#meaning

Why was this bloody world created?" "As a sewer for the stars," a voice in front of him said. "Alternatively to know God and to glorify Him forever." " [...] The two answers are not, of course, necessarily alternative. ↗

— Charles Williams

#life

Often, when I have been feeling lonely, when a book as been thrust aside in boredom [...] I have lain back and stared at the shadows on the ceiling, wondering what life is all about [...] and then, suddenly, there is the echo of the swinging door, and across the carpet, walking with the utmost delicacy and precision, stalks Four or Five or Oscar. He sits down on the floor beside me, regarding my long legs, my old jumper, and my floppy arms, with a purely practical interest. Which part of this large male body will form the most appropriate lap? Usually he settles for the chest. Whereupon he springs up and there is a feeling of cold fur [...] and the tip of an icy nose, thrust against my wrist and a positive tattoo of purrs. And I no longer wonder what life is all about. ↗

— Beverley Nichols

#meaning-of-life #life

I like a good story and I also like staring at the sea-- do I have to choose between the two? ↗

— David Byrne

#life #meaning #music #ocean #pleasure

I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell. ↗

— Richard P. Feynman

#meaning #mystery #philosophy #purpose #uncertainty

When you're having an asthma attack, you don't have any breath. When you don't have any breath, it's hard to speak. You're limited by the amount of air you can spend from your lungs. That's not much, something between three to six words. It gives the word a meaning. You're searching through the piles of words in your head, picking the most important ones. And they have a cost. It's not like the healthy people that take out every word that has accumulated in their head like garbage. When someone, while having an asthma attack, says "I love you" or "I really love you", there's a difference. A word difference. And a word is a lot, because that word could have been "sit", "Ventolin" or even "ambulance". ↗

— Etgar Keret

#meaning #words #love

For reasons that are not well understood, war's codes are safer for most of us than love's. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#meaning #war #love

I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine. ↗

— Emily Dickinson

#literature #meaning #power #words #literature

It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty. ↗

— Jeannette Walls

#inspirational #meaningful #symbolic #beauty

A singer can shatter glass with the proper high note," he said, "but the simplest way to break glass is simply to drop it on the floor. ↗

— Anne Rice

#humor #lestat #logic #luxury #meaning

We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself. ↗

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

#existentialism #meaning #existentialism