Eccentric Meaning Quotes

They tell me to be quiet
When I'd rather cause a riot
And have everyone screaming
Out their eccentric meaning. ~ Initially NO

We do not go to work only to earn an income, but to find meaning in our lives. What we do is a large part of what we are ~ Alan Ryan

The brain-disease model overlooks four fundamental truths: (1) our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another. Restoring relationships and community is central to restoring well-being; (2) language gives us the power to change ourselves and others by communicating our experiences, helping us to define what we know, and finding a common sense of meaning; (3) we have the ability to regulate our own physiology, including some of the so-called involuntary functions of the body and brain, through such basic activities as breathing, moving, and touching; and (4) we can change social conditions to create environments in which children and adults can feel safe and where they can thrive. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

If we do not save the environment, then whatever we do in civil rights will be of no meaning, because then we will have the equality of extinction. ~ James L. Farmer, Jr.

I came to realize that this was about more than not offering up what some of his opponents craved - the picture of the angry black man, or the lectures on race that fuel a sense of grievance among white voters. Obama also didn't want to offer up gauzy words to make well-meaning white people feel better. The fact that he was a black president wasn't going to bring life back to an unarmed black kid who was shot, or alter structural inequities in housing, education, and incarceration in our states and cities. It wasn't going to change the investment of powerful interests in a system that sought to deny voting rights, or to cast people on food stamps working minimum wage jobs as "takers," incapable of making it on their own. The "last person who ever thought that Barack Obama's election was going to bring racial reconciliation and some "end of race" in America was Barack Obama. That was a white person's concept imposed upon his campaign. I know because I was once one of them, taking delight in writing words about American progress, concluding in the applause line "And that is why I can stand before you as president of the United States." But he couldn't offer up absolution for America's racial sins, or transform American society in four or eight years. ~ Ben Rhodes

Essentially Satori is a sudden experience, and it is often described as a "turning over" of the mind, just as a pair of scales will suddenly turn over when a sufficient amount of material has been poured into one pan to overbalance the weight in the other. Hence it is an experience which generally occurs after a long and concentrated effort to discover the meaning of Zen. ~ Alan Watts

We could go to the extreme of giving away everything we have to feed, clothe, and house the poor, or we could sacrifice ourselves in the most heroic of ways, even our body or our life, but if we don't do those things out of a heart of pure love, they won't profit us in any way (1 Corinthians 13:3). Love is what gives meaning to all that we do. ~ Stormie O'martian

Yet this wasn't like sports, let alone sports movies. The roles weren't fixed, nor the meaning of the scaffolding. It didn't have to be this way. They might have, for instance, all felt stronger. They might have felt stronger and come together. They might have decided that, rather than now, as they'd been mistaken before: that if their enemies cheered the same damage as they, then they weren't their enemies after all. They might have concluded their interests were mutual, that some other force, earlier - some other enemy - had confused and divided them, and that all those who cheered were thus allies unmasked.
Instead they felt bitter, tricked by each other, last-strawed underdogs, suckers on the mend. Their enmity swelled and they fought even harder. ~ Adam Levin

Whether we understand work spiritually depends in large part on whether we understand the economy spiritually. If we view the economy materialistically, thinking that economics is just about numbers on spreadsheets and arcane policy issues, we'll tend to view work materialistically. On the other hand, if we have the vision to see that the economy is really a moral system, a vast web of human relationships where people exchange their work with one another, we'll tend to see the spiritual dignity and meaning of our work. That's why dramatic economic changes, like the ones we're all going through right now, make people especially likely to despiritualize their work. At such times, the older economic systems and institutions that had embodied the spirituality of work for earlier generations become obsolete. We lose the sense that our work is part of a greater social whole that has dignity and purpose. As a result, our own work loses its sense of dignity and purpose. ~ Greg Forster

I have a problem with writer/directors, personal. I can't work well with both of them on the set, if both of them are giving instructions. Writers tend to be in love with what they wrote. You can't always translate the words into the meaning, sometimes the meaning is better served without the words, difficult to make a writer to try to understand that. It gets, sometimes, tense. ~ Morgan Freeman

