Meaningful Quotes

As a novelist, I mined my history, my family and my memory, but in a very specific way. Writing fiction, I never made use of experiences immediately as they happened. I needed to let things fester in my memory, mature and transmogrify into something meaningful.

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

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.

Indeed, in the present climate of mistrust of institutions, many people who yearn for a more meaningful and fulfilling life would regard the church as an unlikely place to go for guidance.

In our highly mediated, technologically driven world, we're all looking for meaningful ways to connect. This has constantly inspired me to create environments full of lively, immersive, experiential elements specifically crafted to foster human connection.

Human beings are social animals and nearly all of us are driven by the need to be loved and the desire to successfully sustain meaningful romantic relationships for life.

I was a very driven person, wanting to help and to do good, hopefully to write and teach in a meaningful way - wanting to make change. And I discovered humbly that life was changing me.

I've come to see that you can limit God is different ways. You can limit Him by thinking he can never work in spectacular ways. But you can also limit Him by thinking that only the spectacular is meaningful." - from "Dug Down Deep

You can retire from a job, but don't ever retire from making extremely meaningful contributions in life.

Be involved; be informed. Make meaningful contributions to society through service and involvement.

If somebody responds positively to what I'm doing - if there is a connection - that can be very meaningful. If someone reacts with displeasure, confusion, hostility, well, that is not pleasant, and can often be upsetting.

Life is confusing. We're all just trying to get on with it, that's all.

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

The most meaningful way to differentiate your company from your competition, is to do an outstanding job with information.

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

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent.

If the sky were to suddenly open up, there would be no law, there would be no rule. There would be only you and your memories, the choices you've made and the people you've touched.

Theres something about girls and unicorns thats deep and meaningful. Something about childhood.

Happiness isn't found in some finite checklist of goals that we can diligently complete and then coast. It's how we live our lives in the process. That's why the four pillars of happiness are faith, family, community and meaningful work. Those are priorities we have to keep investing in.

Before he did all those lovely line drawings, Matisse would make really detailed charcoal drawings and tear them up. He wouldn't leave them about... I understand what he was doing: discovering what's there... to make the line meaningful, to find a linear solution.

Destiny ... a word which means more than we can find any definitions for. It is a word which can have no meaning in a mechanical universe: if that which is wound up must run down, what destiny is there in that? Destiny is not necessitarianism, and it is not caprice: it is something essentially meaningful. Each man has his destiny, though some men are undoubtedly "men of destiny" in a sense in which most men are not.

Never give up. Don't let good ideas be buried with you. Breathe it. Dream it. Live it and relentlessly pursue your ideas and ideals. Without them you cannot achieve anything meaningful in life.

Swarmers run the risk of skittering like water bugs on the surface of life. By being quickly and constantly connected, they can avoid deep contact in time-consuming and meaningful ways... You're flitting from one place to another. You're more likely to pursue superficial engagements rather than deep pursuits. It contributes to this certain MTV approach to life where you engage in something for a few minutes and then there's a commercial... You have to get a grip on reality. Unless you know what is real-what is a real friendship and relationship-neither can have an effect on you.

When a poet writes a poem, meaning arises - because the poet is not alone; he has created something. When a dancer dances, meaning arises. When a mother gives birth to a child, meaning arises. Left alone, cut off from everything else, isolated like an island, you are meaningless. Joined together you are meaningful. The bigger the whole, the bigger is the meaning.

The religiously observant is lumped in with the nominal Muslim, the nominal Muslim is lumped in with the non-Muslim and the radical. If we want to make sense of this mess and stop pushing Muslims into the arms of the extremist, we need to make meaningful distinctions between the religion of Islam that a billion Muslims follow and see as a guidance as a peaceful righteous moral life and the puritanical Islam of a minority which so captures the media's attention.

For mankind, speech with a capital S is especially meaningful and committing, more than the content communicated. The outcry of the newborn and the sound of the bells are fraught with mystery more than the baby's woeful face or the venerable tower.

It would be good if you opened your heart to the fullness of time and spirit.

