Quotes about meaning
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“Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Speed

“This is what those who haven’t crossed the tropic of grief often fail to understand: the fact that someone is dead may mean that they are not alive, but doesn’t mean that they do not exist.”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Source: Levels of Life

Understanding, Dead

“She’s pretty,” Zethes mumbled. “I mean, she’s right.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

“Maybe language is kind, giving us these double meanings. Maybe it's trying to teach us a lesson, that we can always be two things at once.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

“Let us cry for the, by all means, if by doing so we learn how to avoid spilling any more. Let us cry for the, and remember how, and where, and why, we spilt it. Much wisdom is learnt through tears, but none by forgetting our lessons.”

María Amparo Ruiz de Burton (1832–1895) Mexican-American writer

Source: The Squatter and the Don

Wisdom, Tear, Learning, Cry

“Being in Love means being willing to ruin yourself for the other person.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

Love, Personality

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Letter to W.T. Barry http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch18s35.html (4 August 1822), in The Writings of James Madison (1910) edited by Gaillard Hunt, Vol. 9, p. 103; these words, using the older spelling "Governours", are inscribed to the left of the main entrance, Library of Congress James Madison Memorial Building. <br class="br">1820s <br class="br">Context: A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

People, Knowledge

“Honey, I liked the Harry Potter movies, too, but that doesn’t mean I ran out and got a Dark Mark tattooed onto my left forearm like you did.”

Jim Butcher (1971) American author

Source: Blood Lite

Tattoo

“Do you ever sit back and wonder what it all means? Whether this is it or if there's something greater out there? Or if you were meant for something better?”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

“You Keep Using the Word Help. I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means”

Rick Riordan book The Hammer of Thor

Source: The Hammer of Thor

Thinking, Help

“P. P. S. Just because I like you, it doesn't mean I still don't think you're an evil creature of the night. You are.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

Thinking, Evil, Night

“I buried a nickel under the porch when I was 8, she said, but one day my grandma died & they sold the house & I never got to go back for it.
A nickel used to mean something, I said.
She nodded. It still does, she said & then she started to cry.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

Grandma, Housing, Cry

“I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Source: The Tent (2006)

Life

“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.”

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

Personality

“Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

Death, Time

“When a country is well governed, poverty and a mean condition are things to be ashamed of. When a country is ill governed, riches and honor are things to be ashamed of.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Analects, Chapter VIII

Country

“When something seems ‘the most obvious thing in the world’ it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

Source: Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic

World, Understanding

“You mean old books?"

"Stories written before space travel but about space travel."

"How could there have been stories about space travel before --"

"The writers," Pris said, "made it up.”

Philip K. Dick book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Books, Travel

“Out here, it's better safe than sorry, because generally speaking, too much of the time sorry means you're dead.”

Patricia C. Wrede (1953) author

Source: Across the Great Barrier

Time, Dead

“Of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

“A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Feeling

“Frankly, our ancestors don't seem much to brag about. I mean, look at the state they left us in, with the wars, the broken planet. Clearly, they didn't care about what would happen to the people who came after them.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

War, People

“Percy, lesser beings do many horrible things in the name of the gods. That does not mean we gods approve. The way our sons and daughters act in our names… well, it usually says more about THEM than it does about us.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

God, Way, Daughters

“You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Whatsit said. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings

Freedom

“Acceptance means no complaining, and happiness means no complaining about the things over which you can do nothing.”

Wayne W. Dyer book Your Erroneous Zones

Source: Your Erroneous Zones

Happiness

“In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

The Guardian (29 January 1992)

Country

“I know," he said, looking down at himself self-consciously. "I am not-I mean, I look-"
"Beautiful," she said, and she meant it. "You look beautiful, James Carstairs.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Beauty

“Knowledge, like all things, is best in moderation," intoned the Will. "Knowing everything means you don't need to think, and that is very dangerous.”

Garth Nix book Lady Friday

Source: Lady Friday

Knowledge, Thinking

“Love and the Soul (for that is what Psyche means) had sought and, after sore trials, found each other; and that union could never be broken. (Cupid and Psyche)”

Edith Hamilton book Mythology

Source: Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

Love, Soul

“To love someone means that you sometimes are fulfilled the most by putting thier deepest desires above your own.”

Terry Goodkind book Confessor

Source: Confessor

Love

“Know something? I'd lay even odds that between the people following us and the people hunting us, we've become this city's principle means of employment. Tal Verrar's entire economy is now based on.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies

People

“It broke my heart into more pieces than my heart was made of, why can't people say what they mean at the time?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 279

People, Time, Heart

“By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Enemies of Reason, "The Irrational Health Service" [1.02], 20 August 2007, timecode 00:13:05"ff"
The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)
Variant: We should be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brain falls out.

Funny

“The pastor ought to have two voices: one, for gathering the sheep; and another, for warding off and driving away wolves and thieves. The Scripture supplies him with the means of doing both.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

“Things feel like they'll be forever, but they aren't. Love can go away, or people can, without even meaning to. Nothing is guaranteed.”

Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You

Source: P.S. I Still Love You

Love, People, Feeling

“Well…… That's what you always forget, isn't it? I mean, you forget to pay attention to what's happening. And that's the same as not being here and now.”

Aldous Huxley book Island

Source: Island

Forgetting

“If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea…does that mean that 1 enjoys it?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

People, Suffering

“Tamaki: Having the courage to be able to admit what you love… enjoying what you love… and being true to yourself… Isn't that also what it means to be strong?”

Bisco Hatori (1975) Japanese manga artist

Source: Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 7

Love, Courage, Strong

“I sit on a man's back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886)
Source: What Then Must We Do?

“I mean, really: what kind of person could possibly dislike me?”

Jeff Lindsay book Dearly Devoted Dexter

Source: Dearly Devoted Dexter

Personality

“But he can also be incredibly sweet. And I know that, deep down, I mean the world to him." "Deep down? That sounds like settling to me. You shouldn't have to venture deep down in order to get to love.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Love, World

“There’s Socialism and Communism and Capitalism and there’s Feminism and Hedonism, and there’s Catholicism and Bipedalism and Consumerism, but I think Narcissism is the system that means the most to me.”

Tony Hoagland (1953–2018) American writer

Communication, Thinking

“Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Forgiveness

“Culture is shared meaning. Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture.”

David Bohm (1917–1992) American theoretical physicist

Changing Consciousness (1991)
Context: Culture is shared meaning. Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture. <!-- p. 185

“ʺWe need someone to get the roomʹs attention,ʺ I said. ʺSomeone not afraid to make a spectacle—I mean, besides me, of course.ʺ”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“He flushed, the colour dark against his pale skin. 'I mean. Tessa Gray, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?' Jem…”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince