Meaningful Things Quotes

the only things that really matter in this world are the relationships you have with the people you love, and the meaningful things that you do. Haters don't fit anywhere into that. Don't devote any mental space to them. ~ James Altucher

One of the most meaningful things that's happened to me since I've been the governor - the president - governor - president. Oops. Ex-governor. I went to Bethesda Naval Hospital to give a fellow a Purple Heart, and at the same moment I watched him-get a Purple Heart for action in Iraq - and at that same - right after I gave him the Purple Heart, he was sworn in as a citizen of the United States - a Mexican citizen, now a United States citizen. ~ George W. Bush

I think parents today are looking for meaningful things for their kid. It's about feeding them something with meaning. ~ Ziggy Marley

Dr. Finch clenched his hands and tucked them under his chin. "Human birth is most unpleasant. It's messy, it's extremely painful, sometimes it's a risky thing. It is always bloody. So is it with civilization. The South's in its last agonizing birth pain. It's bringing forth something new and I'm not sure I like it, but I won't be here to see it. You will. Men like me and my brother are obsolete and we've got to go, but it's a pity we'll carry with us the meaningful things of this society - there were some good things in it." "Stop woolgathering and answer me!" Dr. Finch stood up, leaned on the table, and looked at her. The lines from his nose sprang to his mouth and made a harsh trapezoid. His eyes blazed, but his voice was still quiet: "Jean Louise, when a man's looking down the double barrel of a shotgun, he picks up the first weapon he can find to defend himself, be it a stone or a stick of stovewood or a citizens' council. ~ Harper Lee

When you see people doing meaningless things, you must remind yourself that it is easier for people to do meaningless things than doing meaningful things! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

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

By seeing what triggers procrastination, and then making a plan to flip those triggers, doing your taxes becomes attractive. If I found myself putting off doing my taxes, I might sit down and make a plan to changes those triggers. For example, if the trigger is:
• Boring: I go to my favorite café for an afternoon on Saturday to do my taxes over a fancy drink while doing some people watching.
• Frustrating: I bring a book to the same café, and set a timer on my phone to limit myself to working on my taxes for thirty minutes - and only work for longer if I'm on a roll and feel like going on.
• Difficult: I research the tax process to see what steps I need to follow, and what paperwork I need to gather. And I visit the café during my Biological Prime Time, when I'll naturally have more energy.
• Unstructured or Ambiguous: I make a detailed plan from my research that has the very next steps I need to take to do them.
• Lacking in Personal Meaning: If I expect to get a refund, think about how much money I will get back, and make a list of the meaningful things I'll spend that money on.
• Lacking in Intrinsic Rewards: For every fifteen minutes I spend on my taxes, I set aside $2.50 to treat myself or reward myself in some meaningful way for reaching milestones. ~ Chris Bailey

I held on to stuff I didn't need or use because I wanted to hold on to that part of my identity, or my perceived identity. I am writer, a knitter, a doodler, a skier, a hiker, and more. Cool belongings, like fancy skis, seem to represent my personality. But in truth, I hardly ski anymore, so why keep skis? If I accumulate stuff just to prove who I am, or was, it prevents me from doing meaningful things with my life right now, like focusing on health, happiness, and my relationships. ~ Tammy Strobel

What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through the sale of some astonishingly small and only distantly meaningful things, a civilisation torn and unable sensibly to adjudicate between the worthwhile ends to which money might be put and the often morally trivial and destructive mechanisms of its generation. ~ Alain De Botton

One of the most meaningful things we can do as parents is teach our children the power of prayer, not just the routine of prayer. ~ Tad R. Callister

But what if you discover that the price of purpose is to render invisible so many other things? ~ Jeff VanderMeer

In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight
a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be. ~ Cornelius Plantinga

I want to be around people who dream and support and do things. ~ Amy Poehler

If we walk steadily and faithfully ... God will lift us up to greater things. ~ Francis De Sales

