But Meaningful Quotes & Sayings

clients, the wider community, and the environment. Said differently, companies are human communities. If we once begin to think of our places of work not as something divorced from the rest of life, but as communities that are a vital dimension of our existence as people, and in fact at the heart of a meaningful life, a fundamentally different idea of how a company should operate enters the picture. — Catherine Bell

I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then, "Nowhere Man" came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down ... Song writing is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed sleep. — John Lennon

We stand on the edge of the abyss, across whose unknowable face we paint meaning so as not to see into it. It is always there. But we're here too, and we are no less real than the abyss. We are no less meaningful for being transient creatures caught up in something too big for us. There is still value to our lives. I've learned that those things that are most fragile are also the most precious. — Ovadya Ben Malka

Music used to be essential and meaningful, but now it's disposable. — Brian McKnight

Nevertheless, it bothered Vimes, even though he'd got really good at the noises and would go up against any man in his rendition of the HRUUUGH! But is this a book for a city kid? When would he ever hear these noises? In the city, the only sound those animals would make was "sizzle." But the nursery was full of the conspiracy with bah-lambs and teddy bears and fluffy ducklings everywhere he looked.
One evening, after a trying day, he'd tried the Vimes street version:
Where's my daddy?
Is that my daddy?
He goes "Bugrit! Millennium hand and shrimp!"
He is Foul Ol' Ron!
No, that's not my daddy!
It had been going really well when Vimes heard a meaningful little cough from the doorway, wherein stood Sybil. Next day, Young Sam, with a child's unerring instinct for this sort of thing, said "Buglit!" to Purity. And that, although Sybil never raised the subject even when they were alone, was that. From then on Sam stuck rigidly to the authorized version. — Terry Pratchett

GNP is therefore in a certain sense a value-neutral quantity: a measure of activity, not of activity of any kind of value. A first argument against continued growth is just this. The GNP does not give any guarantee of meaningfulness of that which is created. Growth in GNP does not imply any growth in access to intrinsic values and progress along the course of self-realization. Obviously any kind of economic growth which is not related to intrinsic values is neutral or detrimental. The measure of GNP is somehow related to the fierceness of activity in the society but this fierceness may very well have more to do with a lack of ability of the members of the society to engage in meaningful activity than a measure of something humanity should look upon with joy. There is no clear relation to life quality. — Arne Naess

Traveling as much as I do, I get lonely sometimes. I have friends now in cities all over the world, so I get to be social, but it's hard to have the deep meaningful relationships, especially an intimate one. With my guy friends, I can show up once a month and go to dinner with them and they're happy. — Blake Mycoskie

Automation provides us with wondrous increases of production and information, but does it tell us what to do with the men the machines displace? Modern industry gives us the capacity for unparalleled wealth - but where is our capacity to make that wealth meaningful to the poor of every nation? — Robert Kennedy

Whether a plane to Singapore, a subway in Manhattan, or the streets of Cincinnati, I search for meaningful conversation wherever I may travel. Without it, I believe we lose the ability to not only understand others, but more importantly, ourselves. — Dhani Jones

The best defenses against the terrors of existence are the homely comforts of love, work, and family life, which connect us to a world that is independent of our wishes yet responsive to our needs. It is through love and work, as Freud noted in a characteristically pungent remark, that we exchange crippling emotional conflict for ordinary unhappiness. Love and work enable each of us to explore a small corner of the world and to come to accept it on its own terms. But our society tends either to devalue small comforts or else to expect too much of them. Our standards of "creative, meaningful work" are too exalted to survive disappointment. Our ideal of "true romance" puts an impossible burden on personal relationships. We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves. — Christopher Lasch

I made money. I wanted to give it back to Africa but I wanted to give it back in a meaningful way. So I really want to do something which deals with the root of the problem of hunger, of disease, of ills we have in our society. — Mo Ibrahim

Sometimes life is intensely interesting and meaningful, and this meaning seems to be an objective fact, like sunlight. At other times it's as meaningless and futile as the wind. We accept this eclipse of meaning as we accept changes in the weather. If I wake up with a bad cold or a headache, I seem to be deaf to meaning. Now if I woke up physically deaf or half-blind, I'd feel there was something wrong and consult a doctor. But when I'm deaf to meaning, I accept it as something natural. Esmond didn't accept it as natural. And he also noticed that every time we're sexually stimulated, meaning returns. We can hear again. So he pursued sex as a way of recovering meaning. — Colin Wilson

