Meaning Quotes

If Thecla had symbolized love of which I felt myself undeserving, as I know now that she did, then did her symbolic force disappear when I locked the door of her cell behind me? That would be like saying that the writing of this book, over which I have labored for so many watches, will vanish in a blur of vermillion when I close it for the last time and dispatch it to the eternal library maintained by the old Ultan. The great question then, that I pondered as I watched the floating island with longing eyes and chafed at my bonds and cursed the hetman in my heart, is that of determining what these symbols mean in and of themselves. We are like children who look at print and see a serpent in the last letter but one, and a sword in the last.

~ Gene Wolfe

Any fact becomes important when it’s connected to another. The connection changes the perspective; it leads you to think that every detail of the world, every voice, every word written or spoken has more than its literal meaning, that it tells us a Secret.

~ Umberto Eco

What should I take? Something that will not be missed. In the wood at midnight, a magic flower.

~ Margaret Atwood

For a finite being, an infinite path has no meaning!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

On the floor beside the spare pillow that had tumbled from the bed in her sleep was a single yellow flower. Five heart-shaped petals. As fresh and as pure as if it were in full bloom in a summer meadow.Drowsy and mind-fogged, she crept downstairs to look for a book on Irish wildflowers. It took her a while to find anything that resembled the yellow flower, but eventually she found an image and description that matched: Cinquefoil, a flower renowned for its healing properties and a flower also said to be favored by fairy folk. Meanings associated with it include money, protection, sleep, prophetic dreams, and beloved daughter.

~ Hazel Gaynor

Talk without the support of action means nothing.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Enjoy the stillness, sweet snail! Savor the spring breeze while it still means something! Soon enough, like summer tempests your tears will come!

~ Walt Holcombe

The intellect is a boat which can take us to the very shores of understanding, but once there we must leave it behind in order to grasp true meaning.

~ Ashavan

If you zoom in far enough, the information is there but it contains no meaning. The meaning emerges as a collective principle of organization.

~ R.a.delmonico

100: Live This Day as if It Were Your Last.

~ Richard Carlson

Cut privet still smells of sour apples, as it did when I was sixteen; but this is a rare, lingering exception. At that age, everything seemed more open to analogy, to metaphor, than it does now. There were more meanings, more interpretations, a greater variety of available truths. There was more symbolism, Things contained more.

~ Julian Barnes

The children laughing without knowing why - isn't that beautiful?

~ Milan Kundera

It is not always necessary to search for the cause behind everything, because every cause is unfounded. A cause only looks like a cause from a certain viewpoint.

~ László Krasznahorkai

You wanted to be the cheese,” I said.“The what? The cheese, the gooey good stuff that fills in the empty space when a slice is taken away.

~ Amber Mcree Turner

My Ego taught me a new pride, I teach it to men: No longer to bury the head in the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, an earthly head which creates meaning for the earth!

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Believe me. Everything is meant.

~ Ali Smith

Paradox is the pathos or the passion of philosophy.

~ Gilles Deleuze

Man lives 'in' meanings, in that which is valid logically, esthetically, religiously. The most fundamental expression of this fact is the language which gives man the power to abstract from the concretely given and, after having abstracted from it, to return to it, to interpret and transform it. The most vital being is the being which has the word and is by the word liberated from bondage to the given.

~ Paul Tillich

Why, what is it, how can flesh and blood come up with such stuff, how can flesh feel it. My lord life is strange. How is that Meaning comes to be? How? How does life cast it up, shape it, exude it; how does Meaning come to have physical, tangible effects, to be felt with a shock, to cause grief or longing, come to be sought for like food; pure Meaning having nothing to do with the clothes of persons or events in which it is dressed and yet not ever divorceable from some set of such clothes?

~ John Crowley

I am trying to talk about what blue means, or what it means to me, apart from meaning.

~ Maggie Nelson

If you cannot create a meaning, the things you see will always look meaningless to you!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Secrets are revealed as you are ready to understand them. It seems capricious and mean-spirited of the Grimmerie to hold back, to yield and then to tease with a single page – but then the world is the same way, isn’t it. The world rarely shrieks its meaning at you. It whispers, in private language and obscure modalities, in arcane and quixotic imagery, through symbol systems in which every element has multiple meanings determined by juxtaposition.

~ Gregory Maguire

What a mystery we are to ourselves, even as we go on, learning more, sorting it out a little. The further on we go, the more meaning there is but the less articulable. You live your life, and the older you get – the more specificity you harvest – the more precious becomes every ounce and spam. Your life and times don’t drain of meaning because they become more contradictory, ornamented by paradox, inexplicable. Rather the opposite, maybe. The less explicable, the more meaning. The less a mathematics equation (a sum game); the more like music (significant secret).

~ Gregory Maguire

One must be a lotus to emerge from mucky waters clean.

~ Will Advise

The word preacher comes from an old French word, predicateur, which means prophet. And what is the purpose of a prophet except to find meaning in trouble?

~ Marilynne Robinson

You will not live the life of royalty, if you don't understand the meaning of loyalty.

~ Gift Gugu Mona

Search for truth, not for meaning. Meaning comes from the perspective of a person who interprets the truth.

~ J.r. Rim

God will let you into the battlefield so you can understand the meaning of victory.

~ Gift Gugu Mona

Circumstance has no value. It is how one relates to a situation that has value. All true meaning resides the personal relationship to a phenomenon, what it means to you.

~ Christopher Mccandless

To find doesn't always require to search.

~ Will Advise

There is even rhythm in being empty.

~ Miyamoto Musashi

The meaning of life is to make life be more.

~ Will Advise

Meaning comes from the unknown, from the stranger, from the unpredictable that suddenly knocks at your door — a flower that suddenly blooms and you never expected it; a friend that suddenly happens to be on the street you were not waiting for; a love that blooms suddenly and you were not even aware that this was going to happen, you had not even imagined, not even dreamed. Then life has meaning. Then life has a dance. Then every step is happy because it is not a step filled with duty, it is a step moving into the unknown. The river is going towards the sea.

~ Osho

But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning.

~ Margaret Atwood

The word is only a representation of the meaning, even at its best, writing almost always falls short of full meaning.

~ Stephen King

Make it simple, but significant.

~ Don Draper

Noise guides only as light blinds.

~ Andy Harglesis

Usually, meaning tends to find you, in the middle of the night, and when you least expect it.

~ Catherine Lowell

The biggest catch need not be grandest at all.

~ Andy Harglesis

Death is the destroyer and giver of sense.

~ Andy Harglesis