There's a bad time coming, boys, there's a bad time coming! If things go on as they are, there's nothing lies in the future but death and destruction, for these industrial masses. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely. ~ Neil Peart

If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed. ~ William James

Our trip to Moscow opens new prospects for peace in the Middle East. Our people want simple things: to be free and to have sovereignty. All this is impossible without an end to the occupation. ~ Khaled Mashal

The idea that we could have avoided many of life's difficulties if we had taken things more cautiously is too foolish to be entertained for a moment. As I look back on your past I am so convinced that what has happened hitherto has been right, that I feel that what is happening now is right too. To renounce a full life and its real joys in order to avoid pain is neither Christian nor human. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It is never possible to understand completely any other human being; and no individual will ever really understand himself - the complexity is too great and there is not the time to constantly take things apart and examine them. ~ Edward T. Hall

Each person is ignited by different things based on their personal calling and gifting. Pastoral people are more community minded. Administrative or managerial people are more corporation minded. Visionary leaders and pioneers are more cause minded. Together, let's seek to enhance our sense of community, excel in our corporation and run passionately towards the cause given to us by Jesus Christ. ~ Mark Conner

The same talk, the same thoughts, and always about the same things! And they are all satisfied and confident that it should be so, and will go on living like that till they die. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Of all existing things some are in our power, and others are not in our power. ~ Marcus Aurelius

The Church alone, being the Bride of Christ and having all things in common with her Divine Spouse, is the depository of the truth. ~ Pope Pius X

How many of us have read history, and shook our heads and puffed our chest, and said, "If I were alive during that period, I would never have done those things to those people!" Yet here we are, doing those things to those people. ~ Brian Huskie

The answer came to me before I'd even finished asking myself the question. I couldn't be Mason's girlfriend because when I imagined someone holding me and whispering dirty things in my ear, he had a Russian accent. ~ Richelle Mead

That you don't know for sure it is a mistake. A lot of things are means to some other end. You have to know an awful lot before you can judge other people's actions with real understanding. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Trust = telling someone about the things that make you sleepless. ~ Hillary Frank

Readers have no doubt noticed how seldom builders live in houses of their own construction. You will find a town or village expanding in all directions with their masterpieces of modernity in the way of houses and bungalows; but the builder himself you will usually find living nearer the heart of things, snugly and comfortably housed in some more substantial, if less convenient, building of less recent date. ~ Flora Thompson

I think it's really important, when you're redefining a character [ Spider-Man], for the audience to experience things that they haven't experienced, from the ground up. I wanted to build a character. I feel like point of view is a really crucial thing in the story, and that you need to build up the emotional building blocks, so that you can experience all the other emotions in a very specific way, rather than just experiencing it in an intellectual way. ~ Marc Webb

The things that led me to run for office - trying to figure out how we create an economy where everybody's got a fair shot and if you work hard, you can achieve your dreams. ~ Barack Obama

In the past, Rentaro had been taught that humans possessed both high intelligence and virtue and were true social animals, that they were the beings closest to God. Then why did they kill each other like beasts? How could they destroy each other's hopes and dreams? Why in the world could they machinate such stupid things? Damn ~ Shiden Kanzaki

He loved October. Had always loved it. There was something sad and beautiful about it - the ending and beginning of things. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

...Learn to concentrate, to give all your attention to the thing at hand, and then to be able to put it aside and go on to the next thing without confusion.
My husband said that being President of the United States meant that you saw more kinds of people, took up more subjects, and learn more about a variety of things than anyone else. But it required complete concentration on the person you were with and on what he was saying. When that person left the room, you pulled down a shade in your mind, and you were ready, with your attention free, for what the next person had to say. You might have to shift from banking to forestry, but each subject had the attention and concentration it required and each, in turn, was put in the back of the mind, ready to be called upon when needed. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Holy shit.
I've just been having one of the best days in my life. If not the best.
I have a feeling of peace inside of me as I write this...

