Quotes & Sayings About Life With Its Meaning

Give me life, with its struggles and victories, with its failures and hatreds, with its deep moral meaning and its unknown goal! — E. M. Forster

So I had made a decision which carried with it things that I could not articulate at the time. I had made the choice instinctively, and only later had given it meaning. The trip had never been billed in my mind as an adventure in the sense of something to be proved. And it struck me then that the most difficult things has been the decision to act, the rest had been merely tenacity
and the fears were paper tigers. One really could do anything one had decided to do whether it were changing a job, moving to a new place, divorcing a husband or whatever,m one really cold act to change and control one's life;and the procedure, the process, was its own reward. — Robyn Davidson

Our religion, with its beliefs, rituals, and dogmas becomes another segment among all the other segments that constitute our linear and fragmented existence. It offers us another set of possible acquisitions, even more tempting than all the others: a meaning to life, immortality, enlightenment, the kingdom of heaven. — Stephen Batchelor

It is not a mechanical routine but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being. The music is never the same for me, never. Each day is something new, fantastic, unbelievable. That is Bach, like nature, a miracle! — Pablo Casals

Suffering is normal. Pain is normal, it is part of life ... What is its texture, the weight of our suffering? What is its meaning? Begin by touching it, by coming close to it, accepting it: Hello, suffering, I am here with you. I am beside you, one with you, I am you. I am suffering. — A.M. Homes

Consider a movie: it consists of thousands upon thousands of individual pictures, and each of them makes sense and carries a meaning, yet the meaning of the whole film cannot be seen before its last sequence is shown. However, we cannot understand the whole film without having first understood each of its components, each of the individual pictures. Isn't it the same with life? Doesn't the final meaning of life, too, reveal itself, it at all, only at its end, on the verge of death? — Viktor E. Frankl

The intoxication of frenzy and, ultimately, some suitable crime reveal
in a moment the whole meaning of a life. Without exactly advocating crime, the romantics insist on
paying homage to a basic system of privileges which they illustrate with the conventional images of the
outlaw, the criminal with the heart of gold, and the kind brigand. Their works are bathed in blood and
shrouded in mystery. The soul is delivered, at a minimum expenditure, of its most hideous desires
desires that a later generation will assuage in extermination camps. Of course these works are also a
challenge to the society of the times. But romanticism, at the source of its inspiration, is chiefly concerned
with defying moral and divine law. That is why its most original creation is not, primarily, the
revolutionary, but, logically enough, the dandy. — Albert Camus

She attended the French performance, but the play's content now had a connection to her life. She read a book and the book invariably had lines with sparks from her mind, the fire of her emotions flickered here and there, and words spoken the night before were written down, as if the author had overheard how her heart beat.
The forest held the same trees, but their sound had taken on special meaning; she had established a vibrant consonance with them. The birds did not simply twitter and chirp but were saying something to each other. Everything around her spoke and responded to her mood; a flower would blossom and she seemed to hear its breathing.
pp. 256-257 — Ivan Goncharov

Time held no meaning as my mind darted in and out of memories. Past and present collided to create a full-sensory collage out of my life: playing hide-n-seek with my best friends Luke - who always cheated by walking through walls when he was about to be caught - and Lucy; Mr. Caldrin critiquing my sketches and offering ideas to make them more realistic; targets changing faces, blending into the same person, their thoughts rippling through my mind like waves. Through it all, a demon stalked me from the shadows of my memories, never quite showing its face, but crouching, waiting.
And then I dreamed ... — Kimberly Kinrade

I have often told you that I am that little fish who swims about under a shark and, I believe, lives indelicately on its offal. Anyway, that is the way I am. Life moves over me in a vast black shadow and I swallow whatever it drops with relish, having learned in a very hard school that one cannot be both a parasite and enjoy self-nourishment without moving in worlds too fantastic for even my disordered imagination to people with meaning. — Zelda Fitzgerald

Ibn Rushd caressing her body had often praised its beauty to the point at which she grew irritated and said, You do not think my thoughts worth praising, then. He replied that the mind and body were one, the mind was the form of the human body, and as such was responsible for all the actions of the body, one of which was thought. To praise the body was to praise the mind that ruled it. Aristotle had said this and he agreed, and because of this it was hard for him, he whispered blasphemously in her ear, to believe that consciousness survived the body, for the mind was of the body and had no meaning without it. She did not want to argue with Aristotle and said nothing. Plato was different, he conceded. Plato thought the mind was trapped in the body like a bird and only when it could shed that cage would it soar and be free. — Salman Rushdie

Difficult as his task may be, so is writing an act that is perpetually longing in its attempt to cull the surreptitious meaning of life, which is always located experiences, beyond the obvious, possible, experience that is renewed with each new writing as if it were lived for the first time is the experience that drives today's human being to live a perpetual state of tension as he stands face to face with destruction, death, torture, and solitude. — Luay Hamza Abbas

Assamese life has more meaning than the violence, than its relationship with Delhi. Assam may not be sovereign politically, or economically, but the Assamese imagination has to remain sovereign. — Aruni Kashyap