The real issue is not whether baking biscuits is meaningful, but the extent to which the activity can seem to be so after it has been continuously stretched and subdivided across five thousand lives. — Alain De Botton

Realize that your physical experience and environment is the materialization of your beliefs. If you find great exuberance, health, effective work, abundance, smiles on the faces of those who you meet, then take it for granted that your beliefs are beneficial. If you see a world that is good, people like you, take it for granted again, that your beliefs are beneficial. But if you find poor health, a lack of meaningful work, a lack of abundance, a world of sorrow and evil, then assume your beliefs are faulty and begin examining them. — Seth

Resurrection. In the crude form in which it is preached to console the weak, it is alien to me. I have always understood Christ's words about the living and the dead in a different sense. Where could you find room for all these hordes of people accumulated over thousands of years? The universe isn't big enough for them; God, the good, and meaningful purpose would be crowded out. They'd be crushed by these throngs greedy merely for the animal life.
But all the time, life, one, immense, identical throughout its innumerable combinations and transformations, fills the universe and is continually reborn. You are anxious about whether you will rise from the dead or not, but you rose from the dead when you were born and you didn't notice it. — Boris Pasternak

It's easy to say, 'I love you,' to someone, but it's more meaningful to thank someone for loving you. — Jon Bon Jovi

Realizing your goal, resolution, or transformation is a journey. Change, like any meaningful endeavor, proceeds sequentially through steps. The journey begins with the contemplation stage of specifying realistic goals, getting ready, or getting psyched. The planning stage is all about prepping. How exactly will I do this thing? At some point you will jump from preparing and planning to perspiring, the work of implementing the new, desired behavior. Getting there is wonderful, but we need to keep you there, which entails persevering through slips and, finally, persisting over time. — John C. Norcross

Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

If we have any role at all, I think it's the role of optimism, not blind or stupid optimism, but the kind which is meaningful, one that is rather close to that notion of the world which is not perfect, but which can be improved. In other words, we don't just sit and hope that things will work out; we have a role to play to make that come about. — Chinua Achebe

We seek not for forgiveness, but the freedom and time to do more than 'exist'. — Fennel Hudson

Some of the homes that have been built in the last 10 years just appall me. Why do humans need huge homes? I was born poor and I didn't know you bought clothes at anything but the Goodwill until I went to college. Some of our mentality about what it means to have a good life is, I think, not going to help us in the next 50 years. We have to think through how to choose a meaningful life where we're helping one another in ways that really help the Earth. — Elinor Ostrom

The goal of forecasting is not to predict the future but to tell you what you need to know to take meaningful action in the present — Paul Saffo

To be truly rich includes not only financial freedom but developing rich, meaningful relationships, enriching your health, and enjoying a rich balance between your career and your personal life. — Jack Canfield

The storytelling mind is allergic to uncertainty, randomness, and coincidence. It is addicted to meaning. If the storytelling mind cannot find meaningful patterns in the world, it will try to impose them. In short, the storytelling mind is a factory that churns out true stories when it can, but will manufacture lies when it can't. — Jonathan Gottschall

I can't choose the most meaningful song that I've written. That would be like choosing one child over another. But first borns are always special. — Matisyahu

...I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape. [...] It is important in life to conclude things properly. Only then you can let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse..."
~Life of Pi, chapter 94 — Yann Martel

This is not about the mere extension of life along a horizontal plane, but about the deepening of life along a vertical plane. Mere longevity cannot render life meaningful any more than brevity has the power to make it meaningless. — Peter Rollins

To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history but to articulate it. — Daniel Libeskind

But Ignatian spirituality is so capacious that even an introduction will touch upon a broad spectrum of topics: making good choices, finding meaningful work, being a good friend, living simply, wondering about suffering, deepening your prayer, striving to be a better person, and learning to love. — James Martin

Young people are often asked, 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' and given advice about how to lead meaningful adult lives, but where's the encouragement to lead meaningful lives right now? — Adora Svitak