I was just talking to a friend of mine about the fact that I find it hard to enjoy good moments sometimes, because of a fear that it may be taken away at any moment. And the truth is it can. This is not just anxiety, it is what's accurate. One of the most important things then is to know that I'm good with everyone I want to be good with, come what may. That the people I love know that I love them. And at this point in my life, I feel that is the case. I have no regrets. From that place, it's easier to enjoy what's going on. I'm not holding onto anything or anyone for dear life... I can't. Life just kinda makes that impossible...

The other most important thing is this: acknowledging those moments that are worth noting and remembering, like today. My life is not perfect by any means--there is plenty that I could be fretting about at any given moment... In fact, part of my life is a shit-storm at the moment..! But today I chose not to concentrate on that. I was present, I was here, I was happy. And I would like to add to that: I Am here. And I am happy. Despite everything. ~ Janita

Wit invents; inspiration reveals. The inventions of wit are conceits - metaphors and paradoxes - that discover the secret correspondences that unite beings and things among and with themselves; inspiration is condemned to dissipate its revelations - unless a form can be found to contain them. ~ Octavio Paz

My father is dead!" As soon as he'd said it, Fiskadoro saw he'd made it true again--again for the first time. Did it just go around and around? He began to see that his sorrow wasn't simple. It wasn't one thing, but a thousand things carrying him away to the Ocean: the work of a person's life was to drink it. ~ Denis Johnson

The thing about new things is you feel new when you buy them, you feel as though you are somebody different because you own something different. We are our possessions, you know. There are people who get addicted to buying new stuff. Things. Piles and piles of things. But the new things become old things so quickly. We need new things to replace the old things. ~ Donald Miller

What the Ancient Liar did to Eve at the beginning of things he did to me. The Mother of All was a mighty woman. She thought to outface the Serpent. She thought to brazen it though as she were herself equal to evil. ~ Walter Wangerin Jr.

I only can write a book every two years, you know. And I write very fast, but I'm not always writing every day. I needed a contact with different things, like nature, for example. I cannot be in front of a computer trying to tell a story. ~ Paulo Coelho

Two things specially avail unto improvement in holiness, namely firmness to withdraw ourselves from the sin to which by nature we are most inclined, and earnest zeal for that good in which we are most lacking. ~ Thomas A Kempis

Entropy is just a fancy way of saying: things fall apart. ~ Dan Brown

I'd lived for her smile and I would've done anything to make her laugh. It always made me feel like I'd accomplished something when that dimple appeared in her cheek. Things were different now, but that didn't mean that I couldn't help her out this once. ~ Komal Kant

A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at. ~ David Sedaris

At the devil's booth are all things sold. Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold. ~ James Russell Lowell

Things happen. Things that you think you'll never get over. But you do. You move on. It gets better with time. You forget. Forgive. Whatever. Life goes on and you go on with it. ~ Sophie Jordan

Here, however, you made art because it was the only thing you've ever been good at, the only thing, really, you thought about between shorter bursts of thinking about the things everyone thought about: sex and food and sleep and friends and money and fame. But somewhere inside you, whether you were making out with someone in a bar or having dinner with your friends, was always your canvas, its shapes and possibilities floating embryonically behind your pupils. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

Winning that first game was so important; my mother always said that the first game of the second set was the chance to keep it going if you were ahead or change things if you were behind. ~ Tracy Austin

I used to watch the world as if it was a performance and I would realize that certain things that people did moved me, and certain things didn't move me, and I tried to analyze, even at that age, six and seven and eight, why I was moved by certain things they did. ~ Alan Arkin

Things you Do to live a Happy life, shouldn't ruin others'. ~ Mohith Agadi

Think of some things you've wanted to do for ages and have never given yourself time or permission to do them. The Voice knows what they are and has probably suggested them many times. You've always said inside, 'Oh, I couldn't. Costs too much. I've got too much work. I'm too tired. I can't be away from x that long. Should clean out the garage instead.' It's time to stop cleaning and start living. ~ Noelle Sterne