Quotes about meaning
page 5

“What I have understood is good; and so, I think, what I have not understood is; only the book requires a Delian diver to get at the meaning of it.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Diogenes Laertius

Thinking, Books

“Remember this universal truth… You are a part of this universe. It can’t hurt you without hurting itself. This means it is in the universe’s best interests for you to feel good and to get what you need and want. It is on the side of your greatest good and is taking you there in ways you may not always understand. It is taking you there even if the short cut to get you there takes you straight through hell.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Hurt, Hell, Understanding, Universe

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

Source: "Intuitions" (October 1932), published in Youthful Writings (1976)

Happy, Life, Happiness, Search

“First, do it. Second, do it well. Third, do it well and fast — that means you're a professional.”

David Belle (1973) French actor

http://www.americanparkour.com/content/view/680/243/

“And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path. It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working – bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming – all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned – reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone – one mind less, one world less.”

George Orwell book A Hanging

Source: "A Hanging", in The Adelphi (August 1931)

Understanding, Food, World, Life

“Love life more than the meaning of it.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Los hermanos Karamazov

Source: The Brothers Karamazov (Bratři Karamazovi)

For Wife, love, Romantic, For Her

“The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Life

“If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

Smile

“I score so many goals, this means a lot. I know I will always be a little bit behind and I have to maybe work harder than those players for my country if we want to achieve something. It’s not an easy job for me, but I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid. It’s a big chance.”

Robert Lewandowski (1988) Polish association football player

Chance, Country

“The world hates a hypocrite. You cannot want a safe, secure, moral environment for White children, then act like you had no idea what the word noble means.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

Drugs and Governments
Focus Fourteen

Hate, Children, World, Idea

“Life is full of meaning when enhanced by goodness and beauty.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Beauty, Life

“Meaning of life? There are so many people around you who need support, and you yourself are among them! Move, create!”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Support, People, Life

“The more reliable future of humanity is, the more complete his life meaning.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Future, Life

“There is not any kind of meaning in the lyrics, in fact it was an attempt at completely deconstructing reality.”

Viktor Tsoi (1962–1990) Soviet rock musician (1962-1990)

In an 1987 interview, "Aluminum Cucumbers" http://russiantumble.com/tag/viktortsoi/ (7 November 2012)

Reality

“Maybe we've always asked the wrong question. We should ask ourselves about the meaning of death, rather than life. Are we not alive now?”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Question, Life, Death

“Your aim is to reduce every thing to your own mean level—to degrade every thing to your malignant standard... In all your conduct it is not difficult to detect the workings of a mean and long mortified spirit suddenly invested with power,—the struggles of a strong ambition attempting, by a wanton exercise of authority, to revenge the disgrace of a feeble intellect.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: 'Letter VII. to Lord John Russell' (30 January 1836), The Letters of Runnymede (1836), pp. 60-61

Strong, Revenge, Exercises

“They take your heart and steal your life
And it's as though you feel you've died
‘Cause you've been killed inside
But yet you're still alive
Which means you will survive”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Beautiful Pain"
2010s, The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (2013)

Heart, Life, Feeling

“I'm an atheist: I don't know what it means to believe in God.”

Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909–2012) Italian neurologist

Source: Interview with Piergiorgio Odifreddi in Incontri con menti straordinarie (TEA, Milano, 2007), ISBN 978-88-502-1523-2.

God

“What is the purpose of our lives?
Life's purpose is to be happy.
We have no guarantee what will happen in the future, but we live in hope.
This is what keeps us trying and going.
If we can't enjoy the simple things in life;
We are missing the meaning of life.
Don't give up.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Happiness, Future, Hope, Life

“Absence is the preferable option when your presence has no meaning.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1981

“What does it mean to be human without human values?”

Titon Rahmawan

#Human Values

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”

George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman

#25
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)
Source: Man and Superman

Men

“The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.”

C.G. Jung book Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Source: Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933), p. 67
Context: For it all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

Life

“Ordinary people simply don't know what books mean to us, shut up here. Reading, learning, and the radio are our amusements.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

People, Books, Learning, Reading

“Carpe Jugulum," read Agnes aloud. "That's… well, Carpe Diem is 'Sieze the Day,' so this means-"
"Go for the throat”

Terry Pratchett book Carpe Jugulum

Source: Carpe Jugulum

Reading

“That was the rule that you never mixed up troubles at home with life at school. When parents were poor or ignorant or mean, or even just didn't believe in having a TV set, it was up to their kids to protect them.”

Katherine Paterson book Bridge to Terabithia

Source: Bridge to Terabithia

Life, School, Home, Parent

“Being sent to bed is a terrible command to all children, because it means the most public possible humiliation in front of adults, the confession that they bear the stigma of childhood, of being small and having a child's need for sleep.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Source: The Burning Secret and other stories

Children, Sleep, Childhood

“You can't copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.”