And now a word from our sponsors. Or not now, but later. Much later. You won't know when it happens. It'll be just one of many words you'll encounter that day. But it will come leaden with unseen meaning and consequence, and it will slowly spread throughout your life, invisibly infecting every light moment with its heaviness. Our sponsors cannot be escaped. You will see their word. And you will never know. — Joseph Fink

Little world, full of scars and gashes, ripened with another's pain,
Your flowers feed on carrion
so do your birds;
Men feed on each other because you taught them life was cheap,
Flowing from your endless womb without pain or understanding.
No midwife caresses your flesh or bathes clean your progeny,
Life spurts from you, little world,
and you regard it with disdain.
Only bruised men sense your cruelty,
men whose life has lost its meaning. — James Kavanaugh

Remain true to the earth, my brethren, with the power of your virtue! Let your bestowing love and your knowledge be devoted to be the meaning of the earth! ... Let it not fly away from the earthly and beat against eternal walls with its wings ... Lead, like me, the flown-away virtue back to the earth - yes, back to body and life: that it may give to the earth its meaning, a human meaning! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Our purpose in mortality collectively, is to pioneer godliness; with each of our unique personalities and perspectives, we are searching out the pieces of the divine puzzle.
Possibly before this life is over, but certainly after, there will be a great collaboration, and we will all bring our pieces of the puzzle together that we have found. Each piece on its own is quite an odd spectacle, but together they are beautiful and amazing - the whole mystery of mortality and eternal life.
'What pieces are you holding? What good have you found? Bring it together and we will all rejoice. — Michael Brent Jones

What do I know about God and the purpose of life?
I know that this world exists.
That I am placed in it like my eye in its visual field.
That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning.
This meaning does not lie in it but outside of it.
That life is the world.
That my will penetrates the world.
That my will is good or evil.
Therefore that good and evil are somehow connected with the meaning of the world.The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God.
And connect with this the comparison of God to a father. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Opportunities do not come with their values stamped upon them ... To face every opportunity of life thoughtfully, and ask its meaning bravely and earnestly, is the only way to meet supreme opportunities when they come, whether open-faced or disguised. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

To fully enjoy life, to derive its greatest meaning and beauty, one needs to enter into it with not only the look of involvement and happiness, but the spirit of involvement as well. — Luci Swindoll

On the Bigotry of Culture:
: it presented us with culture, with thought as something justified in itself, that is, which requires no justification but is valid by it's own essence, whatever its concrete employment and content maybe. Human life was to put itself at the service of culture because only thus would it become charged with value. From which it would follow that human life, our pure existence was, in itself, a mean and worthless thing. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Science does not see beyond the atom interacting with atom, the chemicals interacting with chemicals. The scientist cannot see the impressive existence of himself. Academics will never learn the meaning of life because they don't feel it; they can only accept its existence as fact. "I think therefore I am." And yet, thought is a cloud reflecting the impressions of a consciousness. I am therefore I think. The academic mind does not appreciate life in the festive sense therefore - derailed to love by a numb perspective. Life is an unknown, death is a mystery; no, life is a mystery, death is the unknown - in the sense that I will un-know my self in death. Science ignores the ultimate question in pursuance of the distant things, the most superficial things. One must discover from the inside out to discover he is made of nothing, and in that supreme emptiness, he is connected directly to everything that he studies. — Matthew Holbert

It is in the giving up of self that human beings can find the most ecstatic and lasting, solid, durable joy of life. And it is death that provides life with all its meaning. This "secret" is the central wisdom of religion. The process of giving up the self (which is — M. Scott Peck

Wisdom is not just knowing fundamental truths, if these are unconnected with the guidance of life or with a perspective on its meaning. If the deep truths physicists describe about the origin and functioning of the universe have little practical import and do not change our picture of the meaning of the universe and our place within it, then knowing them would not count as wisdom. — Robert Nozick

Plants were bound for good or ill to their places. They expressed not only beauty but also the thoughts of God's world, with an intent of their own and without deviation. Trees in particular were mysterious and seemed to me direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life. For that reason, the woods were the places where I felt closest to its deepest meaning and to its awe-inspiring workings. — Carl Jung

As graduation loomed, I had a nagging sense that there was still far too much unresolved for me, that I wasn't done studying. I applied for a master's in English literature at Stanford and was accepted into the program. I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains, shielded in centimeter-thick skulls, into communion. A word meant something only between people, and life's meaning, its virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. It was the relational aspect of humans - i.e., "human relationality" - that undergirded meaning. Yet somehow, this process existed in brains and bodies, subject to their own physiologic imperatives, prone to breaking and failing. There must be a way, I thought, that the language of life as experienced - of passion, of hunger, of love - bore some relationship, however convoluted, to the language of neurons, digestive tracts, and heartbeats. At Stanford, I had the good — Paul Kalanithi