If we don't understand how metaphor works we will misunderstand most of what we read in the Bible. No matter how carefully we parse our Hebrew and Greek sentences, no matter how precisely we use our dictionaries and trace our etymologies, no matter how exactly we define the words on the page, if we do not appreciate the way a metaphor works we will never comprehend the meaning of the text. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it. ~ Frank Herbert

I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning. ~ Andy Warhol

You don't need to raise taxes on rich people, because they create capitalization and investment. But you need to tax speculation - meaning capital gains. ~ Carlos Slim

We've also evolved the ability to simply 'pay it forward': I help you, somebody else will help me. I remember hearing a parable when I was younger, about a father who lifts his young son onto his back to carry him across a flooding river. 'When I am older,' said the boy to his father, 'I will carry you across this river as you now do for me.' 'No, you won't,' said the father stoically. 'When you are older you will have your own concerns. All I expect is that one day you will carry your own son across this river as I no do for you.' Cultivating this attitude is an important part of Humanism
to realize that life without God can be much more than a series of strict tit-for-tat transactions where you pay me and I pay you back. Learning to pay it forward can add a tremendous sense of meaning and dignity to our lives. Simply put, it feels good to give to others, whether we get back or not. ~ Greg M. Epstein

If you call 'religious' a man who believes in what I call a Supermeaning, a meaning so comprehensive that you can no longer grasp it, get hold of it in rational intellectual terminology, then one should feel free to call me religious, really. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

I can't go as far as Barthes in killing off the author, but I'm with him on the importance of the reader. We are the ones, after all, who exist long after the author (the real, physical being) is in the grave, choosing to read the book, deciding if it still has meaning, deciding what it means for us, feeling sympathy or contempt or amusement for its people and their problems. Take just the opening paragraph. If, having read that, we decide the book isn't worth our time, then the book ceases to exist in any meaningful fashion. Someone else may cause it to live again another day in another reading, but for now, dead as Jacob Marley. Did you have any idea you held so much power? ~ Thomas C. Foster

The bills would keep on coming, no matter what else was happening in your life and that was good because it gave you a purpose. You worked so you could pay them. You rested on the weekends and generated more bills. Then you went back to work to pay for them. That was the reason for getting up tomorrow. That was the meaning of life. ~ Liane Moriarty

Literature has always been related to utopia, so when the utopia loses meaning, so does literature. What I was trying to do, and perhaps what all writers try to do-- what on earth do I know?-- was to combat fiction with fiction. What I ought to do was affirm what existed, affirm the state of things as they are, in other words, revel in the world outside instead of searching for a way out, for in that way I could undoubtedly have a better life, but I couldn't do it, I couldn't, something had congealed inside me, a conviction was rooted inside me, and although it was essentialist, that is, outmoded and, furthermore, romantic, I could not get past it, for the simple reason that it had not only been thought but also experienced, in these sudden states of clear-sightedness that everyone must know, where for a few seconds you catch sight of another world from the one you were in only a moment earlier, where the world seems to step forward and show itself for a brief glimpse before reverting and leaving everything as before... ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

I have underlined words and sentences in one of the Bibles that has always been my study Bible, but when I look at those words and sentences now, I can't remember why they were underlined. One day I was rereading a short story by Joanne Greenberg, and I came across a long passage that I had marked off, but as I looked at it, I couldn't remember why. Perhaps I had meant to ask her about it the next time we talked on the phone, but now I have no idea what it could be that I wanted to ask her. My Revised Standard version of the Bible is filled with markings, for I have gone through it word for word with study groups at least four times, and of course, I have used it on various occasions to begin speeches. I know that the underlined passages served some purpose, but here and there are verses that have no special meaning to me. It is almost as if a friend had secretly opened the book and made some markings just to tease me. What was the spirit trying to say to me then that I no longer need to hear? Or, what was I listening for then that I no longer care about? ~ Charles M. Schulz

At the most basic level, therefore, secure attachments in both childhood and adulthood are established by two individual's sharing a nonverbal focus on the energy flow (emotional states) and a verbal focus on the information-processing aspects (representational processes of memory and narrative) of mental life. The matter of the mind matters for secure attachments. ~ Daniel J. Siegel