Barack Obama is a threat to the continued existence of the United States, and he must be impeached, or resign. The real question is, what will we replace his bad policies with? Real patriots understand the need to think ahead, to create a meaningful purpose and direction as we rebuild our nation. We know that the next several generations need a better world to live in, which can only be a Post-Obama World.

Your date will not be impressed by you throwing up on her brand-new shoes, as you spout poetic babblings that are meaningful only to you.

This award is meaningful because it comes from my fellow dealers in celluloid.

Competitive toughness is an acquired skill and not an inherited gift.

What are we going to get out of life? This can understandably be a question of fundamental importance to us. We begin with certain basic needs and desires. It is important to have a comfortable home, plenty of food, a meaningful and well-paying job, comfort, companionship, and joy. However, many of us have not fully realized a simple, basic principle: for our receiving to take place, we must first give. Giving and receiving are two aspects of the same law of life.

Ultimately, we are seeking a better understanding of what is means to be human. In this quest, progress is not made by finding the "right" answers, but by asking meaningful questions.

In my own work, I've tried to anticipate what's coming over the horizon, to hasten its arrival, and to apply it to people's lives in a meaningful way.

I am not in a bad mood. Everyone is just.. annoying.

I think that when you're depressed, you can't concentrate long enough and well enough to read for the most part; some people can, but by and large people - that's one of the first things that goes, is the capacity to read meaningful literature. With grief, that's not true. For a while you can't read, but then you really are amenable to solace.

Solitude can become your most meaningful companion and it can assist you in being a more giving person in your spiritual partnerships. Rather than regarding your partner's need for time alone as a threat, see it as a time of renewal that you celebrate. Make every effort to help each other have that space. Treat that space as sacred.

To strengthen our relationship with God, we need some meaningful time alone with Him

What is the good life? What is the good man? The good woman? What is the good society and what is my relation to it? What are my obligations to society? What is best for my children? What is justice? Truth? Virtue? What is my relation to nature, to death, to aging, to pain, to illness? How can I live a zestful, enjoyable, meaningful life? What is my responsibility to my brothers? Who are my brothers? What shall I be loyal to? What must I be ready to die for?

More American young people can tell you where an island that the 'Survivor' TV series came from is located than can identify Afghanistan or Iraq. Ironically a TV show seems more real or at least more meaningful interesting or relevant than reality.

We become powerful in the face of our fears when we have a sense that we make a difference in this world. We are all meaningful participants in this Universe and worthy of giving and receiving love. Some affirmations of purpose are: I know that I count and I act as though I do. I spread warmth and love everywhere I go. I am a healing force in the Universe.

But we are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the community of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society.

I've learned to take jobs as an actress that is meaningful to me because I've never taken a job for the money.

Media mystifications should not obfuscate a simple, perceivable fact; Black teenage girls do not create poverty by having babies. Quite the contrary, they have babies at such a young age precisely because they are poor--because they do not have the opportunity to acquire an education, because meaningful, well-paying jobs and creative forms of recreation are not accessible to them ... because safe, effective forms of contraception are not available to them.

As long as outmoded ways of thinking prevent women from making a meaningful contribution to society, progress will be slow. As long as the nation refuses to acknowledge the equal role of more than half of itself, it is doomed to failure.

We skim over the surface thoughtlessly. But we must acknowledge that thinking well is a time-consuming process. We can't expect instant results. We have to slow down a bit, and take the time to contemplate, meditate, and even pray. It is the only route to a more meaningful and efficient existence.

The worst enslaving trait of all is greed. I rail against the substitution of money for worth. The idea that the endless accumulation of dead money can furnish a meaningful life to sold-out souls is the supreme lie offered by the system of free enterprise.

It is no accident that this homeplace, as fragile and as transitional as it may be, a makeshift shed, a small bit of earth where one rests, is always subject to violation and destruction. For when a people no longer have the space to construct homeplace, we cannot build a meaningful community of resistance.

While it is all very well to distinguish happiness that is transient from that which is lasting, between ephemeral and genuine happiness, the only happiness it is meaningful to speak of when a person is dying from thirst is access to water.

Nothing is more endangered in the modern world than the powerful combination of hard work toward meaningful goals joined with an exuberant embrace of the present moment.