#significance

He thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#humor #self-importance #significance #sophistication #beauty

How good is it to remember one's insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of an animal amid billions of animals; and one's abode, the earth, a little grain of sand in comparison with Sirius and others, and one's life span in comparison with billions on billions of ages. There is only one significance, you are a worker. The assignment is inscribed in your reason and heart and expressed clearly and comprehensibly by the best among the beings similar to you. The reward for doing the assignment is immediately within you. But what the significance of the assignment is or of its completion, that you are not given to know, nor do you need to know it. It is good enough as it is. What else could you desire? ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#god #man #significance #spirituality #universe

He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#intelligence #professionalism #significance #vulnerability #intelligence

A life isn't significant except for its impact on other lives. ↗

— Jackie Robinson

#life #significance #life

The difference between real life and a story is that life has significance, while a story must have meaning. The former is not always apparent, while the latter always has to be, before the end. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#fiction #fictional #life #meaning #pattern

My life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. It means nothing. ↗

— David Hewson

#life #meaninglessness #life

You don’t need a significant other to lead a significant life. ↗

— Mandy Hale

#being-single #independence #life #love #not-settling

It is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness. ↗

— Edith Wharton

#insignificance #unpopularity #vanity #vanity

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door. ↗

— Saul Bellow

#door #everybody #his #insignificance #keep

Clinton is a big personality who has led a big life, and for some of the media conventional wisdom to boil it down to a view that 'all people are really interested in' are a few moments of madness in the Oval Office gets him, the importance of the presidency, and the significance of his life, all wrong. ↗

— Alastair Campbell

#boil #clinton #conventional #conventional wisdom #down