Really Meaningful Quotes

Every form of communication is for the purpose of feeling, experiencing, sharing. Everyone has their own intense journey through life, and you don't want to do it all alone. It's really meaningful to be able to share with people. Whether it's your political beliefs, or what goes on for you emotionally, or keeping track of history. ~ Mirah

Well, you know, when you're putting together a show, you've got to be careful not to load it up with the new stuff. We have to play the songs that people want to hear, too. People may come thinking, "Oh, I've just got to hear this song." Or maybe they'll write me a letter saying a certain song is really meaningful to them, so we'll be sure to play those songs. ~ Margo Timmins

I do think that Social Security reform needs to be bipartisan, and we are going to have to reach that in this debate at some time before we can find really meaningful reform. ~ Judy Biggert

It is what is painted between the outlines that makes the difference between merely competent painting and really meaningful art. ~ Philip Pearlstein

And Castle nodded sagely. 'So this is a picture of the meaninglessness of it all! I couldn't agree more.'
'Do you really agree?' I asked. 'A minute ago you said something about Jesus.'
'Who?' said Castle.
'Jesus Christ?'
'Oh,' said Castle. 'Him.' He shrugged. 'People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.'
'I see.' I knew I wasn't going to have an easy time writing a popular article about him. I was going to have to concentrate on his saintly deeds and ignore entirely the satanic things he thought and said. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Throughout our lives friends enclose us like pairs of parentheses. They shift our boundaries; crater our terrain. They fume through the cracks of our tentative houses and parts of them always remain. Friendship asks the truth and wants the truth, hollows and fills, ages with us, and we through it. It cradles us like family. It is ecology and mystery and language - all three. Our grown-up friendships - especially the really meaningful ones- model for our children what we want them to have throughout their lives. ~ Beth Kephart

Feeling inspired, being challenged. Learning something new, something meaningful. Knowing change is possible and I can make that happen. Understanding and loving others, feeling truly connected and authentic. Good food, great sex, and belly laughs. All the basic foundations of happiness, really! ~ Jaime Murray

After you run, there's a sense of accomplishment; you feel like your life is meaningful. It's a moment of clarity. ~ Sakyong Mipham

And we're losing something of great value, a way of thinking and moving through time that can be summed up in a single word: depth. Depth of thought and feeling, depth in our relationships, our work and everything we do. Since depth is what makes life fulfilling and meaningful, it's astounding that we're allowing this to happen. ~ William Powers

What the hell is social justice? What sort of fool can imagine income equality as dictated by bureaucrats and government thugs? I dare anyone to attempt to explain those drug-inspired fantasies in meaningful terms. ~ Ted Nugent

It is a logical absurdity to equate democracy with freedom in the way that mainstream political philosophers and commentators typically do. A system where individuals and minorities are at the mercy of unconstrained majorities hardly constitutes freedom in any meaningful sense. ~ Keith Preston

This had been part of her training, part of her career, part of herself: whatever was going on, live like a normal person. Do normal things, see normal people. Don't give anyone a reason to question you, investigate you. Don't give them any meaningful answers to prying questions that might be asked after you've disappeared. Don't create any suspicion that you were not who you claimed to be. ~ Chris Pavone

Science fiction and fantasy are very closely related genres, and a lot of people say that the genres are so close that there's actually no meaningful distinction to be made between the two. But I think that there does exist an useful distinction to be made between magic and science. One way to look at it is in terms of whether a given phenomenon can be mass-produced. ~ Ted Chiang

I don't think we yet know - because it's probably not big enough - what exactly Amazon does to our cities, but whatever it is, I don't anticipate retail wastelands. If anything, it's maybe a wake-up call to retailers that they just have to offer something meaningful to customers. ~ Brad Stone

I have now been an officer in this Church for a very long time. I am an old man who cannot deny the calendar. I have lived long enough and served in enough different capacities to have removed from my mind, if such were necessary, any doubt of the divinity of this, the work of God. We respect those of other churches. We desire their friendship and hope to render meaningful service with them. We know they all do good, but we unabashedly state - and this frequently brings criticism upon us - that this is the true and living Church of our Father in Heaven and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

You will have significant experiences. I hope that you will write them down and keep record of them, that you will read them from time to time and refresh your memory of those meaningful and significant things. Some may be funny. Some may be significant only to you. Some of them may be sacred and quietly beautiful. Some may build one upon another until they represent a lifetime of special experiences. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

Life is rich, always changing, always challenging, and we architects have the task of transmitting into wood, concrete, glass and steel, of transforming human aspirations into habitable and meaningful space. ~ Arthur Erickson

To me, there's a difference between going to a concert and getting a recording. It's almost like a different release. The physical album itself is the more meaningful one for me, but I don't want to tell people how to listen to music. ~ Tristan Perich

The other wives and I talked together one night about the possibility of becoming widows. What would we do? God gave us peace of heart, and confidence that whatever might happen, His Word would hold. We knew that 'when He Putteth forth His sheep, He goeth before them.' God's leading was unmistakable up to this point. Each of us knew when we married our husbands that there would never be any question about who came first -- God and His work held held first place in each life. It was the condition of true discipleship; it became devastatingly meaningful now.

