Quotes about mean
page 19

Nicholas Sparks photo
John Steinbeck photo
Greg Behrendt photo
Alan Cumming photo
Megan Whalen Turner photo
Sophie Kinsella photo
Richelle Mead photo
Victor Hugo photo
Meg Cabot photo
Umberto Eco photo
Joseph Conrad photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Richelle Mead photo
Mitch Albom photo

“If you’ve found meaning in your life, you don’t want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more.”

Variant: Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward.
Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Milan Kundera photo
Jeffrey Eugenides photo
Stephen Chbosky photo
Rick Riordan photo
John Stuart Mill photo

“I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.”

In a Parliamentary debate with the Conservative MP, John Pakington (May 31, 1866). Hansard, vol 183, col 1592. Pakington was referring to Footnote 3 to Chapter 7 of Mill's "Considerations on Representative Government".
Misquoted as "I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it." in "Life of John Stuart Mill" (1889) by W. L. Courtney, p. 147.
This seems to have become paraphrased as "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives." which was a variant published in Quotations for Our Time (1978), edited by Laurence J. Peter.

Gabriel García Márquez photo
Philip K. Dick photo

“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 (1928–1982) American author

"How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" (1978)

David Levithan photo
Margaret Peterson Haddix photo
Dave Eggers photo

“And there is a chance that everything we did was incorrect, but stasis is itself criminal for those with the means to move, and the means to weave communion between people.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“What you don't understand you can make mean anything.”

Variant: What we don't understand we can make mean anything.
Source: Diary

Andy Warhol photo
Jim Butcher photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Peter Singer photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Rick Riordan photo
Deanna Raybourn photo
Malcolm Gladwell photo

“In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.”

Source: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Sara Shepard photo
Ayn Rand photo
Cinda Williams Chima photo

“Just because you're the enemy of my enemy don't mean you're my friend, Han thought.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Exiled Queen

Jodi Picoult photo
Melissa de la Cruz photo
Max Brooks photo
Desmond Tutu photo
Maria Dahvana Headley photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Rick Riordan photo

“You must forge your own path for it to mean anything.”

Source: The Lost Hero

Fannie Flagg photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo

“It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

The Man Upstairs (1914)
Source: The Man Upstairs and Other Stories

Philip K. Dick photo
Steven Erikson photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Brené Brown photo
Jodi Picoult photo

“You know, the mind is a remarkable thing. Just because you can't see the wound doesn't mean it isn't hurting. It scars all the time, but it heals.”

Variant: The mind is a remarcable thing. Just because you can’t see the wound doesn’t mean it isn’t hurting
Source: The Pact

Robert E. Howard photo
Jonathan Maberry photo
Tom Robbins photo
Suzanne Collins photo

“Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun.”

Tagline on the back cover
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games (2008)

Stephen Chbosky photo

“Calvin:"It says here that 'religion is the opiate of the masses.'… what do you suppose that means?"
Television: "… it means that Karl Marx hadn't seen anything yet”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995: An Exhibition Catalogue

Karen Armstrong photo

“Respect only has meaning as respect for those with whom I do not agree.”

A History of God (1993)
Source: A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Jo Walton photo
Alberto Manguel photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Bryan Lee O'Malley photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Etty Hillesum photo

“Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.”

Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) Jewish diarist

Source: Lettres De Westerbork

Frederick Buechner photo

“One day, you will say it to me again. You will be sober. And you will mean it.”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Chicks Kick Butt

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Rob Grant photo
Steven Brust photo
Alain de Botton photo

“Must being in love always mean being in pain?”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: On Love

Rick Warren photo

“Knowing your purpose gives meaning to your life.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Beverly Cleary photo
Frederick Buechner photo

“If you have never known the power of God's love, then maybe it is because you have never asked to know it - I mean really asked, expecting an answer.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Source: The Magnificent Defeat (1966)

Richelle Mead photo
James Patterson photo

“Love means never having to be apart”

Source: Sundays at Tiffany's

Raymond Chandler photo

“Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.”

Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 28
Context: I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.

John Buchan photo

“I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

A play on words commonly used referring to vagrants or paupers as having "no visible means of support" financially, speaking to the Law Society of Upper Canada, (21 February 1936); published in Canadian Occasions (1940), p. 201. Buchan's source for this definition remains unknown. The witticism was repeated by Harry Emerson Fosdick in his On Being a Real Person (1943), ch. 1, with due acknowledgement to Buchan, and was again used by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in Look magazine (December 14, 1955). The credit for this line is therefore often wrongly given to Fosdick or to Sheen. Credit has also been given to the conductor Walter Damrosch (1862-1950).
Canadian Occasions (1940)

Haruki Murakami photo
Reba McEntire photo
Paulo Coelho photo

“I could have. What does this phrase mean? At any given moment in our lives, there are certain things that could have heppened but, didn't. The magic moments go unrecognized, and then suddenly, the hand of destiny changes everything.”

Variant: At any given moment in our lives, there are certain things that could have happened but didn't. The magic moments
go unrecognized, and then suddenly, the hand of destiny changes everything.
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Elizabeth Wurtzel photo
William James photo
Richelle Mead photo