Meaning Quotes

“Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling, or teaching, or ordering. Rather, he seeks to establish a relationship with meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our live trying to be less lonesome. And one of our ancient methods is to tell a story, begging the listener to say, and to feel, "Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought." To finish is sadness to a writer, a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.”
― John Steinbeck

“It would be frightening to think that in all the cosmos, which is so harmonious, so complete and equal to itself, that only human life is happening randomly, that only one's destiny lacks meaning.”
― Mircea Eliade

“Each of us has his own inner concentration camp... We must deal with, with forgiveness and patience-as full human beings, as we are and what we will become.”
― Viktor Frankl

“Look everywhere. There are miracles and curiosities to fascinate and intrigue for many lifetimes:
the intricacies of nature and everything in the world and universe around us from the miniscule to the infinite; physical, chemical and biological functionality; consciousness, intelligence and the ability to learn; evolution, and the imperative for life; beauty and other abstract interpretations; language and other forms of communication; how we make our way here and develop social patterns of culture and meaningfulness;
how we organise ourselves and others; moral imperatives; the practicalities of survival and all the embellishments we pile on top; thought, beliefs, logic, intuition, ideas; inventing, creating, information, knowledge; emotions, sensations, experience, behaviour.
We are each unique individuals arising from a combination of genetic, inherited, and learned information, all of which can be extremely fallible.
Things taught to us when we are young are quite deeply ingrained. Obviously some of it (like don’t stick your finger in a wall socket) is very useful,
but some of it is only opinion – an amalgamation of views from people you just happen to have had contact with.
A bit later on we have access to lots of other information via books, media, internet etc, but it is important to remember that most of this is still just opinion, and often biased.
Even subjects such as history are presented according to the presenter’s or author’s viewpoint, and science is continually changing. Newspapers and TV tend to cover news in the way that is most useful to them (and their funders/advisors), Research is also subject to the decisions of funders and can be distorted by business interests. Pretty much anyone can say what they want on the internet, so our powers of discernment need to be used to a great degree there too.
Not one of us can have a completely objective view as we cannot possibly have access to, and filter, all knowledge available, so we must accept that our views are bound to be subjective. Our understanding and responses are all very personal, and our views extremely varied. We tend to make each new thing fit in with the picture we have already started in our heads, but we often have to go back and adjust the picture if we want to be honest about our view of reality as we continually expand it. We are taking in vast amounts of information from others all the time, so need to ensure we are processing that to develop our own true reflection of who we are.”
― Jay Woodman

“There is a widespread sense of loss here, if not always of God, then at least of meaning.”
― Charles Taylor, A Secular Age

“Given the ease with which health infuses life with meaning and purpose, it is shocking how swiftly illness steals away those certainties…Time unused and only endured still vanishes, as if time itself is starving, and each day is swallowed whole, leaving no crumbs, no memory, no trace at all.”
― Elisabeth Tova Bailey, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

“At least tell me you won? And that the scratches and dings were totally worth it."
"Of course. They're always worth it," he says with a hidden meaning that only the two of us could ever understand.”
― Jessica Sorensen, The Secret of Ella and Micha

“The crises of modern man are to a large extent religious ones, insofar as they are an awakening of his awareness to an absence of meaning.”
― Mircea Eliade, Ordeal by Labyrinth: Conversations with Claude-Henri Rocquet

“When we work creatively and productively with others, our experience of meaning can be profound. When we work directly for the good of others, meaning deepens in ways that reward us beyond measure. Whenever we go beyond satisfying our own personal needs, we enter the realm of what Frankl called "ultimate meaning." some call it connection to a higher self, to God, to our own spirit, to universal consciousness, to love, to the collective good. No matter what it's called, it is deep meaning and it transforms our lives.”
― Alex Pattakos, Prisoners of Our Thoughts: Viktor Frankl's Principles for Discovering Meaning in Life and Work

“Just as the soul animates the body, so, in a way, meaning breathes life into a word.”
― John of Salisbury, The Metalogicon of John of Salsibury: A Twelfth-Century Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium

“She [Beatrice] alone was still real for him, still implied meaning in the world, and beauty. Her nature became his landmark - what Melville would call, with more sobriety than we can now muster, his Greenwich Standard ...”
― Dan Simmons, Hyperion