Self-reflection or autognosis reveals that what is given in consciousness is, first and foremost, integral connectedness and organic unity of all thinking, feeling, and desiring. At the same time, self-reflection reveals that this connected unity is the ultimate reality that can be reached. "Consciousness cannot go behind itself." Whatever we propose to think forms part of this organic unity of our mind and is a result or consequence of it. There is no means of jumping beyond consciousness, and any attempt to explain with the help of any other imaginary system the radical connectedness in which we live and that is our mind would be absurd. Our mind is the very presupposition of all explanation. For to explain a phenomenon means, in the last instance, to point out its place and its part within the living economy of consciousness, and to determine the "meaning" it has in the original source of all meaning: life. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Inner peace is more a question of cultivating perspective, meaning, and wisdom even as life touches you with its pain. — Rachel Naomi Remen

My intention was to grapple with the metaphysical meaning behind Scheherazade and present that meaning in its essence. Scheherazade is the symbol of the savior. She weaves tales not to save her own life, but to save humanity from its unending retributive response to injury. — Alonzo King

To invoke an analogy, consider a movie: it consists of thousands upon thousands of individual pictures, and each of them makes sense and carries a meaning, yet the meaning of the whole film cannot be seen before its last sequence is shown. However, we cannot understand the whole film without having first understood each of its components, each of the individual pictures. Isn't it the same with life? Doesn't the final meaning of life, too reveal itself, if at all, only at its end, on the verge of death? And doesn't this final meaning, too, depend on whether or not the potential meaning of each single situation has been actualized to the best of their respective individual's knowledge and belief? — Victor Frankl

The following evening John left with Lady Shorne for the south of France, without so much as a word to me."
Alexa felt as if she were hearing that fateful cliche for the first time. "Without so much as a word." No matter how much she tried to see it from every point of view, its meaning was always clear. John was a coward. Anne was his victim. The roles were the opposite of what she had supposed. It was Anne who had been heroic, not John. John was a coward, a mere puppet into whom both Anne and Alexa had managed to breathe a semblance of life. He was as much the creation of one as of the other. — Violet Trefusis

The insistent drums were an unwelcome reminder of the existence of another world, wholly autonomous, with its own necessities and patterns. The message they were beating out, over and over, was for her; it was saying, not precisely that she did not exist but rather that it did not matter whether she existed or not, that her presence was of no consequence to the rest of the cosmos. It was a sensation that suddenly paralyzed her with dread. There had never been any question of her "mattering"; it went without saying that she mattered, because she was important to herself. But what was the part of her to which she mattered? — Paul Bowles

What allows us, as human beings, to psychologically survive life on earth, with all of its pain, drama, and challenges, is a sense of purpose and meaning. — Barbara De Angelis

When there is a total understanding of need, the outward and the inner, then desire is not a torture. Then it has a quite different meaning, a significance far beyond the content of thought and it goes beyond feeling, with its emotions, myths and illusions. With the total understanding of need, not the mere quantity or the quality of it, desire then is a flame and not a torture. Without this flame life itself is lost. It is this flame that burns away the pettiness of its object, the frontiers, the fences that have been imposed upon it. Then call it by whatever name you will, love, death, beauty. Then it is there without an end. — Allan W. Anderson

It was all unknown to me then, as I sat on that white bench on the day I finished my hike. Everything except the fact that I didn't have to know. That is was enough to trust that what I'd done was true. To understand its meaning without yet being able to say precisely what it was, like all those lines from The Dream of a Common Language that had run through my nights and days. To believe that I didn't need to reach with my bare hands anymore. To know that seeing the fish beneath the surface of the water was enough. That it was everything. It was my life - like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me.
How wild it was, to let it be. — Cheryl Strayed

Action is the music of our life. Like music, it starts from a pause of leisure, a silence of activity which our initiative attacks; then it develops according to its inner logic, passes its climax, seeks its cadence, ends, and restores silence, leisure again. Action and leisure are thus interdependent; echoing and recalling each other, so that action enlivens leisure with its memories and anticipations, and leisure expands and raises action beyond its mere immediate self and gives it a permanent meaning. — Salvador De Madariaga

No imagination has yet been great enough to invent improvements to the truth. Truth, however terrible, carried within itself its own strange comfort for the misery it is so often compelled to inflict on behalf of life. Sooner or later it is not pretence but the truth which gives back with both hands what it has taken away with one. Indeed, unaided and alone it will pick up the fragments of the reality it has shattered and piece them together again in the shape of more immediate meaning than the one in which they had been previously contained. — Laurens Van Der Post

So, the word wild here is not used in its modern pejorative sense, meaning out of control, but in its original sense, which means to live a natural life, one in which the criatura, creature, has innate integrity and healthy boundaries. These words, wild and woman, cause women to remember who they are and what they are about. They create a metaphor to describe the force which funds all females. They personify a force that women cannot live without. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

We do not live in a world of dreams, but in an Universe which while relative, is real so far as our lives and actions are concerned. Our business in the Universe is not to deny its existence, but to LIVE, using the Laws to rise from lower to higher--living on, doing the best that we can under the circumstances arising each day, and living, so far as is possible, to our biggest ideas and ideals. The true Meaning of Life is not known to men on this plane .if, indeed, to any--but the highest authorities, and our own intuitions, teach us that we will make no mistake in living up to the best that is in us, so far as is possible, and realising the Universal tendency in the same direction in spite of apparent evidence to the contrary. We are all on The Path--and the road leads upward ever, with frequent resting places. — Three Initiates