Beauvoir left their home wanting to call his wife and tell her how much he loved her, and then tell her what he believed in, and his fears and hopes and disappointments. To talk about something real and meaningful. He dialed his cell phone and got her. But the words got caught somewhere south of his throat. Instead he told her the weather had cleared, and she told him about the movie she'd rented. Then they both hung up. — Louise Penny

He raised one eyebrow. Infuriatingly. Then he looked me up and down, but not in a meaningful way like Jake used to, more as if i was a horse, which was weird because he hadn't yesterday when i was actually dressed as one. — Diane Messidoro

How can even the idea of rebellion against corporate culture stay meaningful when Chrysler Inc. advertises trucks by invoking "The Dodge Rebellion"? How is one to be bona fide iconoclast when Burger King sells onion rings with "Sometimes You Gotta Break the Rules"? How can an Image-Fiction writer hope to make people more critical of televisual culture by parodying television as a self-serving commercial enterprise when Pepsi and Subaru and FedEx parodies of self-serving commercials are already doing big business? It's almost a history lesson: I'm starting to see just why turn-of-the-century Americans' biggest fear was of anarchist and anarchy. For if anarchy actually wins, if rulelessness become the rule, then protest and change become not just impossible but incoherent. It'd be like casting a ballot for Stalin: you are voting for an end to all voting. — David Foster Wallace

PEOPLE SCOLD others in many different ways, but the Buddha spoke of five different forms that scolding might be classified into: 1. There are times when scolding is justified and times when it is not. 2. Scolding may have a basis or may be baseless. 3. Scolding may be in gentle words or harsh. 4. Scolding may use meaningful, helpful words or words that are foolish and vain. 5. Scolding may be done out of compassion or simply out of anger. — Alubomulle Sumanasara

There's no doubt that in the last two to three decades, American democracy has been hacked. It was based on the regular harvesting of the wisdom of crowds, but now big sources of special interest money are able to prevent the passage of almost any meaningful reform that's aimed at the public interest. — Al Gore

But I have to add - and this answers your other question - this catholicity in time and in space is only meaningful for me if there is, at the same time, a concentration on the Gospel. — Hans Kung

There are no guarantees that if you work hard enough, or are talented enough, that you will be successful, be able to support yourself, or importantly, make a meaningful contribution to others. But in the meantime, if you are an artist, the art just comes - whether you like it or not - because you can't stop it. — Jessica Todd Harper

I wish I was the kind of writer who would go to a war zone and write about something that's meaningful and important to people, but that's not my area of coverage. — Jonathan Ames

I've been successfully wearing my TWA during the fashion month in September 2015, but also I felt like my third appearance at a Victoria's Secret show would be more meaningful or impactful if I could help a few women embrace their natural beauty. — Maria Borges

This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures. — Rudyard Kipling

And who wouldn't wish that? Certainly everyone here- dressed up as aliens, and wizards, and zombies, and superheroes- wants desperately to be inside a story, to be part of something more logical and meaningful than real life seems to be. Because even worlds with dragons and time machines seem to be more ordered than our own. When you live for stories, when you spend so much of your time immersed in careful constructs of three and five acts, it sometimes feels like you're just stumbling through the rest of life, trying to divine meaningful narrative threads from the chaos. Which, as I learned the hard way this weekend, can be painfully fruitless. Fiction is there when real life fails you. But it's not a substitute. — Sarvenaz Tash

I know I'll miss her every single day, but the memories she left won't haunt me anymore. I'll remember the girl who never wore shoes, and our blood promise to always be friends. I'll remember girls who loved and trusted each other, protected each other, and sometimes even hurt each other.
I'll remember a friendship that will never go away. — Jennifer Shaw Wolf

The paths we take in our lives are also in the hands of God, and He can guide our steps. Elder Richard G. Scott said, "The Lord has a purpose for you, individually. . . . Discover it and fulfill it. It will likely not be revealed all at once but will be unfolded line upon line. As you pray and work hard, you will find threads of understanding that will lead you to the path the Lord wants you to follow for the greatest enduring, meaningful attainment, contribution, joy, and peace of mind. Faithfully and courageously follow those threads of understanding and direction."2 — Brad Wilcox