Billie Holiday book Lady Sings the Blues

Variant: Everyones got to be different. You can't copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. And without feeling, whatever you do amounts to nothing.
Source: Lady Sings the Blues

People, Music, Way, Feeling

“When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Being human means having doubts and yet still continuing on your path.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

“Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don’t stop at your station.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Time, Past, Training

“It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country," he read. "This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.”

Terry Pratchett book Jingo

Source: Jingo

Reading, Country

“I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Thinking

“One of the Silent Brothers is here to see you. Hodge sent me to wake you up. Actually he offered to wake you himself, but since it's 5 a. m., I figured you'd be less cranky if you had something nice to look at."
"Meaning you?"
"What else?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Friendship, Art, Knowledge, Happiness

“Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only life and reality: the female human being.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Seven (14 May 1904)
Source: Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Life, Women, Girl, Thinking

“Why it's simply impassible!
Alice: Why, don't you mean impossible?
Door: No, I do mean impassible. Nothing's impossible!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

“You'd think, 'What if I make a mistake today, I'll regret it'. I don’t believe in regret, I feel everything leads us to where we are and we have to just jump forward, mean well, commit and just see what happens.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Feeling, Thinking

“And just because you have colleges and universities doesn't mean you have education.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Source: Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers' Power

Education, Universe

“Things usually work out in the end."
"What if they don't?"
"That just means you haven't come to the end yet.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Happy, Life, Sadness, Sad

“He was sunshine most always-I mean he made it seem like good weather.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Weather

“My understanding of the meaning of a book is that the book itself disappears from sight, that it is chewed alive, digested and incorporated into the system as flesh and blood which in turn creates new spirit and reshapes the world.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Books, World, Understanding

“A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Music, Feeling, Mood

“Never follow anyone else's path, unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path. Then by all means follow that path.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Variant: Follow your passion. Stay true to yourself. Never follow someone else's path unless you're in the woods and you're lost and you see a path. By all means, you should follow that.

Funny

“So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 153

Life, People

“Try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting yourself an aim, a goal… an exalted and noble 'to this end.' Perish in pursuit of this and only this”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

Source: Untimely Meditations

“Nothing has meaning except for the meaning you give it.”

T. Harv Eker (1954) American writer

Source: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth

“We should add that it is a privilege to be the recipient of a sulk: it means the other person respects and trusts us enough to think we should understand their unspoken hurt. It is one of the odder gifts of love. Eventually”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Course of Love

Love, Understanding, Thinking, Hurt

“Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Pt. I, ch. 3, sect. 3
Source: The Quiet American (1955)

World

“A life of short duration… could be so rich in joy and love that it could contain more meaning than a life lasting eighty years.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Love, Life, Joy

“Well, what we know
Is not what they tell us
We're not ignorant, I mean it,
And they just cannot touch us
Through the powers of the Most-High
We keep on surfacin'
Thru the powers of the Most-High
We keep on survivin'.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

“Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

World, Courage, Evil

“The significant relationships of early adulthood are thus construed as the means to an end of individual achievement, and these "transitional figures" must be cast off or reconstructed following the realization of success. If in the process, however, they become, like Dido, an impediment to the fulfillment of the Dream, then the relationship must be renounced, "to allow the developmental process" to continue. This process is defined by Levinson explicitly as one of individuation: "throughout the life cycle, but especially in the key transition periods… the developmental process of individuation is going on." The process refers "to the changes in a person's relationships to himself and to the external world," the relationships that constitute his "Life Structure" (p. 195).

If in the course of "Becoming One's Own Man," this structure is discovered to be flawed and threatens the great expectations of the Dream, then in order to avert "serious Failure or Decline," the man must "break out" to salvage his Dream. This act of breaking out is consummated by a "marker event" of separation, such as "leaving his wife, quitting his job, or moving to another region" (p. 206). Thus the road to mid-life salvation runs through either achievement or separation.”

Carol Gilligan (1936) American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist

Source: In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development

Life, World, Dreams, Failure

“The whole spiritual process is just this: that you are willing to take the next step not knowing where it will lead you. If you are not ready for that, that means you are not ready for any new possibility.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Of Mystics & Mistakes

“Never underestimate the meanness in people's souls… Even when they're being kind… especially when they're being kind.”

Alice Munro (1931) Canadian novelist

People, Soul

“Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning… except its own.”

Leonard Bernstein book The Joy of Music

Source: The Joy of Music

Art, Music, Star

“Love has nothing to do with someone else. It is all about you. It is a way of being. It essentially means you have brought sweetness into your emotion. If a loved one travels to another country, would you still be able to love them? You would. If a loved one passed away, would you still be able to love them? You would. Even if a loved one is not physically with you anymore, you are still capable of being loving. So, what is love then? It is just your own quality. You are only using the other person as a key to open up what is already within you.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Love, Way, Travel, Personality

“A certain amount of volatility and drama can me healthy and keep things fun and interesting if you're willing at any moment during a fight to say, 'This means nothing. I love you, let's forget about it.”