Much has been said of the aesthetic values of chanoyu- the love of the subdued and austere- most commonly characterized by the term, wabi. Wabi originally suggested an atmosphere of desolation, both in the sense of solitariness and in the sense of the poverty of things. In the long history of various Japanese arts, the sense of wabi gradually came to take on a positive meaning to be recognized for its profound religious sense ... the related term, sabi, ... It was mid-winter, and the water's surface was covered with the withered leaves of the of the lotuses. Suddenly I realized that the flowers had not simply dried up, but that they embodied, in their decomposition, the fullness of life that would emerge again in their natural beauty. — Okakura Kakuzo

People always want something more than immediate joy or that deeper sense called happiness. This is one of the secrets by which we shape the fulfillment of our designs. The something more assumes amplified power with people who cannot give it a name or who (most often the case) do not even suspect its existence. Most people only react unconsciously to such hidden forces. Thus, we have only to call a calculated something more into existence, define it and give it shape, then people will follow. — Frank Herbert

Surely education has no meaning unless it helps you understand the vast experience of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys. You may earn degrees, you may have a series of letters after your name and land a good job, but then what? What is the point of it all if in the process your mind becomes dull, weary, stupid? — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Az men krigt zikh miten rov, muz men sholem zein miten shainker," Avi had said when he first put the rifle in Jacob's hands. The old Yiddish proverb could be roughly translated as, "If you're at odds with your rabbi, make peace with your bartender." His uncle offered no explanation, but as Jacob had chewed on its meaning, he had concluded that Avi meant something like, "Always be prepared" or "Have a plan B." The problem was, Jacob didn't want a plan B. He didn't want life to change. He wanted things to be the way they had always been. — Joel C. Rosenberg

The most important aspect of life is not the creation, but the creator in you and the process of creation. Once you realize the flow of cosmic energy inside, along with its source, you understand the creator of the universe, and its cosmic order. — Roshan Sharma

The only genres I saw value in, which still conferred meaning, were diaries and essays, the types of literature that did not deal with narrative, that were not about anything, but just consisted of a voice, the voice of your own personality, a life, a face, a gaze you could meet. What is a work of art if not the gaze of another person? Not directed above us, nor beneath us, but at the same height as our own gaze. Art cannot be experienced collectively, nothing can, art is something you are alone with. You meet its gaze alone. — Karl Ove Knausgard

And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow hung over him and a horrid Fate waited in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it - it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life. And now was one to believe that there was nowhere a god of hogs, to whom this hog personality was precious, to whom these hog squeals and agonies had a meaning? Who would take this hog into his arms and comfort him, reward him for his work well done, and show him the meaning of his sacrifice? — Upton Sinclair

Our culture, self-toxified by the poisonous by-products of technology and egocentric ideology, is the unhappy inheritor of the dominator attitude that alteration of consciousness by the use of plants or substances is somehow wrong, onanistic, and perversely antisocial. I will argue that suppression of shamanic gnosis, with its reliance and insistence on ecstatic dissolution of the ego, has robbed us of life's meaning and made us enemies of the planet, of ourselves, and our grandchildren. We are killing the planet in order to keep intact the wrongheaded assumptions of the ego-dominator cultural style. — Terence McKenna

This "I" was made in the image of God for fellowship with God. Without God it is miserable, empty, confused, and frustrated. Without God life has no meaning; but with God at its center there is life, an inner strength and peace, a deep satisfaction, an unfading joy known only to those who know Jesus Christ. — Billy Graham

But a map is not enough as a guide for action; we also need a goal that tells us where to go. Animals have no such problems. Their instincts provide them with a map as well as with goals. But lacking instinctive determination and having a brain that permits us to think of many directions in which we can go, we need an object of total devotion, a focal point for all our strivings and the basis for all our effective - not only our proclaimed - values. We need such an object of devotion in order to integrate our energies in one direction, to transcend our isolated existence, with all its doubts and insecurities, and to answer our need for a meaning of life. — Erich Fromm

For those who seek a lifestyle of meaning served by purpose than listen well. To live rightly is a grace from
God(dess) of the Most High. Albeit it is not meant to be an easy feat either in its pursuit. To live a life of well being one must find a balance that is appropriate to one's own purpose in life. Once found and understood correctly, then one can live by such a hallmark of fortitude. Otherwise one will wander far and wide in a haze of confusion not valuing themselves truly. Find your balance and it will lead you back to yourself and God(dess) awaiting you with open arms. Amen. — Ivan Alexander Pozo-Illas

There is more to life than work, and a life without ample space for family and friends is incomplete. But this much should not be controversial: Vocation - one's calling in life - plays a large role in defining the meaning of that life. For some, the nurturing of children is the vocation. For some, an avocation or a cause can become an all-absorbing source of satisfaction, with the job a means of paying the bills and nothing more. But for many others, vocation takes the form of the work one does for a living. Working hard, seeking to get ahead, and striving to excel at one's craft are not only quintessential features of traditional American culture but also some of its best features. Industriousness is a resource for living a fulfilling human life instead of a life that is merely entertaining. — Charles Murray