The thrill of tramping alone and unafraid through a wilderness of lakes, creeks, alpine meadows, and glaciers is not known to many. A civilization can be built around the machine but it is doubtful that a meaningful life can be produced by it ... When man worships at the feet of avalas creations. When he feels the wind blowing through him on a high peak or sleeps under a closely matted white bark pine in an exposed basin, he is apt to find his relationship to the universe. — William O. Douglas

Do not let your grand ambitions stand in the way of small but meaningful accomplishments. — Bryant H. McGill

Insanity and psychosis can no longer be respected as meaningful [terms] - but are used by limited individuals in positions of social power to describe ways of behaving and thinking that are alien, threatening, and obscure to them. — Seymour Krim

But if you can't love your-self, you can never love others. And if you never overcome your lack of self- love, you will carry that problem into all your relationships. Plagued by rejection, you will experience conflict with others, you will struggle to set meaningful goals, and you will feel a vague uncertainty about what truly matters. — Ken Freeman

Since CWIL's discipline-based practice was grounded not only in process but also in New Genre Theory, their criteria included assigning writing that would enable students to engage in the kinds of thinking typical of the discipline, as well as in writing in the genres typical of professional practice. The UCITF, however, was trying to draft criteria for the new Q (quantitative reasoning) and B (breadth) courses as well as for the W-courses. They were motivated to define courses in ways that would be comprehensive and meaningful, but would not impose demands likely to alienate faculty. — Wendy Strachan

The conscious mind is small and weak compared to the emotional and spiritual power that we call daimonic. It may be the urge to create, take risks, and love. Life may be simple when you avoid the daimon of love, but it is also less passionate and meaningful. — Thomas Moore

We have so many different options now and ways to communicate digitally. But I don't think anything is more meaningful or powerful than a hand-written letter. — Debra Messing

Brands are either built on reruns or coming attractions. The future has no road map while the past does. Creating a brand that blazes new trails can sometimes be bumpy but will also allow you to be the first to discover something new, something meaningful and something that makes others ask, "Why didn't we think of that?" Be very scared of "old tricks" and build a spirit of innovation. It's the "old tricks" that have the highest risk, not doing something bold. — David Brier

But plausibility itself, in my view, is a tremendous step forward as we continue to marshal the courage to live meaningful lives in a universe that likely came into existence, and may fade out of existence, without purpose, and certainly without us at its center. — Lawrence M. Krauss

He's inviting me to heal, but also to see my most meaningful calling: to be His healing to the hurting. My own brokenness, driving me into Christ's, is exactly where I can touch the brokenhearted. Our — Ann Voskamp

In a bravura demonstration of stonewalling, righteousness, and hurt sincerity, Steve Jobs successfully took to the stage the other day to deny the problem, dismiss the criticism, and spread the blame among other smartphone makers.". "This is a level of modern marketing, corporate spin, and crisis management about which you can only ask with stupefied incredulity and awe: How do they get away with it? Or, more accurately, how does he get away with it?" Wolff attributed it to Jobs's mesmerizing effect as "the last charismatic individual." Other CEOs would be offering abject apologies and swallowing massive recalls, but Jobs didn't have to. "The grim, skeletal appearance, the absolutism, the ecclesiastical bearing, the sense of his relationship with the sacred, really works, and, in this instance, allows him the privilege of magisterially deciding what is meaningful and what is trivial. — Walter Isaacson

Mike Morrison, vice president and dean of the University of Toyota, likes to ask employees: "What's on the other side of your card?" In other words, the front of your business card may read "Managing Director," but you may better identify with "big picture thinker" or "educator" or "calm under fire." This kind of information - or even a few simple details like where a person lives, what his or her favorite hobby is - cuts through the red tape to get somewhere more meaningful, and it can more immediately and effectively forge a connection between two people. — Shawn Achor

As a Black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting way to live. — Audre Lorde

Sure, some of us humans might be angry at a sovereign God about Hell, but know that that is about as meaningful as a few germs being angry at humans about bleach. — Criss Jami

When you see which choices, which decisions, a being makes, you see what is truly meaningful to them. They may say many things, but the choices they make let you see their souls. — Colleen Vanderlinden

Even in its darkest passages, the heart is unconquerable. It is important that the body survives, but it is more meaningful that the human spirit prevails. — Dave Pelzer

