning of love.
A piece of our spirit remains wherever we have been...
- Stacey Chillemi
If hate motivates your life, you'll never know the meaning of true love
- Gaiven Clairmont
you can't know the meaning of the lesson until class is over!
- Pearl Cleage
In the meantime, I would drink, rest, and ponder the meaning of this mob.
- Hunter S Thompson
Ye know full well that the meaning of life is to find your gift. To find your gift is happiness. Never tae find it is misery.
- Terry Pratchett
He's going to arrest the Patrician, Vimes told himself, the thought trickling through his brain like an icy rivulet. He's actually going to arrest the Patrician. The supreme ruler. He's going to arrest him. This is what he's actually going to do. The boy doesn't know the meaning of the word "fear." Oh, wouldn't it be a good idea if he knew the meaning of the word "survival"..
- Terry Pratchett
In an incredulous tone, he said, "You don't know the meaning of virtue!"
"Of course I do-it means your thong must be white." (Sabine)
- Kresley Cole
Sabine gave a Scoff. " I could be virtuous, if I wanted to be."
In an incredulous tone, he said, "You don't know the meaning of virtue!"
"Of course I do - it means your thong must be white.
- Kresley Cole
If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.
- Paula Cole
To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.
- Socrates
In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words.
- Mason Cooley
The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have.
- Henry David Thoreau
For Death is the meaning of night;
The eternal shadow
Into which all lives must fall,
All hopes expire.
- Michael Cox
Grant knew that people could not imagine geological time. Human life was lived on another scale of time entirely. An apple turned brown in a few minutes. Silverware turned black in a few days. A compost heap decayed in a season. A child grew up in a decade. None of these everyday human experiences prepared people to be able to imagine the meaning of eighty million years - the length of time that had passed since this little animal had died.
- Michael Crichton
The meaning of this observation is unclear, but it raises the unfortunate possibility of ambiguous triplets; that is, triplets which may code more than one amino acid. However one would certainly expect such triplets to be in a minority.
- Francis Crick
What is the meaning of life? That was alla simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.
- Virginia Woolf
What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.
- Virginia Woolf
The meaning of the world, said Wittgenstein, is outside the world. Events and values are distinguishable only in relation to others. A totality of events and values, the world itself, requires another.
- Guy Davenport
Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.
- Kurt Vonnegut
Drawn crudely in the dust of three window-panes were a swastika, a hammer and sickle, and the Stars and Stripes. I had drawn the three symbols weeks before, at the conclusion of an argument about patriotism with Kraft. I had given a hearty cheer for each symbol, demonstrating to Kraft the meaning of patriotism to, respectively, a Nazi, a Communist, and an American. "Hooray, hooray, hooray," I'd said.
- Kurt Vonnegut
Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.
- Guy Debord
, because what's the meaning of doing dishes if you're not driven by something beyond necessity.
- Don Delillo
The meaning of life has not much to do with good and evil, right and wrong, duty, honor, country, or any of that.
It has to do with cutting the right deal.
- Nelson Demille
What's the meaning of life? Other people.
- John Green
It wasn't like I was some expert on the meaning of being supportive. Was it being loyal even against your better judgement? Or, like Olivia, was it making your displeasure known from the start, even when someone didn't want to hear it?
- Sarah Dessen
God created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed - that is the meaning of evolution.
- Graham Greene
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.
- Philip K Dick
The meaning of life is that it stops.
- Franz Kafka
We can contemplate the meaning of your life all you want, but know that you're my meaning... the reason behind just about everything I do - and I would never want to change that.
- Rebecca Donovan
Love life more than the meaning of it?
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I think everyone must love life more than anything else in the world.'
'Love life more than the meaning of it?'
'Yes, certainly. Love it regardless of logic, as you say. Yes, most certainly regardless of logic, for only then will I grasp its meaning. That's what I've been vaguely aware of for a long time. Half your work is done, Ivan: you love life. Now you must try to do the second half and you are saved.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I believe this is so and I'm prepared to vouch for it, because it seems to me that the meaning of man's life consists in proving to himself every minute that he's a man and not a piano key. And man will keep proving it and paying for it with his own skin; he will turn into a troglodyte if need be. And, since this is so, I cannot help rejoicing that things are still the way they are and that, for the time being, nobody knows worth a damn what determines our desires.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
What is the meaning of it, Watson? said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.
- Arthur Conan Doyle
What is the meaning of it Watson?What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear?It must tend to some end or else our universe is ruled by chance,which is unthinkable.But what end?There is this long standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.
- Arthur Conan Doyle
What really annoys me are the ones who write to say, I am doing your book for my final examinations and could you please tell me what the meaning of it is. I find it just so staggering--that you're supposed to explain the meaning of your book to some total stranger! If I knew what the meanings of my books were, I wouldn't have bothered to write them.
- Margaret Drabble
Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know the present? Is he in a position to make any judgment about it? Certainly not. For how can a person with no knowledge of the future understand the meaning of the present? If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred?
- Milan Kundera
Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.
- Milan Kundera
We decided that it was no good asking what is the meaning of life, because life isn't an answer, life is the question, and you, yourself, are the answer.
- Ursula K Le Guin
Artthe meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory.
- Lawrence Durrell
My understanding of the meaning of a book is that the book itself disappears from sight, that it is chewed alive, digested and incorporated into the system as flesh and blood which in turn creates new spirit and reshapes the world.
- Henry Miller
Living apart and at peace with myself,I came to realize more vividly the meaning of the doctrine of acceptance. To refrain from giving advice, to refrain from meddling in the affairs of others, to refrain even though the motives be the highest, from tampering with anothers way of life-so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit. Hands Off.
- Henry Miller
To help, to continually help and share, that is the sum of all knowledge; that is the meaning of art.
