Quotes about meaning
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“What I mean is, like you to have everything you want. Wished it was me, that's all”

Georgette Heyer book Cotillion

Source: Cotillion

“Life belongs to man, but the meaning of life is beyond him.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Source: The Judges

Life

“So now I'm thinking about it. I'm imagining sitting down with my parents and actually saying, "I'm gay." And you know what? It makes me a little mad. I mean, straight guys don't have to sit their parents down and tell them they like girls.”

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

Guy, Imagination, Girl, Thinking

“Lara: Because sometimes you just feel sad and you can't explain it.

Kitty: PMS?

Lara: No. It's not PMS. Just because a girl is sad, it doesn't mean it has anything to do with PMS.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Sadness, Feeling, Girl

“Does that mean you agree?"
He groaned. "I think it means you crushed my spirit and beat me down."
"Fantastic.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Thinking

“We clutch our bellies and roll on the floor…
When I say this, it should mean laughter,
not poison.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

Laughter

“But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid - that had to mean something.”

William Goldman The Silent Gondoliers

Source: The Silent Gondoliers

Girl, Boy, Dead

“I try to find meaning anywhere I can. It's the only way I know how to validate my existence.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: God-Shaped Hole

Way

“The goal of being alive is to figure out what it means to be alive.”

Chuck Klosterman book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

Source: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

“Sometimes it is only a True Friend who knows what we mean when we try to speak.

Somebody who has spent a lot of time with us, and listens carefully to what we are trying to say, and tries to understand.”

Cressida Cowell book How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse

Source: How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse

Understanding, Time

“Thinking is the desire to gain reality by means of ideas.”

José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

Idea, Thinking, Reality

“I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle, something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it, and mean to astonish you all some day.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Variant: I want to do something splendid... something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it and mean to astonish you all someday.
Source: Little Women

Dead

“Courage doesn’t mean you aren’t scared.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: The Shadows

Courage

“It means much to have loved, to have been happy, to have laid my hand on the living Garden, even for a day.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Love, Happiness

“I didn’t mean to fall in love with you, but I did.
- Chelsea”

Rachel Gibson (1961) American writer

Source: Nothing But Trouble

Love

“love means to see the one you love happy”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Happy, Love, Happiness

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Soul, Reading

“In your walks about London you will sometimes see bent, haggard figures that look as if they had recently been caught in some powerful machinery. They are those fellows who got mixed up with Catsmeat when he was meaning well.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Mating Season

Source: The Mating Season

“I am absolutely convinced that meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain; meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure. And that is why we find ourselves emptied of meaning with our pantries still full.”

Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher

Source: Can Man Live Without God

Pain, Pleasure

“Just because it turned out bad, doesn’t mean it wasn’t meant.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Stay

“That’s what existence means: draining one’s own self dry without the sense of thirst.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Sense

“I just know once you're over your emotional outbursts, you'll come up with-'
I mean if we even had a wheelbarrow, that would be something,' Westley said.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

“Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our talents and ablities were used in a way that served others.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Way, Sleep, Success, Night

“It doesn't matter what people tell you. It doesn't matter what they might say. Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction.”

Alice Hoffman book Practical Magic

Source: Practical Magic

People, Home

“But just because you can never reach it, doesn’t mean that it’s not worth looking for.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Variant: Just because you have a choice, it doesn't mean that any of them 'has' to be right.
Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

“That was the whole point of being special: You existed to make sure everyone else behaved, but that didn't mean YOU had to.”

Scott Westerfeld book Specials

Source: Specials

“Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate toward the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same thing. That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power that created us.”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

Life, Religion

“Someone else has to be disseminating it. (Mark)
Dis-a what? (Nick)
Disseminating. It means distributing it. (Mark)
Then why didn’t you say that? (Nick)
Remind me to get him a word-of-the-day calendar. (Mark)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

“I suffer migraines. I do not suffer fools. I like a twist of meaning. I endure.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Variant: I suffer migraines. I do not suffer fools.
Source: We Were Liars

Fools, Suffering

“If I love you it means we share the same fantasies, the same madnesses”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Love, Madness

“Family isnt about blood relationships, its about the meaning behind them. I relize now that sharing chromosoms is not the only way to having a family, its about the friendship behind it.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Friendship, Family, Way

“Potential," I said, "doesn't mean a thing. You've got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

Baby

“My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning. I wanted my death to be something the people could relate to, a basis for further mobilization of the community.”