I don't claim to know an over-arching 'Meaning of Life,' but I do operate under the understanding that life should not be lived under the pretense that it is simply a test propagated by an invisible, intangible, Creator-God. And it should not be spent identifying with religious traditions and organized groups that, historically, have been at the root of a tremendous amount of oppression and violence. — David G. McAfee

It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history. Human life
and herein lies its secret
takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it; it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch. — Milan Kundera

She knew what bothered her at the store ... It was that the store intensified things that had always bothered her, as long as she could remember. It was the pointless actions, the meaningless chores that seemed to keep her from doing what she wanted to do, might have done-and here it was the complicated procedures with moneybags, coat checkings, and time clocks that kept people from even serving the store as efficiently as they might-the sense that everyone was incommunicado with everyone else and living on an entirely wrong plane, so that the meaning, the message, the love, or whatever it was that each life contained, never could find its expression. — Patricia Highsmith

All illness is meaningful, although its meaning may never be translatable into entirely rational terms. The point is not to understand the cause of the disease and then solve the problem, but to get close enough to the disease to restore the particular religious connection with life at which it hints. — Thomas Moore

Meaning was not a pitch but an interval. It sprang from the depth of disjunction, the distance between one circuit's center and the edge of another. Representation caught the sign napping, with its semantic pants down. Sense lay in metaphor's embarrassment at having two takes on the same thing. For the first time, I understand Emerson's saying about the use of life being to learn metonymy. Life *was* metonymy, or at least stood for it. — Richard Powers

WE HAVE COME here to learn about spirituality. I trust the genuine quality of this search but we must question its nature. The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality. Ego is constantly attempting to acquire and apply the teachings of spirituality for its own benefit. The teachings are treated as an external thing, external to "me," a philosophy which we try to imitate. We do not actually want to identify with or become the teachings. So if our teacher speaks of renunciation of ego, we attempt to mimic renunciation of ego. We go through the motions, make the appropriate gestures, but we really do not want to sacrifice any part of our way of life. We become skillful actors, and while playing deaf and dumb to the real meaning of the teachings, we find some comfort in pretending to follow the path. — Chogyam Trungpa

To survive as a human being is possible only through love. And, when Thanatos is ascendant, the instinct must be to reach out to those we love, to see in them all the divinity, pity, and pathos of the human. And to recognize love in the lives of others - even those with whom we are in conflict - love that is like our own. It does not mean we will avoid war or death. It does not mean that we as distinct individuals will survive. But love, in its mystery, has its own power. It alone gives us meaning that endures. I alone allows us to embrace and cherish life. Love as power both to resist in our nature what we know we we must resist, and to affirm what we know we must affirm. And love, as the poets remind us, is eternal. — Chris Hedges

Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art. — Freya Stark

I cannot define for you what God is. I can only say that my work has proved empirically that the pattern of God exists in every man and that this pattern has at its disposal the greatest of all his energies for transformation and transfiguration of his natural being. Not only the meaning of his life but his renewal and his institutions depend on his conscious relationship with this pattern of his collective unconscious. — Carl Jung

The difference between the "natural" individuation process, which runs its course unconsciously, and the one which is consciously realized, is tremendous. In the first case consciousness nowhere intervenes; the end remains as dark as the beginning. In the second case so much darkness comes to light that the personality is permeated with light, and consciousness necessarily gains in scope and insight. The encounter between conscious and unconscious has to ensure that the light which shines in the darkness is not only comprehended by the darkness, but comprehends it. The filius solis et lunae (the son of the Sun and Moon) is the possible result as well as the symbol of this union of opposites. It is the alpha and omega of the process, the mediator and intermedius. "It has a thousand names," say the alchemists, meaning that the source from which the individuation process rises and the goal toward which it aims is nameless, ineffable. — C. G. Jung

All he needed was a locked room, ink, and sheets of virgin paper. This was his anchor, and he embedded it with the few scraps of energy he had left. He instinctively knew that memory and imagination share the same ghost quarters of the brain, that they are like impressions in loose sand, footfalls in snow. Memory normally weighed more, but not here, where the forest washed it away, smoothing out every contour of its vital meaning. Here, he would use imagination to stamp out a lasting foundation that refused the insidious erosions buffeting around him. He would dream his way back to life with impossible facts. — B. Catling

He ran his knuckles over her cheek as their gazes met and held. So much. He had been given so much.
The sound of their daughters' high-pitched laughter drew their gazes away from each other nd toward their children. The girls came running toward them, breathless and excited. Their hair was messed in tousled disarray, their gowns were smeared with dirt, their skin was flushed and rosy. They leaped onto the blanket, tumbling over each other like exuberant puppies as they wrapped their chubby arms about his neck. "Papa, Papa, we want a new game!"
Morgan thought for a moment, overcome with a profound sense of gratitude.
Of all he had been given, perhaps the most significant gift was a deep reverence for life, with all its pain and all its glory. Every loss had meaning. And every day was a new
reason for celebration. — Victoria Lynne

A word meant something only between people, and life's meaning, its virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. It was the relational aspect of humans that undergirded meaning. — Paul Kalanithi