- Eleonora Duse
The meaning of life is to get meaning for life.
- Wayne Dyer
It is conceivable that not knowing the meaning of life is part of the meaning of life, rather as not counting how many words I am uttering when I give an after-dinner speech helps me to give an after-dinner speech. Perhaps life is kept going by our ignorance of its fundamental meaning, as capitalism for Karl Marx
- Terry Eagleton
Why was he alive on Earth? Very often the meaning was obscured. Very often it required some digging. The meaning of his life was an elusive stream of water hundreds of feet below the surface, and he would periodically drop a bucket down the well, fill it, bring it up and drink from it. But this did not sustain him for long.
- Dave Eggers
But I think I have done right to save the vision in this way, even though I may die sooner because I did it; for I know the meaning of the vision is wise and beautiful and good; and you can see that I am only a pitiful old man after all.
- Black Elk
Maybe the Truth of the Meaning of Life, Ancient and Arcane Knowledge of the Great Unknowable Universe is handed down only to persons presenting with the correct brand-name footwear. If you turn up wearing Shoe City knock-offs, you don't get to pass Go and collect Infinite Enlightenment.
- Tracy Engelbrecht
People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.
- Brian Eno
First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.
- Epictetus
Kallor said: 'I walked this land when the T'lan Imass were but children. I have commanded armies a hundred thousand strong. I have spread the fire of my wrath across entire continents, and sat alone upon tall thrones. Do you grasp the meaning of this?'
Yes,' said Caladan Brood, 'you never learn.
- Steven Erikson
Show me a god that does not demand mortal suffering.
Show me a god that celebrates diversity, a celebration that embraces even non-believers, and is not threatened by them.
Show me a god that understands the meaning of peace. In life, not in death.
- Steven Erikson
If I were doing something that the Bible condemns, I have two choices. I can straighten up my act, or I can somehow distort and twist and change the meaning of the Bible.
- Jerry Falwell
I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise?
- Federico Fellini
I dropped out of high school when I was 16, after I had a huge argument with my English teacher over the meaning of the word 'existentialism.'
- Craig Ferguson
I think of myself as being a relatively intelligent man who is open to a lot of different things and I think that questioning our purpose in life and the meaning of existence is something that we all go through at some point.
- Laurence Fishburne
Horace, who had been trying to find out the meaning of Kurokuma for some time now, was pleased to hear the translation.
"Black bear," he repeated. "It's undoubtedly because I'm so terrible in battle."
"I'd guess so," Will put in. "I've seen you in battle and you're definitely terrible.
- John Flanagan
...the meaning of my thoughts started to float away from me, like leaves that fall from a tree into a river, I was the tree, the world was the river.
- Jonathan Safran Foer
For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.
- Viktor E Frankl
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
- Viktor E Frankl
In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
- Viktor E Frankl
For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.
- Viktor E Frankl
The meaning of life is to give life meaning.
- Viktor E Frankl
Because of social pressure, individualism is rejected by most people in favor of conformity. Thus the individual relies mainly upon the actions of others and neglects the meaning of his own personal life. Hence he sees his own life as meaningless and falls into the "existential vacuum" feeling inner void. Progressive automation causes increasing alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, and suicide.
- Viktor E Frankl
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
- Viktor E Frankl
The mind can ask all the questions on the meaning of life. But it cannot answer one of them, for the answers are beyond the mind.
- Marianne Fredriksson
The sheer size too, the excessive abundance, scale, and exaggeration of dreams could be an infantile characteristic. The most ardent wish of children is to grow up and get as big a share of everything as the grown-ups; they are hard to satisfy; do not know the meaning of 'enough.
- Sigmund Freud
Leonard asks me if there's anything I need to know before he dies, I think about it for a minute, turn to him, say what's the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that's an easy one, my son, it's whatever you want it to be.
- James Frey
What is the meaning of life?Whatever you want it to be.
- James Frey
I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have - I can reflect light into the dark places of this world - into the black places in the hearts of men - and change somethings in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life.
- Robert Fulghum
Throughout the entire history of philosophy, philosophers have sought to discover what man is - or what human nature is. But Sartre believed that man has no such eternal nature to fall back on. It is therefore useless to search for the meaning of life in general. We are condemned to improvise. We are like actors dragged onto the stage without having learned our lines, with no script and no prompter to whisper stage directions to us. We must decide for ourselves how to live.
- Jostein Gaarder
There's nobody to guide through the process of becoming a man... to explain to them the meaning of manhood. And that's a recipe for disaster.
- Barack Obama
By dint of vision, and determination, and most of all faith in the redeeming power of love, he endured the humiliation of arrest, the loneliness of a prison cell, the constant threats to his life, until he finally inspired a nation to transform itself, and begin to live up to the meaning of its creed. Senator Obama
- Barack Obama
Discipline? I don't know the meaning of the word.
- Liam Gallagher
Power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.
- Leo Tolstoy
Salvation does not lie in the rituals and profession of faith, but in a lucid understanding of the meaning of one's life.
- Leo Tolstoy
Looking into Napoleon's eyes, Prince Andrei thought about the insignificance of grandeur, about the insignificance of life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and about the still greater insignificance of death, the meaning of which no one among the living could understand or explain.
- Leo Tolstoy
What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the willso fo the masses transferred to one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.
- Leo Tolstoy
Until we perceive the meaning of our past, we remain the mere carriers of ideas, like the Nomads.
- Stephen Gardiner
Either your understanding of the meaning of music is there from the beginning or it is not.
- Gordon Getty
When I'm with you, my world is complete. When I touch you, I understand the meaning of life. When I lost you, I completely shattered. You. Own. Me.
- Abbi Glines
Everything was going for me, I didn't even know the meaning of the word insecurity and suddenly I am surrounded by words like operation, cancer, chemotherapy, radiation.
