Quotes about meaning
page 24

“As my mom has said, when one person is unhappy, it usually means two people are unhappy but that one has not come to terms with it yet.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

People, Moms, Personality

“Ah," cried Gavroche, "what does this mean? It rains again!… If this continues, I withdraw my subscription.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“I may have been dead for the past hundred and fifty years, Susannah,… but that doesn't mean I don't know how people say good night. And generally, when people say good night, they keep their tongues to themselves.”

Meg Cabot book Ninth Key

Source: Ninth Key

People, Past, Night, Dead

“Winning the Games will make you famous, losing will mean death.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Death, Game

“There is no life without death. That is the true meaning of yin and yang”

Lisa See book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Source: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Life, Death

“Faith is not about finding meaning in the world, there may be no such thing -- faith is the belief in our capacity to create meaningful lives.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: Leap

World, Faith

“What I mean and what I say is two different things," the BFG announced rather grandly.”

Roald Dahl The BFG

Source: The BFG

“I've often thought that there isn't any "I" at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion.”

Aleister Crowley book Diary of a Drug Fiend

Source: Diary of a Drug Fiend

Thinking

“There's no point in saving the world if it means losing the moon.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

World

“I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Context: I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

“Bushido is realized in the presence of death. This means choosing death whenever there is a choice between life and death. There is no other reasoning.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

Life, Death

“Success on the outside means nothing unless you also have success within.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams Reaching Your Destiny

Success

“Sometimes a man and a woman reach a crossroads and linger there, reluctant to take either way, knowing the wrong choice will mean the end… and knowing there’s so much worth saving.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Way

“When she came to write her story, she would wonder when the books and the words started to mean not just something, but everything.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Books

“My truffles? You took them? That's just mean!”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Opal Deception

“Inner peace can be reached only when we practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past, and is therefore the means for correcting our misperceptions.”

Gerald G. Jampolsky (1925) American writer and psychiatrist

Source: Love Is Letting Go of Fear

Moving On, Peace, Forgiveness, Past

“Since then I've always thought that under rape in the dictionary it should tell the truth. It is not just forcible intercourse; rape means to inhabit and destroy everything.”

Alice Sebold book Lucky

Source: Lucky

Truth

“There are some people who will never understand what
loyalty means. They could tell you what it was, of course,
but they will never know. They will never see it from the inside.
They couldn't imagine a world where something like that was real.”

Jim Butcher book First Lord's Fury

Source: First Lord's Fury

People, World, Imagination, Understanding

“Old age means realizing you will never own all the dogs you wanted to.”

Joe Gores (1931–2011) American writer

Age, Dogs

“But what really is immorality? And what does helping someone really mean? Helping them to be like everyone else, or helping them to be themselves?”

Nancy Garden book Annie on My Mind

Source: Annie on My Mind

Help

“Revolution in Love’. Can you tell me what you mean by that? Do you want free love as against bourgeois marriage, or monogamy as against bourgeois promiscuity?”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Source: Life is Elsewhere

Love, Marriage

“I'm not living the life I thought I would lead, but it does have meaning, purpose. There is love… there is joy… there is laughter.”

Christopher Reeve (1952–2004) actor, director, producer, screenwriter

Love, Life, Laughter, Joy

“Italian cities have long been held up as ideals, not least by New Yorkers and Londoners enthralled by the ways their architecture gives beauty and meaning to everyday acts.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Source: Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Beauty, Way

“Altogether, if I'd been looking at nothing but the media all these years, I would be a much more discouraged person-especially given the notion that only conflict is news, and that objectivity means being evenhandedly negative.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: My Life on the Road

Personality

“Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our environment, which means that we can change our first impressions… by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Change

“What did a happy ending even mean in real life, anyway? In stories you simply said, 'They lived happily ever after,' and that was it. But in real life people had to keep on living, day after day, year after year.”

Scott Westerfeld book Afterworlds

Source: Afterworlds

Life, People, Happiness

“Too often we forget that discipline really means to teach, not to punish. A disciple is a student, not a recipient of behavioural consequences.”

Daniel J. Siegel (1957) American psychiatrist

Source: The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind, Survive Everyday Parenting Struggles, and Help Your Family Thrive

Forgetting

“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

Error

“The true meaning of Christ's teaching consists in the recognition of love as the supreme law of life, and therefore not admitting any exceptions.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Love, Life, Law, Christ

“If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil.”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Source: A Clockwork Orange

Love, God, Appearance, Evil

“This is what it means to be loved… when someone wants to touch you, to be tender…”

Banana Yoshimoto book The Lake

Source: The Lake

Love

“Tall, aren't you?" she said.
"I didn't mean to be."
Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep

Thinking

“We're like pretty horses, and just as on horses, they mean to put blinders on us so we can't look left or right but only straight ahead where they would lead.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Horse

“You know, sometimes the world seems like a pretty mean place.'

