Meaning Quotes - Page 2

Who am I? They often tell me I would step from my cell's confinement calmly, cheerfully, firmly, like a squire from his country-house.Who am I? They often tell me I would talk to my warden freely and friendly and clearly, as though it were mine to command.Who am I? They also tell me I would bear the days of misfortune equably, smilingly, proudly, like one accustomed to win.Am I then really all that which other men tell of, or am I only what I know of myself, restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage, struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat, yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds, thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness, trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation, tossing in expectation of great events, powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance, weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making, faint and ready to say farewell to it all.Who am I? This or the other? Am I one person today, and tomorrow another? Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others, and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling? Or is something within me still like a beaten army, fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God loves atheists. The former ones make the most compelling theists because they're so empirically familiar with how atheists think.

Words are things. You must be careful, careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don’t do that. Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally in to you.

There is absolutely nothing feminine about the colour pink, or, anything bad-luck'ish about the colour black — in itself.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Meanings with no purpose are useful for meaningless debates on what the "meaner" meant. And that's what #politics is all about - misreading.

A writer draws a road map where readers walks with their love, joy, anger, tears, and dismay. Every story, every poem, has different meanings for every reader.

Debasish Mridha

Rejoice in the works of your hands, be happy and thankful that you are valuable, that what you say and do insn't taken for a ride, that you have rejected the notion of self-doubt and fear, that God isn't blind towards propagating your positive influence, and finally that you'll leave a meritorious legacy.

Michael Bassey Johnson

photographs are very interesting, and you can look into them a million times and still find a new meaning in them, something in the past that was caught in the film itself…

in exceptional circumstances — exceptional in that all circumstances in life are exceptional, especially those which are nothing in themselves and come to be everything in their results.

Álvaro de Campos

Superior poets say what they really feel. Mediocre poets say what they decide to feel. Inferior poets say what they think they should feel.

Álvaro de Campos

In the recumbence of depression, your information-gathering system collates its intelligence and reports to you these facts: (1) there is nothing to do; (2) there is nowhere to go; (3) there is nothing to be; (4) there is no one to know. Without meaning-charged emotions keeping your brain on the straight and narrow, you would lose your balance and fall into an abyss of lucidity. And for a conscious being, lucidity is a cocktail without ingredients, a crystal clear concoction that will leave you hung over with reality. In perfect knowledge there is only perfect nothingness, which is perfectly painful if what you want is meaning in your life.

It is a harsh reality that some of the most important and respectable jobs which deserve high salaries might be better off with low salaries. A politician, or a minister, or a teacher is sure to be working sincerely and selflessly for the good of the people when through and through there is little monetary reward guaranteed. This is how the charlatans are weeded out of the field.

I’d like to have enough time and quietTo think about absolutely nothing,To not ever feel myself living,To only know myself in others’ eyes, reflected.

Love is one of the most motivating and self-defining forces in our lives, whether we turn from it or allow ourselves to be drawn to it. If you allow romantic possibilities with others to consume all your time and energy, they will distract you from the things of interest that fill your life with passion and purpose.

Fulfilling your destiny is like going on an errand assignment. You must run it to make it meaningful. You don't become who you should become when you remain passionlessly without taking actions.

Israelmore Ayivor

I, sometimes, fear that probably I'll just keep changing cities, and may be someday I'll also travel the world, but never find another soul who thinks exactly the way I do.

Pretentiousness isn't always just big words and meaningless jargon, but also pretty words that either when put into action don't mean beans or hurt you in the long run. Oftentimes, the former appeals to the intellect whereas the latter appeals to the heart.

Life is a series of events and sensations. Everything else is interpretation. Much is lost in translation and added in assumption / projection

Rasheed Ogunlaru

The best of fiction, as we know, of course, doesn't tell the truth; it tales the truth.

Am I making something worth while?I’m not sure.I write and I sing and I hear words from time to time about my life and choices making ways, into other lives, other hearts,but am I making something worth while?I’m not sure.There was a boy last night who I never spoke to because I was too drunk and still shy, but mostly lonely, and I couldn’t find anything lightly to say,so I simply walked awaybut still wondered what he did with his lifebecause he didn’t even speak to meor look at mebut still made me wonder who he wasand I walked away askingAm I making something worth while?I am not sure.I am a complicated person with a simple lifeand I am the reason for everything that ever happened to me.