- Delta Goodrem
Could you understand the meaning of light if there were no darkness to point the contrast? Day and night, life and death, love and hatred; since none of these things can have any being at all apart from the existence of the other; only the indolence of human nature finds it so hard to pierce through to the other side.
- Elizabeth Goudge
What is the meaning of this gross outrage?
- Kenneth Grahame
This is a basic requirement the meaning of globalization is that we should admit that the economy of each country is dependent on the economy of all the others.
- Richard Grasso
Respect yourself and others will come to respect you. That is true about all of us, but especially true about women. That is the meaning of honour.
- Abdulrazak Gurnah
I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.
- Pete Hamill
The meaning of the Street in all ways and at all times is the need for sharing life with others and the search for community.
- Virginia Hamilton
Each move is dictated by the previous one--that is the meaning of order
- Tom Stoppard
Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.
- Vaclav Havel
The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.
- Vaclav Havel
In our own lives the voice of God speaks slowly, a syllable at a time. Reaching the peak of years, dispelling some of our intimate illusions and learning how to spell the meaning of life-experiences backwards, some of us discover how the scattered syllables form a single phrase.
- Abraham Joshua Heschel
I have never been able to grasp the meaning of time. I don't believe it exists. I've felt this again and again, when alone and out in nature. On such occasions, time does not exist. Nor does the future exist.
- Thor Heyerdahl
Sometimes the best course in the search for the meaning of life is to busy yourself until you forget that you don't know the meaning of life
- Amanda Hocking
Before he had come to the town he had known about nothing but death: here he had learnt to live, to decide things for himself; he had learnt what it felt like to wash in clean water in the sunshine until he was clean himself, and what it felt like to satisfy his hunger with food that tasted good; he had learnt the sound of laughter that was free from cruelty; he had learnt the meaning of beauty
- Anne Holm
We need to theorize the meaning of beauty in our lives so that we can educate for critical consciousness, talking through the issues: how we acquire and spend money, how we feel about beauty, what the place of beauty is in our lives when we lack material privilege and even basic resources for living, the meaning and significance of luxury, and the politics of envy.
- Bell Hooks
At times , he didn't understand the meaning of the Koran's words. But he said he liked the enhancing sounds the arabic words made as they rolled off his tongue. He said they comforted him , eased his heart. "They'll comfort you too. Mrariam jo , " he said. "You can summon then in your time of your need , and they won't fail you. God's words will never betray you , my girl. (pg.17)
- Khaled Hosseini
Security is not the meaning of my life. Great opportunities are worth the risk.
- Shirley Hufstedler
A family can be the bane of one's existence. A family can also be most of the meaning of one's existence. I don't know whether my family is bane or meaning, but they have surely gone away and left a large hole in my heart.
- Keri Hulme
When language was not transcendental enough to complete the meaning of a revelation, symbols were relied upon for heavenly teaching, and familiar images, chosen from the known, were made to mirror the unknown spiritual truth.
- William H Hunt
I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.
- Thomas Huxley
If men will not understand the meaning of judgement, they will never come to understand the meaning of grace.
- Dorothy L Sayers
I am not asking for sensational revelations, but I would like to sense the meaning of that minute, to feel it's urgency..
- Jean Paul Sartre
Expression, to a great extent, is a matter of terms, and terms are anyone's. The meaning of 'God' may have a billion interpretations if there be that many souls in the world.
- Charles Ives
The meaning of life is contained in every single expression of life. It is present in the infinity of forms and phenomena that exist in all of creation.
- Michael Jackson
They also accused her of being sardonic, and although there was uncertainty about the meaning of the word, they knew it was not a desirable quality in a woman, being one which gentlemen particularly disliked.
- P D James
Love is without a doubt the laziest theory for the meaning of life, but when it actually comes a time to do it we find just enough energy to over-complicate life again. Any devil can love, whom he himself sees as, a good person who has treated him well, but to love also the polar opposite is what separates love from fickle emotions.
- Criss Jami
In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design.
- Steve Jobs
Irony is the word I forget the meaning of immediately after I look it up, but I kind of feel like I live in a constant state of it.
- Maureen Johnson
I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.
- June Jordan
But what will he do when he sees only too clearly why his patient is ill; when he sees that it arises from his having no love, but only sexuality; no faith, because he is afraid to grope in the dark; no hope, because he is disillusioned by the world and by life; and no understanding, because he has failed to read the meaning of his own existence?
- C G Jung
I wish there existed philosophical delivery stations, where a person could call up and order an answer to such questions as, "Does life have meaning, and what's the meaning of meaning?" Then a delivery guy with a thick German mustache would show up at your door within thirty minutes with an answer. And you could order a large two-topping answer for only 9.99, plus tip.
- Jarod Kintz
There's a line in The Barretts of Wimpole Street - you know, the play - where Elizabeth Barrett is trying to work out the meaning of one of Robert Browning's poems, and she shows it to him, and he reads it and he tells her when he wrote that poem, only God and Robert Browning knew what it meant, and now only God knows. And that's how I feel about studying English. Who knows what the writer was thinking, and why should it matter? I'd rather just read for enjoyment.
- Susanna Kearsley
From man's blood-sodden heart are sprung
Those branches of the night and day
Where the gaudy moon is hung.
What's the meaning of all song?
Let all things pass away.
- W B Yeats
Without knowing how to calculate the odds on such matters, it seems improbably to me that God would have whispered the meaning of my life into the ear of some guru or authority.
- Sam Keen
love only variously everyday
The meaning of love
- Mother Teresa
In short, the Enlightenment privatized marriage, taking it out of the public sphere, and redefined its purpose as individual gratification, not any "broader good" such as reflecting God's nature, producing character, or raising children. Slowly but surely, this newer understanding of the meaning of marriage has displaced the older ones in Western culture.