...'All this suffering,' I said, 'and nothing but greed and violence to build on when the war is over.'
'Have another soda-mint,' said Charles.
I had one. Then I said, 'Why are we here? That's what I don't understand. Why be here at all when it all has to be so beastly?'
'I suppose we just came, like mould on cheese.'
'Then why do we want to be happy? Mould on cheese doesn't want to be happy.' ... ~ Joyce Dennys

What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful. ~ Dalai Lama

I think the novel is essentially a comic form (tragedy is for the theatre), not meaning by that full of jokes, but that it is about the absurd detail of human life, the way in which one cannot fully understand what is happening. Life is muddle and jumble and ends inconclusively, and when this is presented with great comic art the sorrows of human life can be truthfully conveyed; one is moved by the spectacle, and feels that something truthful has been told in a magic way. ~ Iris Murdoch

I understood it all. I understood Pablo. I understood Mozart, and somewhere behind me I heard his ghastly laughter. I knew that all the hundred thousand pieces of life's game were in my pocket. A glimpse of its meaning had stirred my reason and I was determined to begin the game afresh. I would sample its tortures once more and shudder again at its senselessness. I would traverse not once more, but often, the hell of my inner being. ~ Hermann Hesse

The truth is - people won't believe you, they won't care for you, they won't give you time or attention, but once you do something that is 'big' in their eyes, you will get it all. Then suddenly you become everyone's friend, everyone seems to have time for you. The people who ignored you earlier will tag you in their posts to gain publicity. And all of a sudden, you become the 'new' inspiration. But the ones who always support you will still call you by your pet name, tease you by those old names and will be there for you like before.

The 'key' to life is - knowing who is permanent and who is temporary. The people who are with you in your struggle, are the people who deserve to eat a slice of your success, and the people who are there right after your success, are the ones who should be kept at a distance, for those people would be the first ones to run away if you are in any problem.

This life is too short to be lived in any fake fame or publicity. Know your real friends, and know their worth, because if they're lost, the meaning of your life is lost... ~ Mehek Bassi

Even though I'm resting I'm accomplishing something by sewing that shirt that I've been meaning to sew for weeks. And it's relaxing. It's so very meditative and quiet and enjoyable. But at least I'm producing something. I'm being productive in some way. I have a very hard time being completely idle. ~ Evangeline Lilly

Rationalists believe Gandhari had only two sons, Duryodhana and Dusshasana, who are the only two of the hundred to play a significant role in the epic. They were probably twins, the 'two-year' pregnancy probably meaning 'twin' pregnancy. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik

I think it is the duty of all human beings, as intelligent and communicative beings, to learn all the ideas thought up before ours and use them as a means to think up new ones. ~ Jonathan Culver

Remember what it says in Matthew: And false prophets shall abound, and they shall deceive many'" "And from the multiplication of lawlessness, love shall grow cold in many," said Pelagia, continuing the apostolic citation. Dolinin started and gave the nun a strange look, as if he had just heard those words for the first time, or perhaps had never really thought about their meaning before. ~ Boris Akunin

Throughout the life cycle we consciously and unconsciously edit the events of our life, trying to give them meaning. ~ Joan Z. Borysenko

Your stay in the camp was merely an allegory, if you know that word. It was an allegory--speaking at the highest level--of how scandalously, how outrageously a meaning can take up residence in a system without becoming a term in it. ~ J.M. Coetzee

The spoken word and the written - there is an astonishing gulf between them. There is a way of turning sentences that completely reverses the meaning. ~ Agatha Christie

If education really educates, there will, in time, be more and more citizens who understand that relics of the old West add meaning and value to the new. Youth yet unborn will pole up the Missouri with Lewis and Clark, or climb the Sierras with James Capen Adams, and each generation in turn will ask: Where is the big white bear? It will be a sorry answer to say he went under while conservationists weren't looking. ~ Aldo Leopold

good-bad,right-wrong,once you tag things like that,you lose the ability to see the complete truth.... A murderer can also be a loving father. Don't tag things. Words are insufficient to describe the picture in totality. Try not to get trapped in the dictionary meaning of words. ~ Vijay Tendulkar