Charlotte Eriksson

To the loyal and to the blood-lovers, in the good families and in the fiery dynasties, life is family and family is life. It is the same people who give advice and their vices to live well who turn out to be the ones who give resource and reason to live long.

I used to think of work as a bad word. Back in the corporate world, work was something that prevented me from living, something that kept me from feeling satisfied or fulfilled or passionate. Even the word itself carried with it a negative connotation. Work—bluck! When I left the corporate world, I swore off the word altogether. Noun, verb, adjective—I avoided all of work’s iterations. I no longer ‘went to work,’ so that was easy to remove from my vocabulary. In fact, I no longer ‘worked’ at all; instead I replaced the word with a more specific verb: I would ‘write’ or ‘teach’ or ‘speak’ or ‘volunteer,’ but I refused to ‘work.’ I no longer went to the gym to ‘workout’; instead I ‘exercised.’ And I stopped wearing ‘work clothes’; I chose instead to wear ‘dress clothes.’ And I avoided getting ‘worked up,’ preferring to call it ‘stress’ or ‘anxiety.’ And I didn’t bring my car to the shop to get ‘worked on,’ deciding instead to have my vehicle ‘repaired.’ Hell, I even avoided ‘handiwork’ 92 and ‘housework,’ selecting their more banal alternatives. Suffice it to say, I wanted nothing to do with the word. I wanted it not only stricken from my lexicon, but from my memory, erasing every shred of the thing that kept me from pursuing my dream for over a decade. But after a year of that nonsense, I realized something: it wasn’t the word that was bad; it was the meaning I gave to the word. It took removing the word from my everyday speech for a year to discover that it wasn’t a bad word at all. During that year, I had been pursuing my dream, and guess what—when I looked over my shoulder at everything I’d accomplished, I realized that pursuing my dream was, in fact, a lot of work. It took a lot of work to grow a website. It took a lot of work to publish five books. It took a lot of work to embark on a coast-to-coast tour. It took a lot of work to teach my first writing class. It took a lot of work to pursue my dream. Work wasn’t the problem. What I did as my work was the problem. I wasn’t passionate about my work before—my work wasn’t my mission—and so I wanted to escape from work so I could live a more rewarding life, looking to balance out the tedium of the daily grind. But work and life don’t work that way. Even when you’re pursuing your dream, there will be times of boredom and stress and long stretches of drudgery. That’s alright. It’s all worth it in the end. When your work becomes your life’s mission, you no longer need a work-life balance.

Joshua Fields Millburn

But what is the use of the humanities as such? Admittedly they are not practical, and admittedly they concern themselves with the past. Why, it may be asked, should we engage in impractical investigations, and why should we be interested in the past? The answer to the first question is: because we are interested in reality. Both the humanities and the natural sciences, as well as mathematics and philosophy, have the impractical outlook of what the ancients called vita contemplativa as opposed to vita activa. But is the contemplative life less real or, to be more precise, is its contribution to what we call reality less important, than that of the active life? The man who takes a paper dollar in exchange for twenty-five apples commits an act of faith, and subjects himself to a theoretical doctrine, as did the mediaeval man who paid for indulgence. The man who is run over by an automobile is run over by mathematics, physics and chemistry. For he who leads the contemplative life cannot help influencing the active, just as he cannot prevent the active life from influencing his thought. Philosophical and psychological theories, historical doctrines and all sorts of speculations and discoveries, have changed, and keep changing, the lives of countless millions. Even he who merely transmits knowledge or learning participates, in his modest way, in the process of shaping reality - of which fact the enemies of humanism are perhaps more keenly aware than its friends. It is impossible to conceive of our world in terms of action alone. Only in God is there a "Coincidence of Act and Thought" as the scholastics put it. Our reality can only be understood as an interpenetration of these two.

Now I wonder if each artwork is in fact utterly inaccessible to everybody but the person to whom it is secretly addressed?

If you don’t know what you value in life, then you won’t be able to make any meaningful decisions you can live with in the future.