- Timothy Keller
If a person has grasped the meaning of God's grace in his heart, he will do justice. If he doesn't live justly, then he may say with his lips that he is grateful for God's grace, but in his heart he is far from him. If he doesn't care about the poor, it reveals that at best he doesn't understand the grace he has experienced, and at worst he has not really encountered the saving mercy of God. Grace should make you just.
- Timothy Keller
- Mortimer Adler
The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.
- David Viscott
Is that love? It seems like a pale word, too easily tossed about by people who don't know the meaning of it, who twist it for their own ends. I'm afraid of it now, right up there with clowns, close spaces, and open flames.
- Ann Aguirre
One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.
- Paulo Coelho
The aim of every human being is to understand the meaning of total love.
- Paulo Coelho
She didn't need to understand the meaning of life; it was enough to find someone who did, and then fall asleep in his arms and sleep as a child sleeps, knowing that someone stronger than you is protecting you from all evil and all danger
- Paulo Coelho
Maybe these desert birds could explain to him the meaning of love without ownership.
- Paulo Coelho
To live is to experience things, not sit around pondering the meaning of life.
- Paulo Coelho
Work is a blessing when it helps us to think about what we are doing; but it becomes a curse when its sole use is to stop us thinking about the meaning of life.
- Paulo Coelho
the great aim of every human being is to understand the meaning of total love. Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.
- Paulo Coelho
PAIN was no longer a cause of suffering, but a source of pleasure, Because they were redeeming humanity from its sins. Pain becomes joy, the meaning of life, pleasure.
- Paulo Coelho
People work too hard to figure out the meaning of their lives. Why me, why now. The truth is, sometimes things don't happen to you for a reason. Sometimes it's just about being in the right place at the right time for someone else.
- Jodi Picoult
What is the meaning of the togetherness of the perceiving mind, in that peculiar modification of perceiving which makes it perceive not a star but a tree, and the tree itself, is a problem for philosophy.
- Samuel Alexander
Friendship... is not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.
- Muhammad Ali
Would you?" said Gabriel to Will, hotly. "If it was your family?" His lip curled. "Never mind. It's not as if you know the meaning of loyalty "
"Gabriel." Gideon's voice was a reprimand to his brother. "Do not speak to Will in that manner.
- Cassandra Clare
If faith were rational, it wouldn't be - by definition - faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be...a prudent insurance policy.
- Elizabeth Gilbert
Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy.
- Elizabeth Gilbert
in prosperity prayers seem but a mere medley of words, until misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven!
- Alexandre Dumas
Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough.
- Martin Amis
I get even more nervous singing when everyone's fallen silent, but I really try to communicate the meaning of the lyrics, and there's people there listening to that, and if they're moved by it, then I'm moved as well.
- Namie Amuro
I'm Emma. I'm here to make you see the meaning of your life. Her exalted words were totally conquered by her dragging tone and lack of eye contact.
- Debra Anastasia
I saw that Haller was a genius of suffering and that in the meaning of many sayings of Nietzsche he had created within himself with positive genius a boundless and frightful capacity for pain.
- Hermann Hesse
Philosophers can debate the meaning of life, but you need a Lord who can declare the meaning of life.
- Max Lucado
I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it. I would hope to act with compassion without thinking of personal gain.
- Thomas Aquinas
You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.
- Louis Armstrong
Just say up on the hill is the meaning of life and someone knew it and they wanted everyone else to enjoy it. So they put a red vinyl sofa up there.
- Melina Marchetta
The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.
- W H Auden
I am sure it is everyone's experience, as it has been mine, that any discovery we make about ourselves or the meaning of life is never, like a scientific discovery, a coming upon something entirely new and unsuspected; it is rather, the coming to conscious recognition of something, which we really knew all the time but, because we were unwilling to formulate it correctly, we did not hitherto know we knew.
- W H Auden
Good God! Willloughby, what is the meaning of this? -Marianne Dashwood
- Jane Austen
We can start working with time, if you wish, till you can fly the past and the future. And then you will be ready to begin the most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready to BEGIN to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love
- Richard Bach
Be Prepared... the meaning of the motto is that a scout must prepare himself by previous thinking out and practicing how to act on any accident or emergency so that he is never taken by surprise.
- Robert Badenpowell
Try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting yourself an aim, a goal... an exalted and noble 'to this end.' Perish in pursuit of this and only this
- Friedrich Nietzsche
So long as the spectator has to figure out the meaning of this or that person, or the presuppositions of this or that conflict of inclinations and purposes, he cannot become completely absorbed in the activities and sufferings of the chief characters or feel breathless pity and fear.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
What is the sign of every literary decadence? That life no longer dwells in the whole. The word becomes sovereign and leaps out of the sentence, the sentence reaches out and obscures the meaning of the page, the page gains life at the expense of the wholethe whole is no longer a whole.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
As for me, to love you alone, to make you happy, to do nothing which would contradict your wishes, this is my destiny and the meaning of my life.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
Friendship...is not something you learn in school,but if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship you really haven't learned anything.
- Oscar Wilde
Most importantly, the meaning of spirituality lays the seeds for our destiny and the path we must follow.
- Dennis Banks
For the first time in my life I understood the meaning of the word 'never'. And it's really awful. You say the word a hundred times a day but you don't really know what you're saying until you're faced with a real 'never again'.
- Muriel Barbery
My father used to say: Every bird is one bird, and every book is one book, and every bird and every book is one thing too, under the words and the feathers. He finished with a flourish, as though the meaning of this was self-evident.
- Clive Barker
I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense. Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them; so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer means. So, whatever good meanings are in the book, I'm glad to accept as the meaning of the book.
- Lewis Carroll
Speak English!' said the Eaglet. 'I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and I don't believe you do either!
