Quotes about means

page 31

“To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.”

“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance.”

“What is going on with you?" she says, shaking her head and pushing me away. "What's up with all the love and affection? I mean, you of all people, you of the eternal iPod-hoodie combo.”

“I am not imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean.”

“…Tell me, has anything odd happened to you recently?
What do you mean, odd?'
Unusual. Deviating from the customary. Something outside the usual parameters of normalcy. An occurrence of unprecedented weird.”

“By morning she was dead. She had not died of starvation or committed suicide by any conventional means. She had simply willed herself to die, and being a strong-willed woman, she had succeeded. She had missed dying on her birthday by two days.”

“There is no such thing as a perfect, ideal, or 'correct' translation. A translator is always trying to extend his knowledge and improve his means of expression; he is always pursuing facts and words.”

“You've never been in love," she said. "You don't understand."

"If being in love means giving up your freedom, not to mention your opportunities," Caitlin said, "Then I haven't missed anything.”

“To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.”

“Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends.”

“Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power… Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.”

“That's not a real answer.'
Says who?'
Says me. I mean real fear, like of failure, of death, of regret. Like that. Something that keeps you awake nights, questioning your very existence.'
Clowns.”

“How can you tell? That I like books, I mean.

The look on your face when you walked in, somehow I doubted you were that impressed by me.”

“I wonder where we go when we die?”
“…Pittsburgh?”
“You mean if we’re good or if we’re bad?”

“It's hard to be the one always waiting. I mean, there's something to be said for the hero who charges off to battle, but when you get right down to it there's a whole story in who's left behind.”

“Everyone’s death means something”

“I need a watchman to tell me this is what a man says but this is what he means, to draw a line down the middle and say here is this justice and there is that justice and make me understand the difference.”

“What is truly profound is thought to be stupid and trivial, or worse, boring, while what is actually stupid and trivial is thought to be profound. That is what it means to fly upside down.”

“It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty…”

“We have a talent for disguising greed under the cloak of freedom. As for past acts of depravity, we prefer to ignore those. Progress, after all, means to look ever forward, and whatever we have trampled in our wake is best forgotten.”

“So what’s your favorite Synism? (Kiara)
Duwad. (Nykyrian)
Which means? (Kiara)
You’re not old enough for me to answer that. Hell, I’m not even old enough to say it. (Nykyrian)”

“I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it. I would hope to act with compassion without thinking of personal gain.”

“Love is only a word, until someone arrives to give it meaning.
Don't give up. Remember, it's always the last key on the key ring that opens the door.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building, when and if you are an architect?”
“Yes.”
“My dear fellow, who will let you?”
“That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”

“Alone. It's one of those small words that means entirely too much. Like fear. Or trust.”

“To remain in the past means to be dead.”

“Sitting on my stool I thought of a bumper sticker: "If Mean People Suck, Why Isn't My Dick In Your Mouth?”

“Gideon touched her cheek, lightly, with the tips of his fingers. “Did you know your name means ‘wisdom’? It was very well-given.”

“To live is to experience things, not sit around pondering the meaning of life.”

“Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.”

“There is no dignity
quite so impressive,
and no independence
quite so important,
as living within your means.”

“No one ever asks a kid for her opinion, but it seems to me that growing up means you stop hoping for the best, and start expecting the worst.”

“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.”

“Could you fall in love with her if she wasn't smarter than you? I mean, she may not be smarter than you. But isn't it important for you to think she is smarter than you in order to fall in love? Think now.”

“The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder.”

“I mean, we're all going to die. We know that on an intellectual level. We figure it out when we're still fairly young, and it scares us so badly that we convince ourselves we're immortal for more than a decade afterwards.”

“For now, poetry has the capacity - in its own ways and by its own means - to remind us of something we are forbidden to see.”

“I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.”

“How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean.”

“it is just as wrong, or even perhaps more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.”

“Can you see me? Can you hear me? Does anything I say mean anything to you?”

“I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.”

“By means of all created things, without excaption, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, when in fact we live steeped in its burning layers”

“Jason scratched his head. "You named him Festus? You know that in Latin, ‘festus’ means ‘happy’? You want us to ride off to save the world on Happy the Dragon?”

“He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes.”

“All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.”

“There’s nothing wrong with not looking like something. It just means you don’t fit the stereotype yet.”

“If love means anything at all it means extending your hand to the unlovable.”

“Isn’t that what it means to be civilized? That you can wait to get what you want?”

“Color is only beautiful when it means something.”

“The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don't mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed.”

“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.”

“There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with.”