Shannon L. Alder

WHAT IS TRUTH?Truth is not a thingOr a concept.It is as multidimensionalIn its meaningAs it is in its reflection.It is both invisibleAnd visible.It carries tons of weight,But can be carried.It is understood first through the spiritBefore science,And felt in the heart,Before the mind.Truth is not always heard by reason,Because reason sometimesIgnores Truth.Always listen to your conscience.Your conscience is your heartAnd reason is your mind.Your mind is simply there to reasonWith your heart.But remember,Truth is in your heart,And only through your heartCan you connect to the light of God.He who is not motivated by his heartWill not see Truth,And he who thinks only with his mindWill be blind to Truth.He who does not thinkWith his conscience,Does not stand by God,For the language of lightCan only be decoded by the heart.He who reads and recites words of GodAlso does not stand by God –If he merely understandsWords with his mindBut not his heart.Truth is black and white,And the entire spectrumOf colors in-between.It can have many parts,But has a solid foundation.Truth lacks perfection,For it is the reflection of all,Yet its reflection as a whole,Is more beautifulThan the accumulated flawsOf the small.Truth is the only brandWorth breathingAnd believing.So stand for truthIn everything you do,And only thenDoes your life haveMeaning.Poetry by Suzy Kassem

How many infinite lives have been lived since man first had consciousness or awareness of his soul?And how many of those souls have stared up at the stars in wonder; pondered the meaning of their existence, the meaning of life, the thoughts of their ancestors, dreamed of the futures of his offspring and the purpose of all that is man?How long will we wander before the truth is found?

Morris R. Gates

The dead are immune from our prison of Time. The distance between the living and dead may be vast, but the space of Time the dead experience when they are reunited with their loved ones is only paper-thin.

Development in general doesn’t make you better employee or better manager. Development makes you a better human who is able to invest the best in you to add beauty and meaning to your life and the rest of the world.

In Egyptian Arabic, the word 'insan' means 'human'. If we remove the 'n', the word becomes 'insa', which means 'to forget'. So you see, the word 'forget' is taken from the word 'human'. And since it was God who created our minds and hearts, He knew from the very beginning that we would quickly forget our history, only to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. So the ultimate test of every human is to seek wisdom. After all, wisdom is gained from having a good memory. Only after we have passed this test will we evolve to become better humans. Man is only a forgetful mortal, but God — He sees, hears and remembers everything.

We exist only to exist.

Nonsense has taken up residence in the heart of public debate and also in the academy. This nonsense is part of the huge fund of unreason on which the plans and schemes of optimists draw for their vitality. Nonsense confiscates meaning. It thereby puts truth and falsehood, reason and unreason, light and darkness on an equal footing. It is a blow cast in defence of intellectual freedom, as the optimists construe it, namely the freedom to believe anything at all, provided you feel better for it.

Is it odd, my love, that I envy others who have not met you for the intoxication they have yet to experience? Is it odd that I wish to witness you with new eyes so I may have the pleasure of falling for you all over again? I am grateful, so grateful, for knowing the meaning of your various sighs. For being the cause of your ecstatic cries. But, if only for a moment, I wish to let you fall out of my hands so that I may catch you again. You, my love, are the oddity. You are my exception.

They can award me with the greatest accolades and reward me with the finest diamonds. They can name days and streets after me, canonise and celebrate me. They can make me the queen of their kingdom, the president of their nation. They can carry my picture in their wallets and whisper my name in their prayers but, tell me, what is all this worth if your voice isn’t the one calling me home?

Man was created to glorify God. Now, that may encompass other things which God has planned for each man, but essentially, man was created to glorify God.

There is a season for everything under the sun—even when we can’t see the sun.

To ask, 'How do you do it?' is already starting off on the wrong foot. When reaching for the stars, there does not have to be a 'how' if there is a big enough 'why'.

Real women fight for something, other than their own emotions.

Shannon L. Alder

This is why introductions are important--because in the beginning, despite the fact that we already believe we know what it means, there's a chance that over time the definition will change from one thing to another.

Let's always try to paint the truth ... our art must be made to mean something.

E.A. Bucchianeri

How can I shut downIf you don't open up??

