Importance Quotes

“I would have liked to ask people: 'Are you in love?' or 'What are you reading?' but I never wondered what their job was, although to them it was often of prime importance.”
― Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse / A Certain Smile

“Get out," Emilia growled, in a voice she had never heard come from her throat. "I am more than this. It does not matter what you see when you look at me, because you will never know me the way I know myself. And even if I am the only person in the world with that knowledge, it does not make it any less real.”
― Jodi Picoult, By Any Other Name

“Sometimes the things
that matter to you won’t matter
to anyone but you. And that’s redemption.”
― Gabrielle Calvocoressi

“I felt the revenant tense and knew before she spoke that it was Mother Dolours. “I fear that an age of saints and miracles isn’t something to celebrate, Sister Marie. The Lady sends us such gifts only in times of darkness. Do you recall the writings of Saint Liliane?"
The sister was silent a moment. Then she murmured, “And so the silent bell wakens to herald the Dead; and the last candle is lit against the coming night...”
I stained to hear more, but their voices had dwindled as the passed outside the hall, leaving a cold lump in my stomach and the lingering image of a single, steady candle flame slowly burning itself down, the only remaining light to hold off the dark.”
― Margaret Rogerson, Vespertine

“First, since so much time is spent by people in bureaus working with paper, they may come to set too much store by it. They may become absorbed in receiving it, initialing it, routing it, filing it, keeping it; they may forget to read it in this process. Paper may in their eyes become more important than what is written on it. This is a natural tendency — paper is durable, tangible, easy to manipulate. It is something to see, feel, touch. Information and ideas are volatile, hard to handle, invisible, and they may not even be used. Men in bureaus are not different from men anywhere; they would rather risk their lives and reputations in keeping track of something solid and inert than of something impalpable and invisible. So they may tend to worry more over where a paper is than what has become of the things written on it.
There is something else about bureaucratic paper worth noticing. There are some things you cannot write on it, things any sensible man has to take into account. You can, for instance, write out orders for Lieutenant Brown to leave Fort Russell and report to Fort Ethan Allen, but you can't get on the paper how the lieutenant may feel about it. All kinds of qualifying, modifying, distorting considerations have to be left out of the information written on bureaucratic paper. It is difficult to introduce a sense of urgency, of uncertainty, of change, of growth, of all those strange feelings and attitudes that enter into and disturb any human situation. Concern for paper, in other words, may tend to drive out concern for the human being.”
― Elting E. Morison, Men, Machines, and Modern Times

“J'aime à m'étendre auprès des morts pour prendre ma mesure.”
― Marguerite Yourcenar, Mémoires d'Hadrien

“And the roses were humbled.
“You’re lovely, but you’re empty,” he went on. “One couldn’t die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she’s the one I’ve watered. Since she’s the one I put under glass. Since she’s the one I sheltered behind a screen. Since she’s the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three for butterflies). Since she’s the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even when she said nothing at all. Since she’s MY rose.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“When a man is a fair way and sees all life open in front of him, he seems to himself to make a very important figure in the world. His horse whinnies to him; the trumpets blow and the girls look out of windows as he rides into town before his company; he receives many assurances of trust and regard - sometimes by express in a letter - sometimes face to face, with persons of great consequence falling on his neck. It is not wonderful if his head is turned for a time. But once he is dead, were he as brave as Hercules or as wise as Solomon, he is soon forgotten. It is not ten years since my father fell, with many other knights around him, in a very fierce encounter, and I do not think any of them, nor so much as the name of the fight, is now remembered. No, no, madam, the nearer you come to it, you see that death is a dark and dusty corner, where a man gets into his tomb and has the door shut after him till the Judgement Day. I have few friends just now, and once I am dead I shall have none.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Sire De Maletroit's Door

“Sex must be important as it is so expensive.”
― Steve Jones, The Language of Genes: Solving the Mysteries of Our Genetic Past, Present and Future

“Importance calls for urgency while necessity demands consideration for the severity of consequences. The mission will always act as a compass to guide the process of decision making.”
― Dr. Lucas D. Shallua

“Give people the same importance they give you.
Never more, never less.”
― Augusto Branco

