238 Quotes Tagged: meaning

I don't talk things, sir,' said Faber. 'I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I'm alive.

We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.

Friends are the family you choose (~ Nin/Ithilnin, Elven rogue).

"When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning — human meaning, that is — is defined by them. You have to admit that."

Art is, nowadays, our new religion and museums are our cathedrals

How will people remember you when you are gone? And for how long until they forget? Were you selfish or selfless? A gossip or a patient listener? Did you add value to the world, or did you simply take from it? Did you add value to the lives of others, or did you take the value out of someone's life? Were you a plus or negative? Meaningful or meaningless? Do you live to take or live to give?

We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them. Peace is built on understanding, and wars are built on misunderstandings. Never underestimate the power of a single word, and never recklessly throw around words. One wrong word, or misinterpreted word, can change the meaning of an entire sentence - and even start a war. And one right word, or one kind word, can grant you the heavens and open doors.

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

...The editors of (i)Life(i) rejected Kerész'a photographs when he arrived in the United States in 1937 because, they said, his images 'spoke too much'; they made us reflect, suggested a meaning — a different meaning from the literal one. Ultimately, Photography is subversive not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is (i)pensive(i), when it thinks.

Fishes never fly, and cats never catch frogs. These are the difficulties into which we are led ; and they arise simply and solely from our using words for their sound rather than for their meaning. We begin by playing with words, but in the end the words will play with us.

Inner peace is more a question of cultivating perspective, meaning, and wisdom even as life touches you with its pain.

Most of the things that give life its depth, meaning, and value are impervious to science.

Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.

There is, of course, always the personal satisfaction of writing down one's experiences so they may be saved, caught and pinned under glass, hoarded against the winter of forgetfulness. Time has been cheated a little, at least in one's own life, and a personal, trivial immortality of an old self assured. And there is another personal satisfaction: that of the people who like to recount their adventures, the diary-keepers, the story-tellers, the letter-writers, a strange race of people who feel half cheated of an experience unless it is retold. It does not really exist until it is put into words. As though a little doubting or dull, they could not see it until it is repeated. For, paradoxically enough, the more unreal an experience becomes - translated from real action into unreal words, dead symbols for life itself - the more vivid it grows. Not only does it seem more vivid, but its essential core becomes clearer. One says excitedly to an audience, 'Do you see - I can't tell you how strange it was - we all of us felt...' although actually, at the time of incident, one was not conscious of such a feeling, and only became so in the retelling. It is as inexplicable as looking all afternoon at a gray stone of a beach, and not realizing, until one tries to put it on canvas, that is in reality bright blue.

History is the nothing people write about a nothing.