Huey P. Newton book Revolutionary Suicide

Source: Revolutionary Suicide (1973), p. 190

Death, People, Fear, Communication

“Only when we give joyfully, without hesitation or thought of gain, can we truly know what love means.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Love

“Just because you're a gutless harlot doesn't mean I won't find your… attributes attractive. I might be immortal, but I'm still a red-blooded male."

"Harlot? Who talks like that? Father Time, meet the Flinstones.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Endless Knight

Time

“Theophane gave birth to a magical ram named Krysomallos, who for some reason had wool made of gold. Eventually, Krysomallos would be skinned for his fleece, which became known as the Golden Fleece, which means I am related to a sheepskin rug.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Source: Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

Birth

“She was not to look beyond herself for the meaning of her life.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Life

“The moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies…”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Truth

“God created us for this: to live our lives in a way that makes him look more like the greatness and the beauty and the infinite worth that he really is. This is what it means to be created in the image of God.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

God, Beauty, Way

“Being vegetarian here also means that we do not consume dairy and egg products, because they are products of the meat industry. If we stop consuming, they will stop producing. Only collective awakening can create enough determination for action.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom

“Silence isn't golden and it surely doesn't mean consent, so start practicing the art of communication.”

T.D. Jakes (1957) American bishop

Source: Let it Go: Forgive So You Can Be Forgiven

Art, Communication, Silence

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

essay, first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (November, 1945)
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

World, Weather

“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

“I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.”

Robert Henri (1865–1929) American painter

Life, Art

“Do you know people who insist they like 'all kinds of music'? That actually means they likeof music.”

Chuck Klosterman book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

Source: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

People, Music

“Just because I’m Native American doesn’t mean I can track furniture through the wilderness.” She deepened her voice: “‘Yes, kemosabe. A three-legged table passed this way an hour ago.’ Heck, I don’t know.”

Rick Riordan book The Demigod Diaries

Source: The Demigod Diaries

Way

“Maybe the best thing to do with favorite books is to leave them be: to achieve such exalted position means that they entered your life at exactly the right time, in precisely the right place, and those conditions can never be recreated.”

Nick Hornby (1957) English novelist

Life, Books, Time

“You know when most girls say they want a big rock, they dont mean, you know, literally a."
-Clary to Jace, pg.313-”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Girl

“Mr. Anderson:Well, maybe we all should call it a night. Congrats to the happy couples. Will there be wedding bells soon?

SnowGirl:Definitely. I mean, if you help a guy kill a dwarf, he should marry you.”

Alex Flinn book Beastly

Source: Beastly

Guy, Wedding, Help, Night

“Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

World, Education, Girl

“You are beautiful,” he whispered to me. “If you say so.” “Do ye not believe me? Have I ever lied to you?” “That’s not what I mean. I mean—if you say it, then it’s true. You make it true.”

Diana Gabaldon book The Fiery Cross

Source: The Fiery Cross

Beauty

“Because they are mean is no reason why I should be. I hate such things, and though I think I've a right to be hurt, I don't intend to show it. (Amy March)”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Hate, Thinking, Hurt

“The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

“I cannot be awake, for nothing looks to me as it did before, or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Sleep, Time

“Uh-huh," I said. "Because all you mad, evil scientists sit around whipping up batches of Pillsbury's finest during your coffee breaks. I mean, this is pathetic.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Coffee, Evil, Madness

“Telling someone about what a symbol means is like telling someone how music should make them feel.”

Dan Brown book The Da Vinci Code

Source: The Da Vinci Code

Music, Feeling

“Art—the 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 book Justine

Source: Justine

Pain, Art, Reality, Memory

“When will people learn that just because you can make something doesn’t mean you should?”

Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants

Source: Water for Elephants

People, Learning

“No one else knows I'm alive, which means they won't notice when I'm gone.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

“What I mean by an educated taste is someone who has the same tastes that I have.”

Edward Albee (1928–2016) American playwright

Education

“When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.”

Tom Robbins (1932) American writer

“Faith in God means believing absolutely in something with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity means believing absolutely in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary. We are the true believers.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

God, Faith

“It makes me cry because it means that fewer and fewer people are believing it's cool to want what I want, which is to be married and have kids and love each other in a monogamous, long-lasting relationship.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Love, People, Cry

“The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man. Unless he understands this, he does not grasp the essential meaning of his life.”

Huey P. Newton book Revolutionary Suicide

Source: Revolutionary Suicide (1973), p. 3

Life, Understanding, Learning

“When a girl uses six derogatory adjectives in her attempt to paint the portrait of the loved one, it means something. One may indicate a merely temporary tiff. Six is big stuff.”

