Quotes on Meaning :: Finest Quotes

Meaning Quotes

All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: "I refuse to be what I am."

When the bubble of ignorance bursts the self realizes its oneness with the indivisible Self. Words that proceed from the Source of Truth have real meaning. But when men speakthese words as their own, the words become meaningless.

Meher Baba

If now Isay "Stealing money is wrong," I produce a sentence which has no factual meaning that is, expresses no proposition which can be either true or false. It is as if I had written "Stealing money!!" where the shape and thickness of the exclamation marks show, by a suitable convention, that a special sort of moral disapproval is the feeling which is being expressed.

Sir Alfred Jules Ayer

I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.

Gaston Bachelard

Out in Hollywood, where the streets are paved with Goldwyn, the word "sophisticate" means, very simply, "obscene." A sophisticated story is a dirty story. Some of that meaning was wafted eastward and got itself mixed up into the present definition. So that a "sophisticate" means: one who dwells in a tower made of a DuPont substitute for ivory and holds a glass of flat champagne in one hand and an album of dirty post cards in the other.

Dorothy Parker

Faced with the nonsense question 'What is the meaning of a word?' and perhaps dimly recognizing it to be nonsense, we are nevertheless not inclined to give it up.

John Langshaw Austin

It may justly be urged that, properly speaking, what alone has meaning is a sentence.

John Langshaw Austin

Cripple crow say something for our grieving, where do we go once we start leaving. Well close that wound or else keep on bleeding and change your tune, it's got no meaning.

Devendra Banhart

In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.

Steve Jobs

Since the essence of the soul is but a will to bestow, and all its manifestations and possessions are fulfillments of that will to bestow (...) therefore it is immortal and irreplaceable. The soul, with all its manifestations is eternal and exists forever. Absence does not apply to them upon the departure of the body. On the contrary, the absence of the corrupted form of the body, greatly strengthens it, thus enabling it to rise to the Heavens. Thus we have clearly shown that the persistence in no way depends upon the concepts it has acquired, as philosophers claim, but its eternality is in its very essence, meaning in its will to bestow, which is its essence. And the concepts it acquires are its reward, not its essence.

Yehuda Ashlag

Indeed, if we set our hearts to answer but one very famous question, I am certain that all these questions and doubts will vanish from the horizon, and you will look unto their place to find them gone. This indignant question is a question that the whole world asks, namely, What is the meaning of my life? In other words, these numbered years of our life that cost us so heavily and the numerous pains and torments that we suffer for them, to complete them to the fullest, who is it that enjoys them?

Yehuda Ashlag

There is a positive force, meaning constructive, and a negative force, meaning negative and destructive. They create and complement the entire reality in general and particular through their harsh and perpetual war with one another. As we have said above, the negative force appears at the end of every political phase, elevating it to a better state, and thus the phases follow one another until they reach their ultimate perfection (...) In addition, being a social creature, the individual development is not enough. Rather, ones ultimate perfection depends on the development of all the members of society.

Yehuda Ashlag

There are only a few images that are not forced to provide meaning, or have to go through the filter of a specific idea.

Jean Baudrillard

Imam Ali was asked the meaning of being well-off or well-provided for. Imam Ali replied, "Your welfare does not lie in your having enormous wealth and numerous children but it rests in your being highly educated and forbearing and in your being proud of your obedience to God. If you do a good deed then thank God for it and if you commit a sin then repent and atone for it. In this world there is a real welfare for two kinds of people, one is the person who, when commits a sin, atones for it and the other is anxious to do good as much as possible.

Ali bin Abu-Talib

We painted embroidered and made collages. All these works were drawn from the simplest forms and were probably the first examples of concrete art. These works are realities pure and independent with no meaning or cerebral intention. We rejected all mimesis and description, giving free reign to the elementary and spontaneous.

Jean Arp

I think that the effort is to reach a realm of meaning that is not quite sayable. You stay away from what can be said and you try to reach what cant quite be said. Yet it is nevertheless meaningful. And there is such a realm and it is very difficult to talk about. Its not quite nonverbal, but that comes fairly close.

Donald Barthelme

The meaning of your communication is the response you get.

Gregory Bateson

It is not given me to trace The lovely laughter of that face, Like a clear brook most full of light, Or olives swaying on a height, So silver they have wings, almost; Like a great word once known and lost And meaning all things. Nor her voice A happy sound where larks rejoice, Her body, that great loveliness, The tender fashion of her dress, I may not paint them. These I see, Blazing through all eternity, A fire-winged sign, a glorious tree!

Stephen Vincent Bent

A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. It tells us that for every human being there is a diversity of existences, that the single existence is itself an illusion in part, that these many existences signify something, tend to something, fulfill something; it promises us meaning, harmony, and even justice.

Saul Bellow

That is for me the reason why I have to speak, and I have to speak more often than I do so-called art-work. You see, the complication is that I have to use something.. ..I have to use a traditional determination for ideas, so when I speak about art, I can only say that there are two kinds of art: the traditional art, which is unable to bring up art at all or to change anything in society or in the ability and the joy for life; and then, there is another kind of art, which is related to everybodys needs and the problems existing in the society. This kind of art has to be worked out from the beginning, it will never lead to result in any physical form.. ..that is my meaning.

Joseph Beuys

The power of a thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.

Nicholas Black Elk

The fact that most of us never would have heard of Oedipus if it were not for Freud should make us aware that we are almost utterly dependent on our German missionaries or intermediaries for our knowledge of Greece, Rome, Judaism and Christianity; that, however profound that knowledge may be, theirs is only one interpretation; and that we have only been told as much as they thought we needed to know. It is an urgent business for one who seeks self-awareness to think through the meaning of the intellectual dependency that has led us to such an impasse.

Allan David Bloom

Philosophy was architectonic, had the plans for the whole building, and the carpenters, masons and plumbers were its subordinates and had no meaning without its plan.

Allan David Bloom

Social science and humanities have a mutual contempt for one another, the former looking down on the latter as unscientific, the latter regarding the former as philistine. The difference comes down to the fact that social science really wants to be predictive, meaning that man is predictable, while the humanities say that he is not.

Allan David Bloom

What is essential here is the presence of the spirit of dialogue, which is in short, the ability to hold many points of view in suspension, along with a primary interest in the creation of common meaning.

David Joseph Bohm

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