I was trying to think of something to say that would sound more meaningful, but when you get sown to it, words aren't very useful at baring our souls, they're just something else to hide behind. — Orhan Pamuk

Since the debt limit simply accommodates debt that has already been incurred, raising it should, in theory, be perfunctory. But politicians have found it a useful shibboleth for showing their fealty fiscal discipline, even as they vote to ratify the debts their previous actions have a beginning the country to pay. The symbol of railing against debt has proven politically beneficial, even if not substantively meaningful. — Thomas E. Mann

If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it. — David Foster Wallace

The solo years have been more meaningful to the audiences than the Smiths years, but the press in England only write about me in relation to the Smiths era. — Morrissey

Making changes requires making new and different choices, choices that are more conscious, and more life-supporting. Continuing to do what we have been doing so far is also a choice, but not one that will bring any meaningful improvement. I would suggest that before we can intelligently make new choices, a thorough re-evaluation is in order. We need to look more carefully at what we value, what we have, and what we desire to make sure these are really important to us and represent what we truly want. — Ilchi Lee

But maybe it's only been a brief separation that feels like years. Like a solo car ride that takes all night but feels like a lifetime. Watching all those highway dashes flying by at seventy miles an hour, your eyes becoming lazy slits and your mind wandering over the memory of a whole lifetime-past and future, childhood memories to thoughts of your own death-until the numbers on the dashboard clock do not mean anything more. And then the sun comes up and you get to your destination and the ride becomes the thing that is no longer real, because that surreal feeling has vanished and time has become meaningful again. — Matthew Quick

The whiteness celebrated in Paris is Burning is not just any old brand of whiteness but rather that brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness that presents itself -its way of life- as the only meaningful life there is. What could be more reassuring to a white public fearful that marginalized disenfranchised black folks might rise any day now make revolutionary black liberation struggle a reality than a documentary affirming that colonized, victimized, exploited black folks, are all too willing to be complicit in perpetuating the fantasy that ruling-class white culture is the quintessential site of unrestricted joy, freedom, power and pleasure. — Bell Hooks

I am willing to believe that my unobtainable sixty seconds within a sponge or a flatworm might not reveal any mental acuity that I would care to call consciousness. But I am also confident [ ... ] that vultures and sloths, as close evolutionary relatives with the same basic set of organs, lie on our side of any meaningful (and necessarily fuzzy) border and that we are therefore not mistaken when we look them in the eye and see a glimmer of emotional and conceptual affinity. — Stephen Jay Gould

Not all stories have happy endings; but that doesn't mean they're not worth the read. — Cassia Leo

I'm happy for you Agastya,you're leaving for a more meaningful context. This place is like a parody, a complete farce, they're trying to build another Cambridge here. At my old University I used to teach Macbeth to my MA English classes in Hindi.English in India is burlesque. But now you'll get out of here to somehow a more real situation. In my time I'd wanted to give this Civil Service exam too, I should have. Now I spend my time writing papers for obscure journals on L. H. Myers and Wyndham Lewis, and teaching Conrad to a bunch of half-wits. — Upamanyu Chatterjee

People are born, they have a limited amount of time going around thinking life is dandy but then, inevitably, tragedy strikes and they realize life equals loss! The whole point of the game is to minimize the pain caused by that equation! Now some people do it by having kids, or making money, or taking up coin collecting, and others do it by getting wasted. — Dominic West

Human memory was never meant to call up all things, after all, but rather to explore the richness of exclusion, of absence. It creates a meaningful, contextualized, curated assemblage particular to the brain's singular experience and habits. Valuable memories, like great music, are as much about the things that drop away - the rests - as they are about what stays and sounds. — Michael Harris

And each time he finished a sentence, there was a tiny but meaningful lump of silence left behind. This lump floated there, enclosed in the car's restricted space like an imaginary miniature cloud, giving Aomame a strangely unsettled feeling. — Haruki Murakami

Most things don't work out as expected, but what happens instead often turns out to be the good stuff. — Judi Dench

Meaningful work, creative work, thoughtful work, important work - this type of effort takes stretches of uninterrupted time to get into the zone. But in the modern office such long stretches just can't be found. Instead, it's just one interruption after another. — Jason Fried