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

Source: Jeeves in the Morning

Love, Girl, Painting

“It is impossible to say just what I mean!”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
Context: It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while If one, settling a
Pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

“You do the easy thing, the appealing thing, the peaceful thing, mostly it turns sour in the end. But if you take the hard path - ah, that's how you reap the sweet rewards. Duty. Sacrifice. They mean something.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Peace

“To truly esteem oneself means that one must be capable of feeling shame or self-disgust when one does not live up to a certain standard”

Francis Fukuyama (1952) American political scientist, political economist, and author

Feeling

“I was thinking, that when my time comes, I should be sorry if the only plea I had to offer was that of justice. Because it might mean that only justice would be meted out to me.”

Agatha Christie Murder at the Vicarage

Source: Murder at the Vicarage

Justice, Thinking, Time

“See, when you mess something up, you learn for the next time. It's when people compliment you that you're in trouble. That means they expect you to keep it up.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

People, Learning, Time

“It may look impossible, but God can do the impossible. Just because you don’t see anything happening doesn’t mean God is not working”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

God

“Sooner or later usually means too late”

Scott Westerfeld (1963) American science fiction writer

“The one word love means too little for what it is. It doesn't communicate even a fraction of the feelings involved. Love. The word is not enough for what it is. Love. Love.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

Source: A Million Little Pieces

Love, Feeling, Communication

“The fact that I’m silent doesn’t mean I have nothing to say.”

Jonathan Carroll (1949) novelist, short story writer

“Understanding means throwing away your knowledge.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Being Peace

Understanding, Knowledge

“I don’t want my thoughts to die with me, I want to have done something. I’m not interested in power, or piles of money. I want to leave something behind. I want to make a positive contribution - know that my life has meaning.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Life, Money

“Travel was pointless. It removed you from the place in which you had a meaning, and to which you gave meaning in return by dedicating your life to it, and it spirited you away into fairylands where you were, and looked, frankly absurd.”

Salman Rushdie book The Enchantress of Florence

Source: The Enchantress of Florence

Life, Travel

“Any time some well-meaning person forces you to demonstrate you have no talent and rubs your nose in the fact you're a failure at the only dream you ever had, take another drink.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Diary

Source: Diary

Dreams, Failure, Drink, Time

“Hard-covered books break up friendships. You loan a hard covered book to a friend and when he doesn’t return it you get mad at him. It makes you mean and petty. But twenty-five cent books are different.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Friendship, Books, Madness

“And she keeps saying, how can you do this to me?

And i want to scream, what do you mean, how can I do this to you? Aren't we confusing our pronouns here? The question, really, is How could I do this to myself?”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Question

“Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Deep, Faith, Heart Touching, Valentine's Day

“Marrying means, to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find out an eel out of an assembly of snakes.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Hope

“When someone tells me "no," it doesn't mean I can't do it, it simply means I can't do it with them.”

Karen E. Quinones Miller (1958) American writer

“Just because you're naked doesn't mean you're sexy. Just because you're cynical doesn't mean you're cool.”

Tom Robbins (1932) American writer

“There are books that I own that somehow even without reading them they mean something to me. So I think people have a relationship with books in a library whether you’ve come specifically to read them or not.”

Rem Koolhaas (1944) Dutch architect (b.1944)

People, Books, Thinking, Reading

“You're born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Parent

“Thus "phenomenology" means αποφαινεσθαι τα φαινομενα -- to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself.”

Martin Heidegger book Being and Time

Source: Being and Time

Way

“No more rhymes now I mean it!”

“Anybody want a peanut?”

“AAHH!”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

“Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Life, Hope, Feeling

“I swear to the Lord
I still can't see
Why Democracy means
Everybody but me.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"The Black Man Speaks," from Jim Crow's Last Stand (1943)

Democracy

“Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry, you can't have a baby brother, because that would mean that Daddy had sex, and that's never going to happen again.”

Christopher Moore book A Dirty Job

Source: A Dirty Job

Sex, Baby

“Ah, well, being conflicted means you can live a shallow life without copping to be a shallow person.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

Life, Personality

“Kiss me…. Cassie…. Like you mean it.”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Hunt the Moon

Kiss

“We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Thinking, Suffering, Cry

“Keep in mind, just because you don’t know the answer doesn’t mean that one does not exist. You simply haven’t discovered it yet.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

“Bitten? You mean you're a-"
"A werewolf," said the girl. "Like everyone else here. Except you, and the asshole. And the asshole's sister.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Maia to Simon, pg. 50
Variant: A werewolf. Like everyone else here. Except you, and the asshole. And the asshole's sister.
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

Girl, Sister