In this fallen world, and in their fallen lives, those who are alienated from God are a part of this age, which is now passing. It has no future and there are intimations of that in the depths of human consciousness where a tangle of contradictions lie, for we are made for meaning but find only emptiness, made as moral beings but are estranged from what is holy, made to understand but are thwarted in so many of our quests to know. These are the sure signs of a reality out of joint with itself. This is what, in fact, points to something else. These contradictions are unresolved in the absence of that age to come which is rooted in the triune God of whom Scripture speaks. He it is who not only sustains all of life, directing it all to its appointed end, but who also is the measure of what is enduringly true and right, and the fountain of all meaning, purpose, and hope. — John Piper

I don't know whether the universe, with its countless galaxies, stars and planets, has a deeper meaning or not, but at the very least, it is clear that we humans who live on this earth face the task of making a happy life for ourselves. Therefore, it is important to discover what will bring about the greatest degree of happiness. — Dalai Lama XIV

To capture the drama of the unconscious, one had to start with the key, and the key was the dream. But the novelist's task was to pursue this dream, to unravel its meaning; the goal was to reach the relation of dream to life; the suspense was in finding this which led to a deeper significance of our acts. — Anais Nin

The wistful term "transcendental homelessness" was coined by Georg Lukacs in
1916, in a little book called
The Theory of the Novel
. It refers to the longing of all souls
for the place in which they once belonged, and the "nostalgia ... for utopian perfection, a
nostalgia that feels itself and its desires to be the only true reality" (70). According to
Lukacs, everyone has a sense that he or she once belonged somewhere. However, this
place has been lost, and the purpose of human life is to once again find this place. The
search for this place of belonging, for the "home" that will once more fill life with
meaning, is the fundamental structure of the novel — Anonymous

I do not mean to say that I viewed those desires of mine that deviated from accepted standards as normal and orthodox; nor do I mean that I labored under the mistaken impression that my friends possessed the same desires. Surprisingly enough, I was so engrossed in tales of romance that I devoted all my elegant dreams to thoughts of love between man and maid, and to marriage, exactly as though I were a young girl who knew nothing of the world. I tossed my love for Omi onto the rubbish heap of neglected riddles, never once searching deeply for its meaning. Now when I write the word love, when I write affection, my meaning is totally different from my understanding of the words at that time. I never even dreamed that such desires as I had felt toward Omi might have a significant connection with the realities of my life. — Yukio Mishima

In German one of the terms for imagination is the compound word Einbildungskraft: literally, the "power ( Kraft)" of "forming ( Bildung)" into "one (Ein)." Here I want us to reflect about faith as a kind of imagination. Faith forms a way of seeing our everyday life in relation to holistic images of what we may call the ultimate environment. Human action always involves responses and initiatives. We shape our action ( our responses and initiatives) in accordance with what we see to be going on. We seek to fit our actions into, or oppose them to , larger patterns of action and meaning. Faith, in its binding us to centers of value and power and in its triadic joining of us into communities of shared trusts and loyalties, gives forms and content to our imaging of an ultimate environment. — James W. Fowler

Salvation in its true and full meaning is synonymous with exaltation or eternal life and consists in gaining an inheritance in the highest of the three heavens within the celestial kingdom. With few exceptions this is the salvation of which the scriptures speak. It is the salvation which the saints seek. (Mormon Doctrine, 2nd ed., Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966, p. 670.) — Bruce R. McConkie

A formal period in life where there isn't the worry of another person's dramas and insecurities can be of great advantage, especially when used for growing into the full and wholesome beings we intended to be when choosing to come to this material manifestation.
"Even after ending a long relationship or a marriage, it seems normal to have some alone-time to reflect, meditate, explore areas of interest, find meaning in one's suffering and try to placate the void felt in the heart before attempting to enter into new relationships, otherwise the same old mistakes will surely re-emerge.
"Once we're at the stage of life where we can stand our own silence, where we've made peace with our past, where we've accepted and grown from its lessons, and we would like to share our independence without becoming dependent on someone else for love and affection, then we can choose to commit to a two bodied intimate relationship. — Nityananda Das

The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. — Chris Hedges

This is the first time I have heard 'ethics' in the mouth of a man. You and I are the only men on this ship that know its meaning. At one time in my life, I dreamed that I might someday talk with men who used such language, that I might lift myself out of the place in life in which I had been born, and hold conversation and mingle with men who talked about just such things as ethics. — Jack London

There are those who say that spiritual enlightenment is achieved through the denial of oneself; you must deny yourself many things, go and live in a mountaintop, never mingle with other people, talk to the birds..but I say to you, why should you dismantle your home? Where is the meaning in removing the bricks from your walls one by one? What is the purpose in uprooting your floors? Is there any significance in only allowing yourself a tin roof and a muddy bed? Why deny your house its structure? A truly enlightened soul is strong enough, is bright enough to live and shine through, even in a beautiful house! There is no need to ransack the house in order to see an inner beauty etched against a distraught surrounding. A bright and beautiful soul can shine forth even from inside an equally beautiful surrounding. — C. JoyBell C.