“My Kind of Girl
A letter of inspiration from a Loving Mother

My kind of girl
Understands who she is
And stands for what she believes in
She cannot be broken
No one can belittle her
When trials come her way
She remains unfazed

My kind of girl
Walks with confidence
She exudes excellence
An epitome of elegance
She does due diligence
Being mindful of her intelligence
Because she knows her importance

My kind of girl
Builds her own future
A certified trailblazer
Who utilizes the power within her
To be of good influence
Always on top of her game
Yes, she keeps soaring like an eagle



My kind of girl
Takes charge of her own life
Secures her name in historical archives
For she is no ordinary woman
An extraordinary being
She dares to dream
In the world, she makes a difference
That is my kind of girl”
― Gift Gugu Mona, From My Mother's Classroom: A Badge of Honour for a Remarkable Woman

“My Kind of Girl
A letter of inspiration from a Loving Mother

My kind of girl
Understands who she is
And stands for what she believes in
She cannot be broken
No one can belittle her
When trials come her way
She remains unfazed

My kind of girl
Walks with confidence
She exudes excellence
An epitome of elegance
She does due diligence
Being mindful of her intelligence
Because she knows her importance

My kind of girl
Builds her own future
A certified trailblazer
Who utilizes the power within her
To be of good influence
Always on top of her game
Yes, she keeps soaring like an eagle

My kind of girl
Takes charge of her own life
Secures her name in historical archives
For she is no ordinary woman
An extraordinary being
She dares to dream
In the world, she makes a difference
That is my kind of girl”
― Gift Gugu Mona, From My Mother's Classroom: A Badge of Honour for a Remarkable Woman

“My Kind of Girl
A letter of inspiration from a Loving Mother

My kind of girl
Understands who she is
And stands for what she believes in
She cannot be broken
No one can belittle her
When trials come her way
She remains unfazed

My kind of girl
Walks with confidence
She exudes excellence
An epitome of elegance
She does due diligence
Being mindful of her intelligence
Because she knows her importance

My kind of girl
Builds her own future
A certified trailblazer
Who utilizes the power within her
To be of good influence
Always on top of her game
Yes, she keeps soaring like an eagle

My kind of girl
Takes charge of her own life
Secures her name in historical archives
For she is no ordinary woman
An extraordinary being
She dares to dream
In the world, she makes a difference

That is my kind of girl”
― Gift Gugu Mona, From My Mother's Classroom: A Badge of Honour for a Remarkable Woman

“When you have every excuse to not do it,
Your choice of 'none' becomes the most important.”
― Mahendar Singh Jakhar

“The importance of time is not just about time itself, but rather about what it means to us. Time is essential for what we value and prioritize in our lives.”
― Kalpesh Radadiya

“It is important to have a career vision. It is the big picture you have in
your mind of where you would like to be in the future in terms of your
career.”
― André van Eck

“What you place your importance in will determine your focus: Whether that be humility over pride, defense above offense, blade before body.”
― Lauren Lola, Dasig

“Almost every form of meaning is constructed. We convince ourselves and each other that this stuff matters because that's how we get stuff done.”
― John Green

“If the enemy sends its Goliath into battle, it magnifies our cause... If St. George had slain a dragonfly, who would remember him?”
― Jerome Lawrence, Robert Edwin Lee

“The importance of free speech lies in its capacity to nurture resilience in the face of adversity. A society that values and protects the right to express dissenting opinions demonstrates a robust commitment to intellectual fortitude. It is through the clash of ideas, the testing of convictions, and the refining of arguments that we forge a citizenry capable of confronting challenges with a depth of understanding and a unity of purpose.”
― James William Steven Parker

“If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened- that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“I saw other men after Patrick. They were important to me at the time, but now I can’t remember why.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“Gratitude for luxury impresses no one with our savior. No matter how grateful we are, lining our lives with gold will not make the world think our God is great, it will make the world think our God is gold. That is no honor to the supremacy of His worth. None. But His supremacy, Him being infinitely more valuable than gold is why we live.”
― John Piper

“Even for autobiographical purposes a diary is nothing like so useful as I had hoped. You put down each day what you think important; but of course you cannot each day see what will prove to have been important in the long run.”
― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life