“What If Following Her Heart
Means Rose Could Lose Her
Best Friend Forever?”

“There are no coincidences. And everything means something.”

“I mean it," I said. "You're in danger."

"Relax, Harry. I'm not letting anyone lick me, and I'm not looking anyone in the eyes. It's kind of like visiting New York.”

“I don't want more sense!" I said loudly, beating against the silence of the room. "Not if sense means I'll stop loving anyone. What is there besides people that's worth holding on to?”

“Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!”

“When we define the Photograph as a motionless image, this does not mean only that the figures it represents do not move; it means that they do not (i)emerge(i), do not (i)leave(i): they are anesthetized and fastened down, like butterflies.”

“Charlie, you’re one of the most gifted people I’ve ever known. And I don’t mean in terms of my other students. I mean in terms of anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Suddenly, I don't know what to say. It happens often to me. I know what I want to say, I think about whether it is what I mean, but when the moment comes to speak, I can't say it.
- Nana Kleinfrankenheim, Vivre Sa Vie.”

“Sometimes thou seem'st not as thyself alone,
But as the meaning of all things that are.”

“Just because you leave someone doesn’t mean you ever let them go.”

“Some old guy once said that the meaning of life is that it ends.”

“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”

“I'm just a girl in a nurse's uniform, but that doesn't mean I know how to save these men, and they- they are men in uniforms, but that doesn't mean they know how to die.”

“I have already spent roughly five thousand hours asleep next to you. This has to mean something.”

“That’s what they mean by the womb of time: the agony and the despair of spreading bones, the hard girdle in which lie the outraged entrails of events.”

“I do not feel inhibited or bound by what I am. That does not mean that I have never had bad scenes relating to being Black and/or a woman, it means that other people’s craziness has not managed to make me crazy.”

“We must nurture and love, if life is to have any real meaning. But First we must find a way to survive against the things that prevent us from doing so.”

“No public man in these islands ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means.”

“What a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you see what I mean.”

“If suffering like hers had any use, she reasoned, it was not to the sufferer. The only way that an individual's pain gained meaning was through its communication to others.”

“We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves.”

“Print is predictable and impersonal, conveying information in a mechanical transaction with the reader’s eye. Handwriting, by contrast, resists the eye, reveals its meaning slowly, and is as intimate as skin.”

“But… as bad as it was, I learned something about myself. That I could go through something like that and survive. I mean, I know it could have been worse--a lot worse-- but for me, it was all I could have handled at the time. And I learned from it.”

“Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life.”

“It means the third rail has seven hundred volts of direct current running through it. Touch it and you're human popcorn”

“I do not mean to object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read. I object only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach but one thing: there are as many opinions as there are men.”

“Guarding knowledge is not a good way to understand. Understanding means to throw away your knowledge.”

“Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.”

“It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.”

“Books mean all possibilities. They mean moving out of yourself, losing yourself, dying of thirst and living to your full. They mean everything.”

“Compassionate people ask for what they need. They say no when they need to, and when they say yes, they mean it. They're compassionate because their boundaries keep them out of resentment.”

“It really is the year 2007. Which means I must be…

Oh my God. I'm twenty-eight.

I'm old.”

“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean”

“Whoever it was, whether I knew them or not, if I could help in some way, I would. I mean, if you can help, you have to help. Don't you think? - Poppy Wyatt”

“Memories were moving pictures in which meaning was constantly in flux. They were stories people told themselves.”

“There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.”

“Any idea is a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize something means to think it.”

“We must look at ourselves over and over again in order to learn to love, to discover what has kept our hearts closed, and what it means to allow our hearts to open.”

“Love - true love - is a precious thing. It is painful, uncomfortable, makes fools of us all, but it is what breathes meaning and color and purpose into our lives.”

“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”

“Being an adult means accepting those situations where no action is possible.”

“Remember this. Hold on to this. This is the only perfection there is, the perfection of helping others. This is the only thing we can do that has any lasting meaning. This is why we're here. To make each other feel safe.”

“Gale and I were thrown together by a mutual need to survive. Peeta and I know the other's survival means our own death. How do you side step that?”

“Other people apologize and don't mean t "Sorry, but you shouldn't have…" or "Sorry, but I just didn't…" They apologize while telling you that they were right all along, which is the opposite of an actual apology.”

“Geometry has two great treasures: one is the Theorem of Phythagoras, the other the division of a line in extreme and mean ratio. The first we can compare to a mass of gold; the other we may call a precious jewel.”

“Justice must always question itself, just as society can exist only by means of the work it does on itself and on its institutions.”