#meaning

Every poet knows that the gift of the gods is not fire but language. “Man dwells poetically on this earth,” Hölderin wrote. Language is the essence of being human. We can think, thanks to language, for thought exists only by the grace of words. Our experiences and emotions are molded by language. It is language that allows us to name and know the world. We ourselves are known by language, through prayer, confession, poetry. Language gives us a world that reaches beyond the reality of the moment, to a past (there was…) and a future (there shall be…). It is through language that eternity has a space and that the dead continue to speak: “Defunctus adhuc loquitur” (Hebrews 11:4). Thanks to language, there is meaning, there is truth. ↗

— Rob Riemen

#meaning #poetry #truth #words #experience

Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#meaning #prayer #trouble #life

Ordinary people who live their lives peacefully, whose days gently resemble each other, may happen one day to stop and wonder why and what for do they do the things they do and have been doing for so many years? ↗

— Haim Shapira

#life

Where you read a book and when and with whom can make a big difference. ↗

— Robert Coles

#story #value #imagination

MDMA, it was beginning to be apparent, could be all things to all people. ↗

— Alexander Shulgin

#mdma #meaning #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

I wasn't really naked. I simply didn't have any clothes on. ↗

— Josephine Baker

#humor #literal-meaning #nakedness #realtivity #funny

…breaking the heart of someone you still love is a rare horror, not funny to anyone, except perhaps Satan…and even his pleasure would be spoiled by not having had a hand in it, by the dumb, wasteful accident of the thing. The Devil wants meaning just like the rest of us. ↗

— Glenn Duncan

#love #meaning #the-devil #funny

The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it. ↗

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

#freedom #meaning-of-life #psychology #purpose-of-life #work