Quotes about Meaning

the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, "I'll be dead," you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul — it was a consequence of grammar.

I will say you ... You can mean more than one. You can mean thousands. I'm not in immediate danger, I'll say to you. I'll pretend you can hear me. But its no good, because I know you can't.

Poems are made of words. They aren't boxes. They aren't houses. Nobody is in them, really.

When thanksgiving is filled with true meaning and is not just the formality of a polite 'thank you,' it is the recognition of dependence.

This is the holy reasoning of love; it draws no license from grace, but rather feels the strong constraints of gratitude leading it to holiness.

I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.

I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death!

Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.

When humans experience something as powerful as a forest or a rainbow, it is not crazy to assign its existence to a Greater Intelligence.

One rarely knows where to begin the search for meaning, though by necessity, we can only start where we are.

Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit. God tells Job, who wants an explanation for all his troubles, "You wouldn't understand.

Every one of us sometimes needs a tour guide to remind us how big and deep life is meant to be.