It was a time for soul-searching, a time for counting the possible cost. Was it the thrill of adventure that drew our husbands on? No. Their letters and journals make it abundantly clear that these men did not go out as some men go out to shoot a lion or climb a mountain. Their compulsion was from a different source. Each had made a personal transaction with God, recognising that he belonged to God, first of all by creation, and secondly by redemption through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ. This double claim on his life settled once and for all the question of allegiance. It was not a matter of striving to follow the example of a great Teacher. To conform to the perfect life of Jesus was impossible for a human being. To these men, Jesus Christ was God, and had actually taken upon Himself human form, in order that He might die, and, by His death, provide not only escape from the punishment which their sin meri ~ Elisabeth Elliot

Inspiration is the greatest gift because it opens your life to many new possibilities. Each day becomes more meaningful, and your life is enhanced when your actions are guided by what inspires you. ~ Bernie Siegel

Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

I hate small talk. It is small. Small is for teacups and occasionally for tiny houses. Too much small talk is how a country is given to sociopaths who thrive on shallow chatter to distract their emotional sleight of hand. Talk should be meaningful or kept to a minimum. ~ Tressie McMillan Cottom

At a theoretical level, I think a naturalist approach to religion is just asking questions I'm not interested in. They're perfectly legitimate in their own terms, but they don't address the actual experience of how one or other aspect of religion becomes existentially meaningful to us in our actual lives. The fact that we ourselves are the subject of investigation makes all the difference. ~ George Pattison

Do silly things. Foolishness is a great deal more vital and healthy than our straining and striving after a meaningful life. ~ Anton Chekhov

To make your goals savvy, keep them both personal (meaningful to you and aligned with your values) and positive (so you feel good about what you're trying to accomplish. ~ Beverly K. Bachel

Maybe it's all utterly meaningless. Maybe it's all unutterably meaningful. If you want to know which, pay attention to what it means to be truly human in a world that half the time we're in love with and half the time scares the hell out of us. Any fiction that helps us pay attention to that is religious fiction. The unexpected sound of your name on somebody's lips. The good dream. The strange coincidence. The moment that brings tears to your eyes. The person who brings life to your life. Even the smallest events hold the greatest clues. ~ Frederick Buechner

It's hard to imagine you working as a waitress in some college-town bar, Aunt Cora. Were you wearing Coot's overalls back then?"
The older woman put a hand to her hip. "I'll have you know I was once considered quite a babe."
While the others were grinning, Cal rushed to her defense. "Still are to me, Cora."
Then,realizing what he'd just said, his face reddened.
His discomfort wasn't lost on the others.
Amy and Marilee exchanged meaningful looks, while Jesse,Wyatt, and Zane jumped at the chance to start teasing him.
"Careful,Cal." Jesse winked at his cousins. "Next thing you know,Aunt Cora will invite you to her studio to pose for a portrait."
Wyatt chuckled. "Just remember to keep your boots on,Cal. ~ R.C. Ryan

Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while, so that we can see Life with a clearer view again. ~ Alex Tan

I do think the idea of living your life to the fullest is a little flawed. Like, why is jumping out of an airplane inherently better than reading a book?
Or why is living a life that looks good on instagram inherently more meaningful than a life lived quietly?
I just don't buy it. ~ John Green

After the most basic physical requirements are satisfied, human happiness is almost independent of wealth. A meaningful job is far more important. ~ Graeme Simsion

The work of PME-ART is highly collaborative and is also very much about collaboration, about people working together, trying to negotiate what is meaningful to them, where and how they disagree, and how such agreements and disagreements might be evocatively conveyed. Collaboration is definitely not easy. As a teenager in Toronto I would see many one-person shows and think the reason there is only one person onstage has little to do with art and much to do with economics. I would see many shows where the people onstage felt like employees primarily doing what they had been told. Instead I wanted to see people onstage doing what they wanted to do, and felt that this wanting should include active, alive ways of working together.