Ana Claudia Antunes

One word absent from a sentence, or misinterpreted incorrectly, can change the entire meaning of a sentence. One word can change the meaning of everything. Before you believe anything about God or anybody, ask yourself how well do you trust the transmitter, translator or interpreter. And if you have never met them, then how do you know if the knowledge you acquired is even right? One hundred and twenty-five years following every major event in history, all remaining witnesses will have died. How well do you trust the man who has stored his version of a story? And how can you put that much faith into someone you don't know?

In old days, instead of asking a teacher, people looked at the dictionary to know the complete definition of teacher. Now Google becomes our teacher and to know about Google, people Google it.

The little boy nodded at the peony and the peony seemed to nod back. The little boy was neat, clean and pretty. The peony was unchaste, dishevelled as peonies must be, and at the height of its beauty.(...) Every hour is filled with such moments, big with significance for someone.

Robertson Davies

We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them. Peace is built on understanding, and wars are built on misunderstandings. Never underestimate the power of a single word, and never recklessly throw around words. One wrong word, or misinterpreted word, can change the meaning of an entire sentence and start a war. And one right word, or one kind word, can grant you the heavens and open doors.

We believe because it gives us faith. It gives us the willingness to go through our day, to keep the existentialist threat of meaninglessness away. We believe because we crave to be seen, to be known, to be understood. We believe because that is the only thing we can do. If there is no one to judge us - to tell us that we are good, and that if we are bad, we can be redeemed - why bother living at all? Why bother being good at all? If there is no one to look after us, and we are truly alone in this universe, what purpose do we have? We have nothing but the present moment, and only temporariness.

In the absence of a formally agreed, worldwide dictionary definition of 'Quotography' (in 2016), here are my two cents worth: 'Quotography is the art of pairing unique quotations with complementary images in order to express thought-provoking ideas, challenging concepts, profound sentiments'.

Jesus Christ is the source—the only source—of meaning in life. He provides the only satisfactory explanation for why we’re here and where we’re going. Because of this good news, the final heartbeat for the Christian is not the mysterious conclusion to a meaningless existence. It is, rather, the grand beginning to a life that will never end. That same Lord is waiting to embrace and forgive anyone who comes to Him in humility and repentance. He is calling your name, just as He called the name of Pete Maravich. His promise of eternal life offers the only hope for humanity. If you have never met this Jesus, I suggest that you seek spiritual counsel from a Christian leader who can offer guidance. You can also write to me, if that would help. Thanks for reading along with me. I hope to meet you someday. If our paths don’t cross this side of heaven, I’ll be looking for you in that eternal city. By all means, Be there!

James C. Dobson

Self glory makes life meaningless, glorify God fulfills it

A kid thinking about fairy tales and believing in fairy talesActs like a sick god, but like a god.Because even though he affirms that what doesn’t exist exists,He knows things exist, that he exists,He knows existing exists and doesn’t explain itself,And he knows there’s no reason at all for anything to exist.He knows being is the point.All he doesn’t know is that thought isn’t the point.(10/1/1917)

Make her smile, make her laugh and make her happy; because this is the only Truth, Meaning & Beauty act any human can ever achieve.

A row of trees far away, there on the hillside.But what is it, a row of trees? It’s just trees.Row and the plural trees aren’t things, they’re names.

It’s stranger than every strangenessAnd the dreams of all the poetsAnd the thoughts of all the philosophers,That things are really what they seem to beAnd there’s nothing to understand.

The language of light can only be decoded by the heart.

If I knew I was going to die tomorrow,And Spring came the day after tomorrow,I would die peacefully, because it came the day after tomorrow.If that’s its time, when else should it come?I like it that everything is real and everything is right;And I like that it would be like this even if I didn’t like it.And so, if I die now, I die peacefullyBecause everything is real and everything is right.

Anya looked upon Nin admirably. Having him as a partner-in-crime—if only on this one occasion, which she hoped would only be the start of something more—was more revitalizing than the cheap thrills of a cookie-cutter shallow, superficial romance, where the top priority was how beautiful a person was on the outside.

With his night-cap and his night-shirt tatters,He botches up the loop-holes in the structure of the world.

One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light.

Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Crap.It's all crap.Living is crap.Life has no meaning.None. Nowhere to be found.Crap.Why doesn't anybody realize this?