Can you understand,' asked my father, 'the deep meaning of that weakness, that passion for colored tissue, for papier-mache, for distemper, for oakum and sawdust? This is,' he continued with a pained smile, 'the proof of our love for matter as such, for its fluffiness or porosity, for its unique mystical consistency. Demiurge, that great master and artist, made matter invisible, made it disappear under the surface of life. We, on the contrary, love its creaking, its resistance, its clumsiness. We like to see behind each gesture, behind each move, its inertia, its heavy effort, its bearlike awkwardness. — Bruno Schulz

I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains, shielded in centimeter-thick skulls, into communion. A word meant something only between people, and life's meaning, its virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. — Paul Kalanithi

Every human cell, with its thousands of protein chains, is more complex than a 747 or the largest cruise ship, in fact more complex than the two combined. All life on Earth, in its extravagant variety, offers itself for study, but though we probe to ever deeper layers of its structure, the meaning eludes us. — Dean Koontz

The blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. — Chaim Potok

The ruinous abdication by philosophy of its rightful domain is the consequence of the oblivion of philosophers to a great insight first beheld clearly by Socrates and re-affirmed by Kant as by no other philosopher. Science, concerned solely and exclusively with objective existents, cannot give answers to questions about meanings and values. Only ideas engendered by the mind and to be found nowhere but in the mind (Socrates), only the pure transcendental forms supplied by reason (Kant), can secure the ideals and values and put us in touch with the realities that constitute our moral and spiritual life. Twenty-four centuries after Socrates, two centuries after Kant, we badly need to re-learn the lesson. — D.R. Khashaba

The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Man's best efforts seem utterly fallible without appeal to something higher for justification, some conceptual support for the meaning of one's life from a transcendental dimension of some kind. As this belief has to absorb man's basic terror, it cannot be merely abstract but must be rooted in the emotions, in an inner feeling that one is secure in something stronger, larger, more important than one's own strength and life. It is as though one were to say: "My life pulse ebbs, I fade away into oblivion, but "God" (or "It) remains, even grows more glorious with and through my living sacrifice." At least, this feeling is belief at its most effective for the individual. — Ernest Becker

There are two distinct methods of interpreting the Quran. The first, tafsir, is primarily concerned with elucidating the literal meaning of the text, while the second, ta'wil, is more concerned with the hidden, esoteric meaning of the Quran. Tafsir answers questions of context and chronology, providing an easily understandable framework for Muslims to live a righteous life. Ta'wil delves into the concealed message of the text, which, because of its mystical nature, is comprehensible only to a select few. While both are considered equally valid approaches, the tension between tafsir and ta'wil is but one of the inevitable consequences of trying to interpret an eternal and uncreated scripture that is nevertheless firmly grounded in a specific historical context. For — Reza Aslan

Death is a terrifying experience... It threatens, with its corrosive power, our possibility of living a humane life. There are two kinds of experiences that can protect those---those able to turn to them---from the terror of the danger of death. One is the certainty of truth, the continuous awakening toward the understanding of the 'ineluctable need for truth,' without which a good life is not possible. The other is the resolute and profound illusion that life has meaning and that the meaning of life is found in performing good deeds. — Ricardo Piglia

Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?
I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.
It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here. — Chaim Potok

The search for truth is, as it always has been, the noblest expression of the human spirit. Man's insatiable desire for knowledge about himself, about his environment and the forces by which he is surrounded, gives life its meaning and purpose, and clothes it with final dignity ... And yet we know, deep in our hearts, that knowledge is not enough ... Unless we can anchor our knowledge to moral purposes, the ultimate result will be dust and ashes- dust and ashes that will bury the hopes and monuments of men beyond recovery. — Raymond B. Fosdick

It was long before I could believe that human learning had no clear answer to this question. For a long time it seemed to me, as I listened to the gravity and seriousness wherewith Science affirmed its positions on matters unconnected with the problem of life, that I must have misunderstood something. For a long time I was timid in the presence in learning, and I fancied that the insufficiency of the answers which I received was not its fault, but was owing to my own gross ignorance, but this thing was not a joke or a pastime with me, but the business of my life, and I was at last forced, willy-nilly, to the conclusion that these questions of mine were the only legitimate questions underlying all knowledge, and that it was not I that was in fault in putting them, but science in pretending to have an answer for them. — Leo Tolstoy

We begin life with the world presenting itself to us as it is. Someone - our parents, teachers, analysts - hypnotizes us to "see" the world and construe it in the "right" way. These others label the world, attach names and give voices to the beings and events in it, so that thereafter, we cannot read the world in any other language or hear it saying other things to us. The task is to break the hypnotic spell, so that we can become undeaf, unblind, and multilingual, thereby letting the world speak to us in new voices and write all its possible meaning in the new book of our existence. — Sidney M. Jourard

The term - 'Fairy-Tales' is so ironical in itself, when I sometimes sit to write love stories with a happy ending, it usually drags me into a dilemma whether, I should even begin with a love story at first place or not? Because honestly, I haven't seen many of them reaching climax, most of them just die out in the mid. Then comes the concept of fairy tales or what we say 'fiction', where nothing is impossible!
But over time, if I've realized something, it is that there's no such term called fiction when it comes to reality! Its harsh, in-your-face-sarcastic, ironical and highly irrational. You can't expect what's coming up next, and how it's going to blow you. In the real life, the entire meaning of fiction ceases to exist. Conclusively, we writers, deal with harsh reality and write lively fictions, this job in itself is so ironical but, that's life ... — Mehek Bassi