However, looking back over the past twenty years, I also have to admit that I'm not completely sure collaboration is the place for me. It seems I am temperamentally ill-suited for it. Twenty years of doing something I'm ill-suited for and justifying it to myself through compelling artistic results. (This book is in many ways the story of this struggle.) Because though collaboration has never felt good, I still believe in it. Perhaps I believe in it even more because I find it so difficult. Perhaps I believe in it too much. We are all here on this planet, in our various societies and communities, and like it or not we must find ways to work together. The fact that it is often not easy makes it all that much more necessary.

I sometime ~ Jacob Wren

The very foundation of private property and free contracting wears away in a nation in which its most vital, most concrete, most meaningful types of private property and free contracting disappear from the moral horizon of the people. ~ Joseph A. Schumpeter

You probably thinking they you've seen someone like me before. But I'm a G and they don't make em like me anymore. ~ Wiz Khalifa

[When we feel there's a void within us which we have to fill, many of us try to fill it by consuming more stuff: more things to read, more knowledge to consume, more youtube videos to see, more social media posts to look at, more stuff to experience, more stuff to buy.]

For most of us, however, the void has nothing to do with a need to consume more; in fact, the opposite is true: when we consume too much, we experience stress, anxiety, and depression, effectively deepening the void. [...]

We must realize the real void is on the other side of the equation: the void most of us feel is a creative void - we're so caught up in our consumeristic mindset we forget our inherent need to create.

The solution, then, is to create more and consume less. [...]

So let's each select one meaningful thing we'd like to create - one thing that will add value to the world - and let's create it: let's fill the real void together. ~ Joshua Fields Millburn

The Bible has a very meaningful expression: The Spirit makes all things new. We are those who grow old, and we want everything done to our aged standards. The Spirit is never old; the Spirit is always young. ~ Oscar Romero

If there's no magic of cinema, you only have the plain imagery of television. We are moving more and more towards a world devoid of meaningful experiences. We're going to the surface. ~ Laszlo Nemes

In order for us to awaken and "to begin to understand the gorgeous fever that is consciousness, we must try to understand the senses," Ackerman urges. "The senses don't just make sense of life in bold or subtle acts of clarity, they tear reality apart into vibrant morsels and reassemble them into a meaningful pattern. ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit. ~ Igor Stravinsky

To the North of my soul.
To the South of my existence. ~ Talismanist Giebra

Life Is an Ambiguous Stimulus

In a very real sense, life is an ambiguous stimulus. Does survival of a heart attack indicate that death is imminent or that one has been given a new lease on life? Is falling in love an assurance of a lifelong partnership or the first sign of an inevitable heartbreak? Many human situations are complex and their meanings subtle. Thus, to make sense of and gain agency over our experiences, we engage in the process of self-reflection.
Through self-reflection, people come to realize that their lives are filled with uncertainty about their own identities, their relationships with others, and their environmental circumstances. Because living involves adaptation to irregular changes and perturbations from the environment, the process of self-reflection reveals the indefinite nature of life. The uncertainty stemming from threatening stimuli whose nature is unknown or unpredictable evokes stress and a sense of loss of control. In response to uncertainty, we are driven to make meaning of our experiences and in so doing to reduce uncertainty. Indeed, a series of cunning experiments demonstrated that the sense of lacking control promotes illusory pattern perception in ambiguous situations. Hence, people consciously or unconsciously attempt to regain a sense of control by projecting patterns onto the chaos of their lives. This meaning-making process hinged on the appraisal of stressors and their meaningful integration into our autobiographica ~ Todd Kashdan

We're just alike,... Plants and humans. Plants need to be loved the right way in order to
survive. So do humans. We rely on our parents from birth to love us enough to keep us alive.
And if our
parents show us the right kind of love, we turn out as better humans overall. But if we're
neglected . . we're neglected, we end up homeless and incapable of anything
meaningful ~ Colleen Hoover

Human life was rarely shapely, only intermittently meaningful, its clumsiness the inevitable consequence of the victory of content over form, of what and when over how and why. ~ Salman Rushdie

Positivist man is a curious creature who dwells in the tiny island of light composed of what he finds scientifically "meaningful," while the whole surrounding area in which ordinary men live from day to day and have their dealings with other men is consigned to the outer darkness of the "meaningless." Positivism has simply accepted the fractured being of modern man and erected a philosophy to intensify it.
Existentialism, whether successfully or not, has attempted instead to gather all the elements of human reality into a total picture of man. Positivist man and Existentialist man are no doubt offspring of the same parent epoch, but, somewhat as Cain and Abel were, the brothers are divided unalterably by temperament and the initial choice they make of their own being. ~ William Barrett

Some people like to paint trees. I like to paint love. I find it more meaningful than painting trees. ~ Robert Indiana