Silence is banished from our screens; it has no place in communication. Media images (and media texts resemble media images in every way) never fall silent: images and messages must follow one upon the other without interruption. But silence is exactly that - a blip in the circuitry, that minor catastrophe, that slip which, on television for instance, becomes
highly meaningful - a break laden now with anxiety, now with jubilation, which confirms the fact that all this communication is basically nothing but a rigid script, an uninterrupted fiction designed to free us not only from the void of the television screen but equally from the void of our own mental screen, whose images we wait on with the same fascination. — Jean Baudrillard

We really feel very humbled that we are a part of so many lives around the globe and that we can help connect people from everywhere with and through our music. My experiences with fans are mostly wonderful and I am always so grateful when I see what kind of positive effect our music has on people. All of our fan experiences are memorable in different way, but it is especially powerful and meaningful when you can feel that someone is really inspired with what you are doing. This is especially true for the young generation. It feels good to know that we can get these kids to pick up classical instruments and see them as instruments they can rock on. — Luka Sulic

I remember an insight that taught me much about life. One day I felt that I had everything that I really wanted in life. I had a creative and meaningful work as a therapist and course leader, I had a relationship with a beautiful woman, who I loved and who loved me, I had friend that I trusted and I had money to do what I wanted.
But in spite of all this, I still had a feeling that there was something missing in my life. I was not satisfied. The thirst and longing in my heart was still searching for something more. It made me realize that the deepest pain in my heart was that I was still separated from the Whole and that no outer things or relationships could ease this pain. — Swami Dhyan Giten

I injured myself quite badly when I was seventeen. I broke my ankle, and it didn't heal in such a way that I could keep dancing at the level I wanted to. It wasn't like, 'Oh my god, I'll never play the violin again.' I could, but not at the level I wanted. So, I segued into acting, the other thing that was also meaningful to me. — Kristin Lehman

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. ~ Anton Ego, Ratatouille — Walt Disney Company

He looks," Simon had once said to Isabelle, "like he's thinking about something deep and meaningful, but if you ask him what it is, he'll punch you in the face. — Cassandra Clare

People will continue to search for answers to universal and perplexing problems. But to find meaningful answers, one must first know what questions to ask. — Jacque Fresco

Even five minute meaningful conversations with other people not only fuel us in the moment but also build up a reserve of social capital so that when hard times strike, we can draw down on that bank account. — Michelle Gielan

The run-down nature of the high-rise was a model of the world into which the future was carrying them, a landscape beyond technology where everything was either derelict or more ambiguously recombined in unexpected but more meaningful ways — J.G. Ballard

When I talk to audiences about the size and age of the cosmos, people often say, "It makes me feel so insignificant." I answer, "The bigger and more impersonal the universe is, the more meaningful you are, because this vast, impersonal place needs something significant to fill it up." We've abandoned the old belief that humanity is at the physical center of the universe but more come back to believing we are at the center of meaning. — Alan Dressler

I could stop and live carefully but that's ridiculous. I don't want to live carefully. — Joan Rivers

As soon as we notice that certain types of event "like" to cluster together at certain times, we begin to understand the attitude of the Chinese, whose theories of medicine, philosophy, and even building are based on a "science" of meaningful coincidences. The classical Chinese texts did not ask what causes what, but rather what "likes" to occur with what. — M.L. Von Franz

Some people live closely guarded lives, fearful of encountering someone or something that might shatter their insecure spiritual foundation. This attitude, however, is not the fault of religion but of their own limited understanding. True Dharma leads in exactly the opposite direction. It enables one to integrate all the many diverse experiences of life into a meaningful and coherent whole, thereby banishing fear and insecurity completely. — Thubten Yeshe

So if this were a normal book about a girl with leukemia, I would probably talk a shitload about all the meaningful things Rachel had to say as she got sicker and sicker, and also probably we would fall in love and have some incredibly fulfilling romantic thing and she would die in my arms. But I don't feel like lying to you. She didn't have meaningful things to say, and we definitely didn't fall in love. She seemed less pissed with me after my stupid outburst, but she basically just went from irritable to quiet. — Jesse Andrews