“…breaking the heart of someone you still love is a rare horror, not funny to anyone, except perhaps Satan…and even his pleasure would be spoiled by not having had a hand in it, by the dumb, wasteful accident of the thing. The Devil wants meaning just like the rest of us.”
― Glenn Duncan

“Life must have its sacred moments and its holy places. We need the infinite, the limitless, the uttermost -- all that can give the heart a deep and strengthening peace.”
― A. Powell Davies, Without Apology: Collected Meditations on Liberal Religion

“Poetry doesn’t pay. But I need it. And so do you.”
― Cory Basil, Skinny Dipping in Daylight

“A place without meaning is no place to be.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars

“Love, Hope, and Reverence are realities of a different order from the senses, but they are positive and constant facts, always active, always working out mighty changes in human life.”
― Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell

“The search for meaning in our lives takes us on paths large and small. When we go beyond ourselves-whether in forgiveness, unselfishness, thoughtfulness, generosity and understanding toward others-we enter into the spiritual realm of meaning. By giving beyond ourselves, we make our own lives richer. This is a truth long understood at the heart of all meaningful spiritual traditions. It's a mystery that can only be experienced. And when we do experience it, we are in the heart of meaning. We are no longer a prisoner of our thoughts.”
― Alex Pattakos, Prisoners of Our Thoughts: Viktor Frankl's Principles for Discovering Meaning in Life and Work

“We have no way of knowing, of course, why some are born in health and affluence, while others enter broken bodies or broken homes, or emerge into a realm of war or hunger. So we cannot give definite meaning to our place in the world, or to our neighbor's. But Plato's reflections should give us pause and invite both humility and hope. Humility, because if we chose our lot in life, there is every reason to suspect merit, and not disfavor, is behind disadvantaged birth. A blighted life may have been the more courageous choice--at least it was for Plato... So how can we feel pride in our own blessedness, or condescension in another's misfortune? And Plato's reflections should give us hope, because his myth reminds us that suffering can be sanctifying, that pain is not punishment ,and that the path to virtue is fraught with opposition.”
― Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“The whole purpose of the construction of The Bridge of Silver Wings was to provide a path leading to The River of Winged Dreams, or to serve as a resting place until the river’s deeper and truer nature revealed itself.”
― Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams

“If the if isn't an if, what if is an if that if has to be replaced by an if that if shall never if that the place of if.”
― Avakruth

“Qui n'a plus qu'un moment a vivre
N'a plus rien a dissimuler”
― Philippe Quinault, Atys: A Play in Five Acts

“The only obligation any artist can have is to himself. His works means nothing, otherwise. It has no meaning.”
― Truman Capote

“Don't be led away to think this part of the world important and that unimportant. Every corner of the world is important. No man knows whether this part or that is most so, but every man may do some honest work in his own corner.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

“Art indeed may not change anything, and yet on some very basic level, life is insupportable without it.”
― Richard Matturro, Janey

“I like the multiplicity of books, because each book is different in the mind of each reader. It's the same with this film - if 300 people are in a cinema watching it, they will all see a different film, so in a way there are thousands of different versions of "Caché (Hidden)". The point being that, despite what TV shows us, and what the news stories tell us, there is never just one truth, there is only personal truth.”
― Michael Haneke

“...there is no map of the soul because we make it up as we go...”
― John Geddes A Familiar Rain

“I sort of kind of said something a little like that but maybe not clearly enough to sound like that... But it's what I meant.”
― Mary Eva Swatek

“Frankl asserts that "the potentialities of life are not indifferent possibilities, but must be seen in the light of meaning and values." Such meaning and values cannot be imposed; each individual must seek out for himself or herself the meaning of each situation and the implications the present moment may have for the future.”
― William Blair Gould, Viktor E. Frankl: Life With Meaning

“Isn't it true that there is a rare kind of person who perceives, as does a good dog, that life is doing something meaningful, and who discovers what it is and goes about doing it with a spirit of moderate hustle, and there is a not rare kind of person who perceives none of this and who goes about doing what is necessary in a spirit of aggrievedness?”
― Padgett Powell, The Interrogative Mood