Anthony Kiedis book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

Love, Fight, Forgetting

“The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.”

Henry David Thoreau A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Source: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Family, Friendship, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“You can only offend me if you mean something to me.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

“Building a temple didn't mean you believed in gods, it just meant you believed in architecture.”

Terry Pratchett book Making Money

Source: Making Money

God

“Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Color, Way, Soul

“Let's be in awe
which doesn't mean
anything but the courage
to gape like fish at the surface
breaking around our mouths
as we meet the air.”

Mark Nepo (1951) American writer

Courage, Fish

“Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)
Context: So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

Love, Communication

“It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Time

“Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable: what it is or what it means can never be said.”

George Santayana book The Sense of Beauty

Pt. IV, Expression; § 67: "Conclusion.", p. 267
The Sense of Beauty (1896)

Beauty, Feeling

“My father had taught me to be nice first, because you can always be mean later, but once you've been mean to someone, they won't believe the nice anymore. So be nice, be nice, until it's time to stop being nice, then destroy them.”

Laurell K. Hamilton A Stroke of Midnight

Source: A Stroke of Midnight

Time

“All types of knowledge, ultimately mean self knowledge.”

Bruce Lee book Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview (1971)
Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Knowledge

“Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Feeling, Parting

“The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 3
Source: Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living

Life

“If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

Pt II, p. 162
Philosophical Investigations (1953)
Context: One can mistrust one's own senses, but not one's own belief.
If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.

Personality, Falseness

“But let me tell you this: sometimes at night, when I look up at the stars, an see the whole sky jus laid out there, don't you think I ain't rememberin it all. I still got dreams like anybody else, an ever so often, I am thinkin about how things might of been. An then, all of a sudden, I'm forty, fifty, sixty years ole, you know?
Well, so what? I may be a idiot, but most of the time, anyway, I tried to do the right thing-- an dreams is jus dreams, ain't they? So whatever else has happened, I am figgerin this: I can always look back an say, at least I ain't led no hum-drum life.
You know what I mean?”

Winston Groom Forrest Gump

Source: Forrest Gump

Life, Dreams, Star, Thinking

“You’re the only person I’ve ever met who seems to have the faintest conception of what I mean when I say a thing.”

Virginia Woolf book The Voyage Out

Source: The Voyage Out

Personality

“If you can develop this ability to see what you look at, to understand its meaning, to readjust your knowledge to this new information, you can continue to learn and to grow as long as you live and you’ll have a wonderful time doing it.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

Understanding, Knowledge, Learning, Time

“The aim of every human being is to understand the meaning of total love.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Love, Understanding

“As I recall, this word's use means somewhere there is a tree that is now a - a two-legger.

-Numair Salmalin”

Tamora Pierce book Wolf-Speaker

Source: Wolf-Speaker

Tree

“To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.”

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French writer and philosopher

A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire (1988)

Beauty, Feeling, Reading

“I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

IQ84 (2009-2010)
Source: 1Q84

Hurtful, Pain

“Life sometimes separates people so that they can realize how much they mean to each other.”

Paulo Coelho book The Winner Stands Alone

Source: The Winner Stands Alone

Life, People

“Having totality means being capable of following "what is," because "what is" is constantly moving and constantly changing. If one is anchored to a particular view, one will not be able to follow the swift movement of "what is.”

Bruce Lee book Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Change

“Peace means nothing without freedom.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Kingdom of the Wicked

Peace, Freedom

“I like someone who is a little crazy but coming from a good place. I think scars are sexy because it means you made a mistake that led to a mess.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Thinking

“Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

“Religion means to know God and to love Him.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Source: The Science of Self-Realization

Love, God, Religion

“Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig. (150)”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

Dance

“A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

Life, Disease, Despair

“You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.”

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) Italian author and poet

Way, Reading, Perseverance, Night

“To philosophize means to make vivid.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

“There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Travel

“I've never done anything but dream. This, and this alone, has been the meaning of my life. My only real concern has been my inner life.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Life, Dreams

“He's probably their battle poet, too."
"You mean he makes up heroic songs about famous battles?"
"No, no. He recites poems that frighten the enemy…. When a well-trained gonnagle starts to recite, the enemy's ears explode.”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

Training

“We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain”, p. 133. <br class="br">This is a paraphrase of Thoreau: see explanation by the Walden Woods project http://www.walden.org/Library/Quotations/The_Henry_D._Thoreau_Mis-Quotation_Page). <br class="br">Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Arizona and New Mexico: On Top," & "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain"

Life, Men, World, Peace