So successfully have we disguised from ourselves the intensity of our own feelings, the sensibility of our own hearts, that plays in the tragic tradition have begun to seem untrue. For a couple of hours we may surrender ourselves to a world of fiercely illuminated values in conflict, but when the stage is covered and the auditorium lighted, almost immediately there is a recoil of disbelief. "Well, well!" we say as we shuffle back up the aisle, while the play dwindles behind us with the sudden perspective of an early Chirico painting. By the time we have arrived at Sardi's, if not as soon as we pass beneath the marquee, we have convinced ourselves once more that life has as little resemblance to the curiously stirring and meaningful occurrences on the stage as a jingle has to an elegy of Rilke. — Tennessee Williams

The problem may be a literary one: we are given a single story line about what makes a good life, even though not a few who follow that story line have bad lives. We speak as though there is one good plot with one happy outcome, while the myriad forms a life can take flower - and wither - all around us.
Even those who live out the best version of the familiar story line might not find happiness as their reward. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I know a woman who was lovingly married for seventy years. She has had a long, meaningful life that she has lived according to her principles. But I wouldn't call her happy; her compassion for the vulnerable and concern for the future have given her a despondent worldview. What she has had instead of happiness requires better language to describe. There are entirely different criteria for a good life that might matter more to a person - honor, meaning, depth, engagement, hope. — Rebecca Solnit

Bicycling beyond the Divide did what all great books do: it told me about me. In its tale of a journey made by two different men-both of them Daryl Farmer-this book offers us not only moving vistas and meaningful people, but also hope, that rarest of literary commodities these days. I didn't want this to end. — Bret Lott

In 1971, 73 percent of incoming freshmen said that it is essential or very important to "develop a meaningful philosophy of life," 37 percent to be "very well-off financially" (not well-off, note, but very well-off). By 2011, the numbers were almost reversed, 47 percent and 80 percent, respectively. — William Deresiewicz

The second thing we did was said, OK, we've now identified the risk, but what do you want to do with the money? Because it's not enough to have risk; you've got to have a meaningful use for the money we give you. — Michael Chertoff

We teenage girls are faced with a quandary: we know what we want but are forced to wait for our male counterparts to grow up. We are ready for intense and meaningful relationships, but research indicates that males will not reach maturity until their mid-20s. — Alexandra Adornetto

In societies reduced to blur and glut, terror is the only meaningful act. There's too much everything, more things and messages and meanings that we can use in ten thousand lifetimes. Inertia-hysteria. Is history possible? Is anyone serious? Who do we take serious? Only the lethal believer, the person who kills and dies for faith. Everything else is absorbed. The artist is absorbed, the madman in the street is absorbed an processed and incorporated. Give him a dollar, put him in a TV commercial. Only the terrorists stand outside. The culture hasn't figured out how to assimilate him. It's confusing when they kill the innocent. But this is precisely the language of being noticed, the only language the West understands. The way they determine how we see them. The way they dominate the rush of endless streaming images. — Don DeLillo

Cats can be a very affectionate type of animal, but it's an affection you have to win. Pretty much the way you earn the affection of your friends and your lovers and your wives and your girlfriends and anybody else that's meaningful in your life,' says Des philosophically. 'There's a period of time where you don't know your positioning, and you work for it. And then all of a sudden, the relationship is established and it's yours, it belongs to you, it's something tangible. You can feel it, you can touch it. — Denise Flaim

I think a lot of people assume from my music and stuff I'm constantly talking about deep and meaningful things, but then with my friends I'm just a class clown. — Ella Henderson

Allowing children to learn about what interests them is good, but helping them do it in a meaningful, rigorous way is better. Freedom and choice are good, but a life steeped in thinking, learning, and doing is better. It's not enough to say, "Go, do whatever you like." To help children become skilled thinkers and learners, to help them become people who make and do, we need a life centered around those experiences. We need to show them how to accomplish the things they want to do. We need to prepare them to make the life they want. — Lori McWilliam Pickert

I am a hunter. Not merely 'a person who hunts', but someone to whom this ancient, natural and honorable activity is an essential and deeply meaningful part of life. — David Petersen

I don't want to make any general statements, but I feel like so many stories that are presented as being about humanity and human emotion are just so convoluted and overly dramatic and focus on these certain little things that are supposedly meaningful, but just don't really mean anything. — Ellar Coltrane