I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. — Chaim Potok

The literary experience extends impression into discourse. It flowers to thought with nouns, verbs, objects. It thinks. Film implodes discourse, it deliterates thought, it shrinks it to the compacted meaning of the preverbal impression or intuition or understanding. You receive what you see, you don't have to think it out ... Fiction goes everywhere, inside, outside, it stops, it goes, its action can be mental. Nor is it time-driven. Film is time-driven, it never ruminates, it shows the outside of life, it shows behavior. It tends to the simplest moral reasoning. Films out of Hollywood are linear. The narrative simplification of complex morally consequential reality is always the drift of a film inspired by a book. Novels can do anything in the dark horrors of consciousness. Films do close-ups, car drive-ups, places, chases and explosions. — E.L. Doctorow

People say hate is like a poison - but they're wrong. It's like a drug. You never forget your first hit, how it seduces you with its strength and power, and takes you completely by storm. It colors your world in light and meaning, until you wonder how you ever managed to get by without it. And then, eventually, you get to a point where you can't. It takes over your life, until hating becomes your reason for living. — Nenia Campbell

The purpose of life is to stay alive. Watch any animal in nature
all it tries to do is stay alive. It doesn't care about beliefs or philosophy. Whenever any animal's behavior puts it out of touch with the realities of its existence, it becomes exinct. — Michael Crichton

Barth observes that the seventh day does not come at the end of a week of toil and labor for human beings as though its primary purpose is to offer a measure of respite after days of toil. Rather, since "God's seventh day was man's first,"54 the seventh day sets life's priority for human beings in the most tangible way. Better yet - and much closer to the point - the seventh day brings to view God's priorities. Seeing that human time "begins with a day of rest and not a day of work,"55 the spiritual pursuit, living life in a relationship with the Creator that is mutually meaningful, stands out as the primary meaning in life. — Sigve K. Tonstad

In the recumbence of depression, your information-gathering system collates its intelligence and reports to you these facts: (1) there is nothing to do; (2) there is nowhere to go; (3) there is nothing to be; (4) there is no one to know. Without meaning-charged emotions keeping your brain on the straight and narrow, you would lose your balance and fall into an abyss of lucidity. And for a conscious being, lucidity is a cocktail without ingredients, a crystal clear concoction that will leave you hung over with reality. In perfect knowledge there is only perfect nothingness, which is perfectly painful if what you want is meaning in your life. — Thomas Ligotti

Or maybe memories are like karaoke - where you realize up on the stage, with all those lyrics scrawling across the screen's bottom, and with everybody clapping at you, that you didn't even know the lyrics to your all-time favourite song. Only afterwards, when someone else is up on stage humiliating themselves amid the clapping and laughing, do you realize that what you liked most about your favourite song was precisely your ignorance of its full meaning - and you read more into it than maybe existed in the first place. I think it's better not to know the lyrics to your life. — Douglas Coupland

People search for the meaning of life, but this is the easy question: we are born into a world that presents us with many millenia of collected knowledge and information, and all our predecessors ask of us is that we not waste our brief life ignoring the past only to rediscover or reinvent its lessons badly. — Erik Naggum

And when, after fifteen years of bingeing, barfing, starving, needles and tubes and terror and rage, and medical crises and personal failure and loss after loss - when, after all this, you are in your early twenties and staring down a vastly abbreviated life expectancy, and the eating disorder still takes up half your body, half your brain, with its invisible eroding force, when you have spent the majority of your life sick, when you do not yet know what it means to be 'well,' or 'normal,' when you doubt that those words even have meaning anymore, there are still no answers. You will die young, and you have no way to make sense of that fact.
You have this: You are thin. — Marya Hornbacher

We were fortunate his brief psychic vision distracted him from what his fingertips could have told him about my face.
Of course we were aware that temporary clairvoyance was a lame and unlikely explanation. The ordering of this world, however is so abstruce, so deep and complex, most explanations that people to make sense of moments of strange experience are inadequate. Our very existence as thinking creatures is an astonishment that cant be solved. Every human cell, with its thousands of protein chains, is more complex than a 747 or the largest cruise ship, in fact more complex than the two combined. All life on earth, in its extravagant variety, offers itself for study, but though we probe to ever deeper layers of its structure, the meaning eludes us.
There is no end of wonders and mysteries: fireflies and music boxes, the stars that outnumber all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the world. — Dean Koontz

When my play was with thee I never questioned who thou wert. I knew nor shyness nor fear, my life was boisterous.

In the early morning thou wouldst call me from my sleep like my own comrade and lead me running from glade to glade.

On those days I never cared to know the meaning of songs thou sangest to me. Only my voice took up the tunes, and my heart danced in their cadence.

Now, when the playtime is over, what is this sudden sight that is come upon me? The world with eyes bent upon thy feet stands in awe with all its silent stars. — Rabindranath Tagore