Quotations about:
meaning
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Life is a biography, not a series of disconnected moments, more or less pleasurable but increasingly tedious and unsatisfying unless one imposes a purposive pattern upon them.
I am an agnostic partly because I don’t think it is part of the human condition ever to have very much certainty about anything but moments of pleasure and of imminent and immanent death. I don’t think we have a language, will ever have a language, that can describe transcendence in any useful way and am aware that transcendence may be nothing more than the illusory aspiration of a decaying piece of meat on a random rock. The thing is to be humble enough to be content with that while acting to other people as generously as if better things were true, and making art as if it might survive and do good in the world. Because what else are we going to do with the few short years of our life?
Roz Kaveney (b. 1949) British writer, critic, poet
“On Good Friday, I may not have faith, but that doesn’t make me an atheist,” The Guardian (29 Mar 2013)
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What is the meaning of life? That was all — a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other….
There is no greater satisfaction for a just and well-meaning person than the knowledge that he has devoted his best energies to the service of a good cause.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
“A Message to My Adopted Country,” Pageant (Jan 1946)
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Later reprinted as "The Negro Question."
Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams, to have no greater aim than a second car and another television set — and this in a world where half our fellow men have less than enough to eat.
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American diplomat, statesman
“Putting First Things First”, Foreign Affairs (1960-01)
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We cannot define anything precisely! If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other, “You don’t know what you are talking about!”. The second one says, “What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you?” and so on.
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) American physicist
The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I, 8-2 “Motion” (20 Oct 1961)
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From the same it proceedeth that men give different names to one and the same thing from the difference of their own passions: as they that approve a private opinion call it opinion; but they that mislike it, heresy: and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion; but has only a greater tincture of choler.
POLONIUS: Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Hamlet, Act 2, sc. 2, l. 223 (2.2.223) (c. 1600)
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In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
(Misattributed)
Carlyle uses this phrase in his The French Revolution: A History, Part 1, Book 1, ch. 2 (1.1.2) (1837), but brackets it in quotations, and prefaces it with "For indeed it is well said ...." Nevertheless, the phrase is often misattributed directly to Carlyle.
The second half of the phrase (and sometimes the whole thing) has also been misattributed to Johann von Goethe, as "The eye sees only what the eye brings means of seeing." This is not found in Goethe's work, but may be distorted from a line in the Prologue to Goethe's Faust: "Each one sees what he carries in his heart."
If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
The Bible (The New Testament) (AD 1st - 2nd C) Christian sacred scripture
1 Corinthians 13:1 [NRSV (1989)]
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Alternate translations:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
[KJV (1611)]
If I have all the eloquence of men or of angels, but speak without love, I am simply a gong booming or a cymbal clashing.
[Jerusalem (1966)]
I may be able to speak the languages of human beings and even of angels, but if I have no love, my speech is no more than a noisy gong or a clanging bell.
[GNT (1976)]
The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves but in our attitude towards them.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944) French writer, aviator
Citadelle [The Wisdom of the Sands], ch. 5 (1948) [tr. Gilbert (1950)]
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