“In the end what matters most is what we do and how we live when no one is watching.”
― Mariann Edgar Budde

“A final point on this poem, & RH as a poet. 1 of the great conflation made in criticism of poetry is the terms great & important. They are 2 different things. There are great poets who are not particularly important. In this camp would be an Edgar Allan Poe, Pablo Neruda, Emily Dickinson, Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Pound, Robinson Jeffers, & Countee Cullen, among some others. These are poets for whom there is no doubt that great poetry sprang from. BUT, their work did not have a profound effect on the advancement of the art form of poetry. They were either technically superb craftsmen who were the best at their craft but wrote on things, & in ways, similar to others. They were simply better. Here would be Poe, Kipling, & Cullen. Or they were inventive & unique, but while inspiring devotees, never gave rise to poetic heirs. Here is Dickinson. Or they were hit & miss poets who often set back the art. Here are Neruda- whose great personal, lyric, & love poems in a traditional vein were counterbalanced by his atrociously puerile political & ‘experimental’ poems. Also in this category- despite his High Modernist credentials, is Ezra Pound. Most of his great poems are in ancient forms, in mock fashion. An envelope-pusher he was not- although he spurred TSE to greater heights than he was capable of by himself. Then there is a Jeffers- a poet who was superb; yet mystifyingly left little impact- most likely due to his reclusive personae & political prophesying. Yet all these poets touched the ineffable at least a few times in their careers.
A 2nd camp are those poets who are important but not really great poets. Their poems had significant impact on the art, but the poets’ work, overall, rarely touched greatness. In this camp would reside a T.S. Eliot- whose whole career consists of 5 or 6 near-great to great poems & a passel of shit, William Carlos Williams- whose prosaic approach to poetry overshadowed the fact that he only had 10 or 12 good 10 line or less poems in his arsenal, Arthur Rimbaud- whose impact was more on the ‘cult of the poet’ than on the art form, Anna Akhmatova- whose import was more as ‘functional state treasure’ than persuasive writer, Allen Ginsberg- who has 12 or so great poems that showed new boundaries & subject matter could work in poetry, but also wrote a passel of utter doggerel, & Derek Walcott- who, despite early promise, has a body of banal poetry, yet opened the way for several generations of non-European poets’ poetry to find a Western audience. None of these poets will stand too tall in the coming centuries for their work, but- their impact on varied aspects of the art is undeniable.
This is the difference between the 2. Greatness is about how much the art succeeds & stands alone, Import is on the non-artistic aspects of the work & poet. Of course, a 3rd category exists for those poets that were great & important. Whose excellence & import is undeniable. In this camp would reside John Donne- the 1st English language poet with a Modern mindset, if not vocabulary, Walt Whitman- whose work revolutionized subject matter, & led to the war against formalism, Charles Baudelaire- who did the same as Whitman in French, Stephane Mallarmé- whose fragmenting of form led directly to Eliot, but whose work has held up far better despite being older, Hart Crane- who created lyric epopee, & whose verse reached in new directions in new ways- cracking the ekstasis of poetry open & truly inventing the REAL Language poetry of the 20th Century, Marina Tsvetaeva & Sylvia Plath- the 2 women who became iconic Feminist heroines with legions of acolytes worldwide, yet wove together brilliant poetry despite mental illnesses, & Wallace Stevens- whose great poetry has given heart to legions of poetry lovers who appreciate games played with beauty & philosophy.”
― Dan Schneider

“Even the world doesn't care about itself. It is humans who have succeeded in giving it the appearance of being important. They have built an endless game that forces constant action, thus embedding the illusion in masses' minds that "these must mean something.”
― Sov8840

“Here it comes, then: what we’re doing doesn’t really matter. You know how they always told us we’re indispensable? Not true. We’re dispensable. Highly dispensable. But since we’re here anyway, let’s make something of it. Let’s not get too caught up in identities and job titles. They’re usually only there to put some order in our day. Like summer camp, but with salaries instead of juice boxes. You’ll have to look elsewhere for the really essential stuff.”
― Etgar Keret

“Words could mean nothing or they could change someone for eternity.”
― Aegelis