- Lewis Carroll
I don't know the meaning of life. I don't know why we are here. I think life is full of anxieties and fears and tears. It has a lot of grief in it, and it can be very grim. And I do not want to be the one who tries to tell somebody else what life is all about. To me it's a complete mystery.
- Charles M Schulz
She was not to look beyond herself for the meaning of her life.
- Simone De Beauvoir
What I liked in anthropology was its inexhaustible faculty of negation, its relentless definition of man, as though he were no better than God, in terms of what he is not. But my ideas on this subject were always horribly confused, for my knowledge of men was scant and the meaning of being beyond me.
- Samuel Beckett
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
- Albert Camus
I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.
- Albert Camus
Fragments of a vessel which are to be glued together must match one another in the smallest details, although they need not be like one another. In the same way a translation, instead of resembling the meaning of the original, must lovingly and in detail incorporate the original's mode of signification, thus making both the original and the translation recognizable as fragments of a greater language, just as fragments are part of a vessel.
- Walter Benjamin
The meaning of life... I think the meaning of life is, I think it's love.
- Julie Benz
Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.
- Wendell Berry
We can only be enlightened to the meaning of wise words
only and only if life have put and made us requiring them.
- Toba Beta
But I feel truly wowed by the architecture and the meaning of the architecture if you get lost in it and think about the man hours in the smallest little chapel, and the love involved. God it's fantastic.
- Paul Bettany
Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.
- E M Forster
You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.
- E M Forster
If you let yourself go I am sure you are sensible.... You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By understanding George you may learn to understand yourself.
- E M Forster
The meaning of life consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning.
- Niels Bohr
We are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe.
- Jorge Luis Borges
Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.
- Hal Borland
I don't talk things, sir. I talk the meaning of things.
- Ray Bradbury
I don't talk things, sir,' said Faber. 'I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I'm alive.
- Ray Bradbury
He doesn't know the meaning of the word fear, but then again he doesn't know the meaning of most words.
- Bobby Bowden
I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them. And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river and I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.
- Carl Sandburg
You don't know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling? A happy medium is something I wonder if you'll ever learn.
- Madeleine L Engle
They were viewed very much like castles, I suppose: as crumbling, obsolete relics, with no real modern function other than as tourist attractions. But when the skies darkened and the nation called, both reawoke to the meaning of their existence. One shielded our bodies, the other, our souls.
- Max Brooks
To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books.
- Dan Brown
Eventually I came across another passage. This is what it said:
I am not commanding you, but I want to treat the sincerity of your love by comparing it to the earnestness of others.
The words made me choke up again, and just as I was about to cry, the meaning of it suddenly became clear.
God had finally answered me, and I suddenly knew what I had to do.
- Nicholas Sparks
What it's like to be a parent: It's one of the hardest things you'll ever do but in exchange it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love.
- Nicholas Sparks
You are right," he had said. "Love is not the word. No one can love his neighbor. Say, rather, 'Know thy neighbor as thyself." That is, comprehend his hardships and understand his position, deal with his faults as gently as with your own. Do not judge him where you do not judge yourself. Madame, this is the meaning of the word love.
- Pearl S Buck
I have a problem when people say something's real or not real, or normal or abnormal. The meaning of those words for me is very personal and subjective. I've always been confused and never had a clearcut understanding of the meaning of those kinds of words.
- Tim Burton
What is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of any creature? To know the answer to this question means to be religious. You ask: Does it make any sense, then, to pose this question? I answer: The man who regards his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life.
- Albert Einstein
A person's life consists of a collection of events,
the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole,
not because it counts more than the previous ones
but because once they are included in a life,
events are arranged in an order that is not chronological but, rather,
corresponds to an inner architecture.
- Italo Calvino
Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.
- Joseph Campbell
I don't think people are really seeking the meaning of Life. I think we're seeking an experience of being alive...we want to feel the rapture of being alive
- Joseph Campbell
I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.
- Joseph Campbell
A weak King must be what other Kings have been; a strong King is himself, and from then on the meaning of the name of King is changed.
- Orson Scott Card
Perhaps a physicist would know at once why this whole idea was absurd. But then, perhaps a physicist would be so locked into the consensus of his scientific community that it would be harder for him to accept an idea that transformed the meaning of everything he knew. Even if it were true.
- Orson Scott Card
Just when I discovered the meaning of life, they changed it.
- George Carlin
I think essentially the meaning of life is probably the journey and not really any one thing or an outcome or a result.
- Charisma Carpenter
Jennifer now understood the meaning of the cadence: the black and white drawing, the watercolor painting,and the notes. The cadence had at last developed into a concerto for violin, the instrument of gypsies, with a prevailing rhapsodic "leitmotif". The final movement had revealed itself when they were at the gypsy camp. And now it was complete.
- Barbara Casey
Nobody will ever be able to understand the meaning of the measure of his own words.
- Sorin Cerin
Never let the meaning of your love light escape to the dark nothingness of oblivion.
- Sorin Cerin
The meaning of the words is necessary and not their extent.
- Sorin Cerin
For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger
In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.
- Marc Chagall
Science and art,... they seek the truth and the meaning of life, they seek God, [and] the soul, and when they are harnessed to passing needs and activities,... then they only complicate and encumber life.
- Anton Chekhov
Love is two people in love,
who bond as one,
destined for each other;
this is the meaning of love.
A piece of our spirit remains wherever we have been...
- Stacey Chillemi
If hate motivates your life, you'll never know the meaning of true love
- Gaiven Clairmont
you can't know the meaning of the lesson until class is over!
- Pearl Cleage
In the meantime, I would drink, rest, and ponder the meaning of this mob.
- Hunter S Thompson
Ye know full well that the meaning of life is to find your gift. To find your gift is happiness. Never tae find it is misery.