'That's why animals are so soft and huggy.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: Scientific Progress Goes "Boink": A Calvin and Hobbes Collection

World, Animals

“Just because something is unspoken doesn't mean that it disappears.”

Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer

Source: Incantation

“As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs… The way I write is who I am, or have become…”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

Way, Sense

“We are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe.”

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

Source: The Book of Imaginary Beings

Universe

“In the end, I must proclaim that no good can be achieved of false means. For the substance of our existence is not in the achievement, but in the method.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

Falseness

“Children don’t know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night.”

Elena Ferrante book My Brilliant Friend

Source: My Brilliant Friend

Children, Night

“What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards.”

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

Source: Existentialism Is a Humanism, lecture http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm (1946) <br class="br">Context: What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.

World

“Nobody likes children, your mother assured you. That doesn't mean you don't have them.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

Children

“Words are such uncertain things, they so often sound well but mean the opposite of what one thinks they do.”

Agatha Christie book Partners in Crime

Source: Partners in Crime

Thinking

“I had come to a place where I was meant to be. I don't mean anything so prosaic as a sense of coming home. This was different, very different. It was like arriving at a place much safer than home.”

Pat Conroy The Lords of Discipline

Source: The Lords of Discipline

Home, Sense

“Smiling back at her, it occurs to me that I've never met a mean librarian.”

Anthony Horowitz (1955) English novelist and screenwriter

Smile

“Aimless extension of knowledge, however, which is what I think you really mean by the term curiosity, is merely inefficiency. I am designed to avoid inefficiency.”

Isaac Asimov book The Caves of Steel

Source: The Caves of Steel

Knowledge, Thinking

“Not daring to flee since my general location has just been broadcast to any killer who cares. I mean, I know it's cold out here and not everybody has a sleeping bag.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Sleep

“you know festus means happy in Latin right? You want us to go save the world on Happy the dragon?"
-Jason to Leo in the lost hero”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

World, Happiness

“When a man does a queer thing, or two queer things, there may be a meaning to it, but when everything he does is queer, then you begin to wonder”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“Just because we can't be together doesn't mean I don't love you”

Cecily von Ziegesar Gossip Girl

Source: Gossip Girl

Love

“The world is full of abandoned meanings. In the commonplace I find unexpected themes and intensities.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise (1984)

World

“I mean, how do you know if people are good for you or not? It's not like they come with an FDA approved sticker or anything.”

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

People

“I will use big words from time to time, the meanings of which I may only vaguely perceive, in hopes such cupidity will send you scampering to your dictionary: I will call such behavior 'public service'.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Hope, Behavior, Time

“No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Books

“The life of the individual has meaning only insofar as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful. Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Life, Beauty

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

Morrie Schwartz (1916–1995) American sociologist

Life

“He made it so hard not to love him. When he was sweet like this, I remembered why I did. Used to love him, I mean. I remembered everything.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: The Summer I Turned Pretty

Love

“Insane means fewer cameras!”

Ally Carter book Only the Good Spy Young

Source: Only the Good Spy Young

“If I amlucky - I mean if I am clever about it - I will get myself shot. Here, soon.”

Elizabeth Wein book Code Name Verity

Source: Code Name Verity

“Life’s all about the revolution, isn’t it? The one inside, I mean. You can’t change history. You can’t change the world. All you can ever change is yourself.”

Jennifer Donnelly book Revolution

Source: Revolution

Life, World, History, Change

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
Source: The Works Of John Adams, Second President Of The United States
Context: Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees, of the people; and if the cause, the interest, and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute other and better agents, attorneys and trustees.

People, Understanding, Nature, Knowledge

“What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. And there it is… It was death. I chose life.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

Life, Death

“If you are clinically insane, by which I mean you wake up in the morning, and you think you are an onion, this is your car, (about the BMW X3).”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

Cars, Thinking

“I'd be a conservative if I'd never met any. They're selfish, mean-spirited, egocentric, reactionary, and boring.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Selfishness

“Wisdom's daughter walks alone.
That didn't just mean without other people, Annabeth realized. It meant without any special powers.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Wisdom, People, Daughters

“Is this a game? We just blurt out whatever word comes next to mind? In that case mine's 'genuphobia'. It means an unreasonable fear of knees."
"What's the word for a perfectly reasonable fear of annoying idiots?" inqired Jessamine.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Fear, Game

“Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 75
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice
Context: Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.

Life, Passion