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meaning quotes

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“Love life . . . regardless of logic, and it’s only then one will understand the meaning of it.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.” Oscar Wilde, Intentions
“Put in its simplest form, the problem is: How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world given my waist and shirt size?” Woody Allen, Side Effects
“All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant.” Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow
“The word is only a representation of the meaning; even at its best, writing almost always falls short of full meaning. Given that, why in God’s name would you want to make things worse by choosing a word which is only cousin to the one you...” Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is the only value in passing the time as comfortably as possible?” John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“I don't believe there's an atom of meaning in it.” Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
“I never know what I mean in my telegrams—especially those I send from America. Clearness is too expensive.” Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
“The only names of objects which connote nothing are proper names; and these have, strictly speaking, no signification.” John Stuart Mill, A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive
“Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” William Shakespeare, Macbeth
“Words mean more than what is written on paper. They need the human voice to give them deeper meaning.” Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
“Droll thing life is—that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“What you don’t understand you can make mean anything.” Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
“If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself.” Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.” Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
“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,...” Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
“Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths.” George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
“The conception of education as a social process and function has no definite meaning until we define the kind of society we have in mind.” John Dewey, Democracy and Education
“It might be possible, Septimus thought, looking at England from the train window, as they left Newhaven; it might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.” Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
“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, Mere Christianity
“Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it. ” A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
“No matter how explicit the pledge, people will turn and twist the text to suit their own purposes.” Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of my Experiments with Truth
“Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!” Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
“When I use a word . . . it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
“I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.” J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
“I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and, what's more, I don't believe you do either!” Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
“I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
“People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.” Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
“the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.” Albert Einstein, The world as I see it
“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means” Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
“The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.” Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
“there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.” John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown...” Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“That was when I learned that words are no good; that words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at.” William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
“He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“Life was not so horrible if it was meaningless, and he faced it with a strange sense of power.” W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
“Thus, isness is the meaning — having freedom in its primary sense, not limited by attachments, confinements, partialization, complexities.” Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do
“Nothing so consumes a person as meaningless exertion.” Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
“Without such love, one's dreams would have no meaning.” Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.” Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
“There was only one creature in the world that could concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It was she.” Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things.” Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
“All her life, she never saw a dead person. There was no real sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with.” Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
“The music is meant to be provocative — which doesn’t mean it’s necessarily obnoxious, but it is (mostly) confrontational, and more than that, it’s dense with multiple meanings.” JAY-Z, Decoded
“Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. 'I don't quite understand you,' she said, as politely as she could.” Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
“I didn't know what it meant to love another person.” Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Related topics

life death world language self-knowledge feelings words love understanding education interpretation clarity voice futility art work pain importance freedom attachment

Related authors

Oscar Wilde (2)
Lewis Carroll (4)
John Green (2)
Haruki Murakami (2)
Chuck Palahniuk (2)
William Shakespeare (2)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (2)
Virginia Woolf (2)
Joseph Conrad (2)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1)
Maya Angelou (1)
Paulo Coelho (1)
William Faulkner (1)
Aldous Huxley (1)
Kurt Vonnegut (1)
C. S. Lewis (1)
Leo Tolstoy (1)
W. Somerset Maugham (1)
George R. R. Martin (1)
Milan Kundera (1)

Related sources

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (3)
The Brothers Karamazov (2)
The Fault in Our Stars (2)
Heart of Darkness (2)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1)
The Alchemist (1)
As I Lay Dying (1)
Fight Club (1)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1)
Tao of Jeet Kune Do (1)
Anna Karenina (1)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1)
Mere Christianity (1)
Romeo and Juliet (1)
The Story of my Experiments with Truth (1)
The world as I see it (1)
Through the Looking-Glass (1)
Macbeth (1)
The Catcher in the Rye (1)
The Beautiful and Damned (1)