- Terry Pratchett
He's going to arrest the Patrician, Vimes told himself, the thought trickling through his brain like an icy rivulet. He's actually going to arrest the Patrician. The supreme ruler. He's going to arrest him. This is what he's actually going to do. The boy doesn't know the meaning of the word "fear." Oh, wouldn't it be a good idea if he knew the meaning of the word "survival"..
- Terry Pratchett
In an incredulous tone, he said, "You don't know the meaning of virtue!"
"Of course I do-it means your thong must be white." (Sabine)
- Kresley Cole
Sabine gave a Scoff. " I could be virtuous, if I wanted to be."
In an incredulous tone, he said, "You don't know the meaning of virtue!"
"Of course I do - it means your thong must be white.
- Kresley Cole
If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.
- Paula Cole
To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.
- Socrates
In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words.
- Mason Cooley
The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have.
- Henry David Thoreau
For Death is the meaning of night;
The eternal shadow
Into which all lives must fall,
All hopes expire.
- Michael Cox
Grant knew that people could not imagine geological time. Human life was lived on another scale of time entirely. An apple turned brown in a few minutes. Silverware turned black in a few days. A compost heap decayed in a season. A child grew up in a decade. None of these everyday human experiences prepared people to be able to imagine the meaning of eighty million years - the length of time that had passed since this little animal had died.
- Michael Crichton
The meaning of this observation is unclear, but it raises the unfortunate possibility of ambiguous triplets; that is, triplets which may code more than one amino acid. However one would certainly expect such triplets to be in a minority.
- Francis Crick
What is the meaning of life? That was alla simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.
- Virginia Woolf
What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.
- Virginia Woolf
The meaning of the world, said Wittgenstein, is outside the world. Events and values are distinguishable only in relation to others. A totality of events and values, the world itself, requires another.
- Guy Davenport
Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.
- Kurt Vonnegut
Drawn crudely in the dust of three window-panes were a swastika, a hammer and sickle, and the Stars and Stripes. I had drawn the three symbols weeks before, at the conclusion of an argument about patriotism with Kraft. I had given a hearty cheer for each symbol, demonstrating to Kraft the meaning of patriotism to, respectively, a Nazi, a Communist, and an American. "Hooray, hooray, hooray," I'd said.
- Kurt Vonnegut
Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.
- Guy Debord
, because what's the meaning of doing dishes if you're not driven by something beyond necessity.
- Don Delillo
The meaning of life has not much to do with good and evil, right and wrong, duty, honor, country, or any of that.
It has to do with cutting the right deal.
- Nelson Demille
What's the meaning of life? Other people.
- John Green
It wasn't like I was some expert on the meaning of being supportive. Was it being loyal even against your better judgement? Or, like Olivia, was it making your displeasure known from the start, even when someone didn't want to hear it?
- Sarah Dessen
God created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed - that is the meaning of evolution.
- Graham Greene
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.
- Philip K Dick
The meaning of life is that it stops.
- Franz Kafka
We can contemplate the meaning of your life all you want, but know that you're my meaning... the reason behind just about everything I do - and I would never want to change that.
- Rebecca Donovan
Love life more than the meaning of it?
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I think everyone must love life more than anything else in the world.'
'Love life more than the meaning of it?'
'Yes, certainly. Love it regardless of logic, as you say. Yes, most certainly regardless of logic, for only then will I grasp its meaning. That's what I've been vaguely aware of for a long time. Half your work is done, Ivan: you love life. Now you must try to do the second half and you are saved.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I believe this is so and I'm prepared to vouch for it, because it seems to me that the meaning of man's life consists in proving to himself every minute that he's a man and not a piano key. And man will keep proving it and paying for it with his own skin; he will turn into a troglodyte if need be. And, since this is so, I cannot help rejoicing that things are still the way they are and that, for the time being, nobody knows worth a damn what determines our desires.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
What is the meaning of it, Watson? said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.
- Arthur Conan Doyle
What is the meaning of it Watson?What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear?It must tend to some end or else our universe is ruled by chance,which is unthinkable.But what end?There is this long standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.
- Arthur Conan Doyle
What really annoys me are the ones who write to say, I am doing your book for my final examinations and could you please tell me what the meaning of it is. I find it just so staggering--that you're supposed to explain the meaning of your book to some total stranger! If I knew what the meanings of my books were, I wouldn't have bothered to write them.
- Margaret Drabble
Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know the present? Is he in a position to make any judgment about it? Certainly not. For how can a person with no knowledge of the future understand the meaning of the present? If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred?
- Milan Kundera
Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.
- Milan Kundera
We decided that it was no good asking what is the meaning of life, because life isn't an answer, life is the question, and you, yourself, are the answer.
- Ursula K Le Guin
Artthe meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory.
- Lawrence Durrell
My understanding of the meaning of a book is that the book itself disappears from sight, that it is chewed alive, digested and incorporated into the system as flesh and blood which in turn creates new spirit and reshapes the world.
- Henry Miller
Living apart and at peace with myself,I came to realize more vividly the meaning of the doctrine of acceptance. To refrain from giving advice, to refrain from meddling in the affairs of others, to refrain even though the motives be the highest, from tampering with anothers way of life-so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit. Hands Off.
- Henry Miller
To help, to continually help and share, that is the sum of all knowledge; that is the meaning of art.
- Eleonora Duse
The meaning of life is to get meaning for life.
- Wayne Dyer
It is conceivable that not knowing the meaning of life is part of the meaning of life, rather as not counting how many words I am uttering when I give an after-dinner speech helps me to give an after-dinner speech. Perhaps life is kept going by our ignorance of its fundamental meaning, as capitalism for Karl Marx
- Terry Eagleton
Why was he alive on Earth? Very often the meaning was obscured. Very often it required some digging. The meaning of his life was an elusive stream of water hundreds of feet below the surface, and he would periodically drop a bucket down the well, fill it, bring it up and drink from it. But this did not sustain him for long.
