Meaning Quotes

if we possess a why of life we can put up with almost any how.

Friedrich Nietzsche

There is a connection between heaven and earth. Finding that connection gives meaning to everything, including death. Missing it makes everything meaningless, including life.

John H. Groberg

Whoever does not know how to lay his will into things at least lays some meaning into them - that means he has the faith that they already obey some will

Friedrich Nietzsche

My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfilment of which I could consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not have known what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guess of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless.

Leo Tolstoy

Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.

Greg Child

Art doesn't have to be pretty. It has to be meaningful.

Duane Hanson

As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence.

Viktor E. Frankl

To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.' Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.

Viktor E. Frankl

Art indeed may not change anything, and yet on some very basic level, life is insupportable without it.

Richard Matturro

Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you. ... You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life.

John Gardner

Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person's life its true meaning.

Paulo Coelho

That brief walk was one of those moments he knew he'd remember and look back on, one of those moments that he'd try to capture in the stories he told. Nothing was happening, really, but the moment was thick with mattering.[p214]

John Green

Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.

Albert Einstein

A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit

Samuel Johnson

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

C.S. Lewis

I feel myself dissolving, vanishing into nothingness, for if there is no one in the world who cares for you, do you really exist at all?

Cassandra Clare

Good has two meanings: it means that which is good absolutely and that which is good for somebody.

Aristotle

One must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm alive and it's not my fault, which means I must somehow go on living the best I can, without bothering anybody, until I die.''But what makes you live? With such thoughts, you'll sit without moving, without undertaking anything...''Life won't leave one alone as it is.

Leo Tolstoy

Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.

Voltaire

when man was put into the garden of eden, he was put there with the idea that he should work the land; and this proves that man was not born to be idle.

Voltaire