Quotes about Meaning

When Bad Things Happen to Good People and his lectures.

The essential message of Judaism and Christianity is that life is not an end in itself. Life is to be a means—to goodness, to sanctity, and to God. The belief in life as an end in itself is a form of idolatry.

This verse uses the Hebrew word milacha to refer to work instead of the more common word avoda. Milacha is not truly translatable; it is best understood as creative work—work that produces something.

Unfortunately, most English-language Bibles, going back to the King James translation, have translated this verse as "Thou shalt not kill." This has led to many people using this commandment to defend pacifism and to oppose capital punishment for murder.

A simple test to ascertain how much you enjoy and derive meaning from your work is to ask yourself whether you would continue doing it if you won the lottery.

Don't just aspire to make a living. Aspire to make a difference.

Just as this scale predicted the future health and happiness of the children in this study, so does knowing and telling our own stories of harm predict our future health and happiness in recovering from that trauma. When we know our stories and make sense of what has happened, we get connected to the larger story of our lives and its meaning. We become more resilient, we are able to handle stress, and we heal.

Paul argues for holy anger when he repeats the advice of Psalm 4:4: "In your anger do not sin" (Ephesians 4:26).

A good test of the appropriateness of a joke is whether the humor controls us or we control it.

The type of religion which rejoices in the pious sound of traditional phrases, regardless of their meanings, or shrinks from "controversial" matters, will never stand amid the shocks of life. In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding; the really important things are the things about which men will fight.

It is not enough to know that Jesus is alive; it is not enough to know that a wonderful Person lived in the first century of the Christian era and that Person still lives, somewhere and somehow, today. Jesus lives, and that is well; but what good is it to us?

According to that fundamental principle, language is truthful, not when the meaning attached to the words by the speaker, but when the meaning intended to be produced in the mind of the particular person addressed, is in accordance with the facts.