- Dave Eggers
But I think I have done right to save the vision in this way, even though I may die sooner because I did it; for I know the meaning of the vision is wise and beautiful and good; and you can see that I am only a pitiful old man after all.
- Black Elk
Maybe the Truth of the Meaning of Life, Ancient and Arcane Knowledge of the Great Unknowable Universe is handed down only to persons presenting with the correct brand-name footwear. If you turn up wearing Shoe City knock-offs, you don't get to pass Go and collect Infinite Enlightenment.
- Tracy Engelbrecht
People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.
- Brian Eno
First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.
- Epictetus
Kallor said: 'I walked this land when the T'lan Imass were but children. I have commanded armies a hundred thousand strong. I have spread the fire of my wrath across entire continents, and sat alone upon tall thrones. Do you grasp the meaning of this?'
Yes,' said Caladan Brood, 'you never learn.
- Steven Erikson
Show me a god that does not demand mortal suffering.
Show me a god that celebrates diversity, a celebration that embraces even non-believers, and is not threatened by them.
Show me a god that understands the meaning of peace. In life, not in death.
- Steven Erikson
If I were doing something that the Bible condemns, I have two choices. I can straighten up my act, or I can somehow distort and twist and change the meaning of the Bible.
- Jerry Falwell
I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise?
- Federico Fellini
I dropped out of high school when I was 16, after I had a huge argument with my English teacher over the meaning of the word 'existentialism.'
- Craig Ferguson
I think of myself as being a relatively intelligent man who is open to a lot of different things and I think that questioning our purpose in life and the meaning of existence is something that we all go through at some point.
- Laurence Fishburne
Horace, who had been trying to find out the meaning of Kurokuma for some time now, was pleased to hear the translation.
"Black bear," he repeated. "It's undoubtedly because I'm so terrible in battle."
"I'd guess so," Will put in. "I've seen you in battle and you're definitely terrible.
- John Flanagan
...the meaning of my thoughts started to float away from me, like leaves that fall from a tree into a river, I was the tree, the world was the river.
- Jonathan Safran Foer
For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.
- Viktor E Frankl
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
- Viktor E Frankl
In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
- Viktor E Frankl
For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.
- Viktor E Frankl
The meaning of life is to give life meaning.
- Viktor E Frankl
Because of social pressure, individualism is rejected by most people in favor of conformity. Thus the individual relies mainly upon the actions of others and neglects the meaning of his own personal life. Hence he sees his own life as meaningless and falls into the "existential vacuum" feeling inner void. Progressive automation causes increasing alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, and suicide.
- Viktor E Frankl
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
- Viktor E Frankl
The mind can ask all the questions on the meaning of life. But it cannot answer one of them, for the answers are beyond the mind.
- Marianne Fredriksson
The sheer size too, the excessive abundance, scale, and exaggeration of dreams could be an infantile characteristic. The most ardent wish of children is to grow up and get as big a share of everything as the grown-ups; they are hard to satisfy; do not know the meaning of 'enough.
- Sigmund Freud
Leonard asks me if there's anything I need to know before he dies, I think about it for a minute, turn to him, say what's the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that's an easy one, my son, it's whatever you want it to be.
- James Frey
What is the meaning of life?Whatever you want it to be.
- James Frey
I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have - I can reflect light into the dark places of this world - into the black places in the hearts of men - and change somethings in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life.
- Robert Fulghum
Throughout the entire history of philosophy, philosophers have sought to discover what man is - or what human nature is. But Sartre believed that man has no such eternal nature to fall back on. It is therefore useless to search for the meaning of life in general. We are condemned to improvise. We are like actors dragged onto the stage without having learned our lines, with no script and no prompter to whisper stage directions to us. We must decide for ourselves how to live.
- Jostein Gaarder
There's nobody to guide through the process of becoming a man... to explain to them the meaning of manhood. And that's a recipe for disaster.
- Barack Obama
By dint of vision, and determination, and most of all faith in the redeeming power of love, he endured the humiliation of arrest, the loneliness of a prison cell, the constant threats to his life, until he finally inspired a nation to transform itself, and begin to live up to the meaning of its creed. Senator Obama
- Barack Obama
Discipline? I don't know the meaning of the word.
- Liam Gallagher
Power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.
- Leo Tolstoy
Salvation does not lie in the rituals and profession of faith, but in a lucid understanding of the meaning of one's life.
- Leo Tolstoy
Looking into Napoleon's eyes, Prince Andrei thought about the insignificance of grandeur, about the insignificance of life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and about the still greater insignificance of death, the meaning of which no one among the living could understand or explain.
- Leo Tolstoy
What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the willso fo the masses transferred to one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.
- Leo Tolstoy
Until we perceive the meaning of our past, we remain the mere carriers of ideas, like the Nomads.
- Stephen Gardiner
Either your understanding of the meaning of music is there from the beginning or it is not.
- Gordon Getty
When I'm with you, my world is complete. When I touch you, I understand the meaning of life. When I lost you, I completely shattered. You. Own. Me.
- Abbi Glines
Everything was going for me, I didn't even know the meaning of the word insecurity and suddenly I am surrounded by words like operation, cancer, chemotherapy, radiation.
- Delta Goodrem
Could you understand the meaning of light if there were no darkness to point the contrast? Day and night, life and death, love and hatred; since none of these things can have any being at all apart from the existence of the other; only the indolence of human nature finds it so hard to pierce through to the other side.
- Elizabeth Goudge
What is the meaning of this gross outrage?
- Kenneth Grahame
This is a basic requirement the meaning of globalization is that we should admit that the economy of each country is dependent on the economy of all the others.