If truth in hearts that perish
Could move the powers on high,
I think the love I bear you
Should make you not to die.
Sure, sure, if steadfast meaning,
If single thought could save,
The world might end to-morrow,
You should not see the grave.
This long and sure-set liking,
This boundless will to please,
-Oh, you should live for ever
If there were help in these.
But now, since all is idle,
To this lost heart be kind,
Ere to a town you journey
Where friends are ill to find. ~ A.E. Housman

Dreams are not without meaning wherever thay may come from-from fantasy, from the elements, or from other inspiration. ~ Paracelsus

Mr. Langdon, all questions were once spiritual. Since the beginning of time, spirituality and religion have been called on to fill in the gaps that science did not understand. The rising and setting of the sun was once attributed to Helios and a flaming chariot. Earthquakes and tidal waves were the wrath of Poseidon. Science has now proven those gods to be false idols. Soon all Gods will be proven to be false idols. Science has now provided answers to almost every question man can ask. There are only a few questions left, and they are the esoteric ones. Where do we come from? What are we doing here? What is the meaning of life and the universe?" Langdon was amazed. "And these are questions CERN is trying to answer?" "Correction. These are questions we are answering." Langdon ~ Dan Brown

Lacan wrote about two levels of speaking, one in which we know what we are saying (even when struggling with something difficult or contradictory) and another in which we have no idea of what we are saying. In this second level of speaking there are repeating words, phrases, and even sounds that function as magnets of unconscious meaning, condensing multiple scenes, times, and ideas. He called such markers in speech 'signifiers. ~ Annie Rogers

We are all here to take care of one another. We all know this. Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. It's better to give than to receive. These phrases are so timeworn they almost lose meaning. And yet they are well used for a reason: They are the cornerstones of life. ~ Kirsten Gillibrand

She smiled and understood my meaning without it needing to be said. She leaned in close and murmured in my ear, 'The world is ending, as it always must. But the end of the world is getting faster. ~ Claire North

To build a life you love, do what you love every single day. Make the time for what matters most to you for a more meaningful life. ~ Akiroq Brost

Happiness! There is no word with more meanings, each person understands it in his own way. ~ Fernan Caballero

How many of those who are insecure seek power over others as a compensation for inadequacy and wind up bringing consequences down upon their heads and those around them? How many hide out in their lives, resist the summons to show up, or live fugitive lives, jealous, projecting onto others, and then wonder why nothing ever really feels quite right. How many proffer compliance with the other, buying peace at the price of soul, and wind up with neither? ~ James Hollis

Not only does my world revolve around her, but she is my world. She's not just my reason for breathing, she's air itself. She's the meaning behind every one of my thoughts, every thrum of my pulse, every whisper of my conscience. She's my entire everything. It's as simple and as complex as that. ~ Laurelin Paige

I don't know how to fit you in my world without hurting you too." The truth in my words revealed more than he'd ever know.
"Don't worry about hurting me," he replied calmly. "I like being a part of your world, and I understand that it's more complicated than you're willing to share with me. But I'll respect that, for now."
He pulled into the parking lot of a drugstore and put the car in park. Evan seemed nervous as he turned to speak to ne. He released a quick breath before he spoke. My chest tightened, afraid to hear what he had to say."
"I don't do this." His hands gestured between us. My eyes narrowed, trying to inerpret his meaning. He exhaled and looked out the windshield. "I don't stay, and I'm used to that. And I'm always prepared to leave-because I have to eventually.
He stopped again, frustrated with himself. I sat motionless, absolutely convinced I didn't want him to continue - but I couldn't bring myself to ask him to stop.
"I want to stay here," he finally decalred. "It would bother me if I left. I mean, I've already unpacked. ~ Rebecca Donovan

Ever since, New York has existed for me simultaneously as a map to be learned and a place to aspire too
a city of things and a city of signs, the place I actually am and the place I would like to be even when I am here. As a kid, I grasped that the skyline was a sign that could be, so to speak, relocated to New Jersey
a kind of abstract, receding Vision whose meaning would always be "out of reach," not a concrete thing signifying "here you are." Even when we are established here, New York still seems a place we aspire to. Its life is one thing
streets and hot dogs and brusqueness
and its symbols, the lights across the way, the beckoning skyline, are another. We go on being inspired even when we're most exasperated. ~ Adam Gopnik