- Richard Grasso
Respect yourself and others will come to respect you. That is true about all of us, but especially true about women. That is the meaning of honour.
- Abdulrazak Gurnah
I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.
- Pete Hamill
The meaning of the Street in all ways and at all times is the need for sharing life with others and the search for community.
- Virginia Hamilton
Each move is dictated by the previous one--that is the meaning of order
- Tom Stoppard
Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.
- Vaclav Havel
The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.
- Vaclav Havel
In our own lives the voice of God speaks slowly, a syllable at a time. Reaching the peak of years, dispelling some of our intimate illusions and learning how to spell the meaning of life-experiences backwards, some of us discover how the scattered syllables form a single phrase.
- Abraham Joshua Heschel
I have never been able to grasp the meaning of time. I don't believe it exists. I've felt this again and again, when alone and out in nature. On such occasions, time does not exist. Nor does the future exist.
- Thor Heyerdahl
Sometimes the best course in the search for the meaning of life is to busy yourself until you forget that you don't know the meaning of life
- Amanda Hocking
Before he had come to the town he had known about nothing but death: here he had learnt to live, to decide things for himself; he had learnt what it felt like to wash in clean water in the sunshine until he was clean himself, and what it felt like to satisfy his hunger with food that tasted good; he had learnt the sound of laughter that was free from cruelty; he had learnt the meaning of beauty
- Anne Holm
We need to theorize the meaning of beauty in our lives so that we can educate for critical consciousness, talking through the issues: how we acquire and spend money, how we feel about beauty, what the place of beauty is in our lives when we lack material privilege and even basic resources for living, the meaning and significance of luxury, and the politics of envy.
- Bell Hooks
At times , he didn't understand the meaning of the Koran's words. But he said he liked the enhancing sounds the arabic words made as they rolled off his tongue. He said they comforted him , eased his heart. "They'll comfort you too. Mrariam jo , " he said. "You can summon then in your time of your need , and they won't fail you. God's words will never betray you , my girl. (pg.17)
- Khaled Hosseini
Security is not the meaning of my life. Great opportunities are worth the risk.
- Shirley Hufstedler
A family can be the bane of one's existence. A family can also be most of the meaning of one's existence. I don't know whether my family is bane or meaning, but they have surely gone away and left a large hole in my heart.
- Keri Hulme
When language was not transcendental enough to complete the meaning of a revelation, symbols were relied upon for heavenly teaching, and familiar images, chosen from the known, were made to mirror the unknown spiritual truth.
- William H Hunt
I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.
- Thomas Huxley
If men will not understand the meaning of judgement, they will never come to understand the meaning of grace.
- Dorothy L Sayers
I am not asking for sensational revelations, but I would like to sense the meaning of that minute, to feel it's urgency..
- Jean Paul Sartre
Expression, to a great extent, is a matter of terms, and terms are anyone's. The meaning of 'God' may have a billion interpretations if there be that many souls in the world.
- Charles Ives
The meaning of life is contained in every single expression of life. It is present in the infinity of forms and phenomena that exist in all of creation.
- Michael Jackson
They also accused her of being sardonic, and although there was uncertainty about the meaning of the word, they knew it was not a desirable quality in a woman, being one which gentlemen particularly disliked.
- P D James
Love is without a doubt the laziest theory for the meaning of life, but when it actually comes a time to do it we find just enough energy to over-complicate life again. Any devil can love, whom he himself sees as, a good person who has treated him well, but to love also the polar opposite is what separates love from fickle emotions.
- Criss Jami
In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design.
- Steve Jobs
Irony is the word I forget the meaning of immediately after I look it up, but I kind of feel like I live in a constant state of it.
- Maureen Johnson
I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.
- June Jordan
But what will he do when he sees only too clearly why his patient is ill; when he sees that it arises from his having no love, but only sexuality; no faith, because he is afraid to grope in the dark; no hope, because he is disillusioned by the world and by life; and no understanding, because he has failed to read the meaning of his own existence?
- C G Jung
I wish there existed philosophical delivery stations, where a person could call up and order an answer to such questions as, "Does life have meaning, and what's the meaning of meaning?" Then a delivery guy with a thick German mustache would show up at your door within thirty minutes with an answer. And you could order a large two-topping answer for only 9.99, plus tip.
- Jarod Kintz
There's a line in The Barretts of Wimpole Street - you know, the play - where Elizabeth Barrett is trying to work out the meaning of one of Robert Browning's poems, and she shows it to him, and he reads it and he tells her when he wrote that poem, only God and Robert Browning knew what it meant, and now only God knows. And that's how I feel about studying English. Who knows what the writer was thinking, and why should it matter? I'd rather just read for enjoyment.
- Susanna Kearsley
From man's blood-sodden heart are sprung
Those branches of the night and day
Where the gaudy moon is hung.
What's the meaning of all song?
Let all things pass away.
- W B Yeats
Without knowing how to calculate the odds on such matters, it seems improbably to me that God would have whispered the meaning of my life into the ear of some guru or authority.
- Sam Keen
love only variously everyday
The meaning of love
- Mother Teresa
In short, the Enlightenment privatized marriage, taking it out of the public sphere, and redefined its purpose as individual gratification, not any "broader good" such as reflecting God's nature, producing character, or raising children. Slowly but surely, this newer understanding of the meaning of marriage has displaced the older ones in Western culture.
- Timothy Keller
If a person has grasped the meaning of God's grace in his heart, he will do justice. If he doesn't live justly, then he may say with his lips that he is grateful for God's grace, but in his heart he is far from him. If he doesn't care about the poor, it reveals that at best he doesn't understand the grace he has experienced, and at worst he has not really encountered the saving mercy of God. Grace should make you just.
- Timothy Keller
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