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Meaning Of Life Quotes

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Meaning Of Life Quotes

“Whatever talent a person has should be dedicated to the rest of humanity - indeed to all living beings. Therein lies fulfillment. All men are kin. They are of the same likeness, the same build, molded out of the same material, with the same divine essence in each. Service to man will help your divinity to blossom, for it will gladden your heart and make you feel that life has been worth while. Service to man is service to God, for He is in every man, and every living being, in every stone and stump. Offer your talents at the feet of God. Let every act be a flower, free from the creeping worms of envy and egoism and full of the fragrance of love and sacrifice.”

“It's as if I had been going downhill when I thought I was going uphill. That's how it was. In society's opinion I was heading uphill, but in equal measure life was slipping away from me... And now it's all over. Nothing left but to die!" "So what's it all about? What's it for? It's not possible. It's not possible that life could have been as senseless and sickening as this. And if it has really been as sickening and senseless as this why do I have to die, and die in agony? There's something wrong. Maybe I didn't live as I should have done?" came the sudden thought. "But how can that be when I did everything properly?" he wondered, instantly dismissing as a total impossibility the one and only solution to the mystery of life and death.”

“To my readers, I hope this book inspires you to align your investing strategies with your core strengths while recognizing the importance of balance and growth. Whether you are a Type Three seeking achievement, a Type Nine striving for peace, or a Type Two driven by helping others, investing can reflect your highest ideals. But as Frankl and Adler remind us, financial success alone does not sate our deepest yearnings. Meaning arises when we transcend self-interest to seek something larger.”

“The trials of evolution programme a human race for aggression, not wisdom. And once capitalism gets underway human relationships become regulated by systems that deliver behaviour into a killing zone of selfishness and greed. The Tension Dynamic, p165”

“There seemed no answer. He wasn't resigned to anything, he hadn't accepted or adjusted to the life he'd been forced into. Yet here he was, eight months after the plague's last victim, nine since he's spoken to another human being, ten since Virginia had died. Here he was with no future and a virtually hopeless present. Still plodding on. Instinct? Or was he just stupid? Too unimaginative to destroy himself? Why hadn't he done it in the beginning when he was in the very depths? What had impelled him to enclose the house, install a freezer, a generator, an electric stove, a water tank, build a hothouse, a workbench, burn down the houses on each side of his, collect records and books and mountains of canned supplies, even - it was fantastic when you thought about it - even put a fancy mural on the wall? Was the life force something more than words, a tangible, mind-controlling potency? Was nature somehow, in him, maintaining its spark against its own encroachments? He closed his eyes. Why think, why reason? There was no answer. His continuance was an accident and an attendant bovinity. He was just too dumb to end it all, and that was about the size of it.”

“We will be able to depart this life with the quiet peace-giving notion, that we were permitted to contribute to the happiness of many who will live after us. In our long lives we endeavored to unfold the collective consciousness. In our lives we have known hell and heaven; the final balance, however, is that we helped pave the way to dynamic harmony in this earthly house. That, I believe, is the meaning of life.”

“آه يا طائر الطفولة النائح قل لي لِمَّ كل هذا النواح؟ قل لي لِمَ كل هذا العويل؟ آه يا طائري الذي صاحبني منذ الطفولة لِمَ طبعت نواحك وألصقت عويلك وآهاتك في كل ضحكاتي في كل ابتساماتي في ملامحي في نبراتي؟ آه يا رفيق الطفولة لقد بات الجميع يتجنبني بسببك لئلا أذكرهم بعويلهم الذي دفنوه وصرخاتهم التي أخرسوها ليتمكنوا من مواصلة العيش ...”

“Life is like theatre. Each new day is a new scene with new acts and roles to portray. The sets always change. You come across new dialogue and lines to exchange between others. Scripts are improvised. But the beauty in it is that everyday, you are constantly learning who you are and how others around you are. Express yourself and empathize. It's okay to wear a mask every now and then but remember that you'll eventually meet fellow thespians who will find a way to break down your walls and barriers. Remember another thing: this isn't a dress rehearsal. And God is your ultimate Director. Let Him write your script and call the cuts. Allow Him to provide you with the applause that truly matters. Let Him open up your heart to real self discovery. He is the best playwright that never dies. He lives. And so do you when you learn to let go and step on the stage of life.”

“You know what's wrong with scientific power?... It's a form of inherited wealth... Most kinds of power require a substantial sacrifice by whoever wants the power. There is an apprenticeship, a discipline lasting many years. Whatever kind of power you want. President of the company. Black belt in karate. Spiritual Guru. Whatever it is you seek, you have to put in the time, the practice, the effort. You must give up a lot to get it. It has to be very important to you. And once you have attained it, it is your power. It can't be given away: it resides in you. It is literally the result of your discipline. Now, what is interesting about this process is that, by the time someone has acquired the ability to kill with his bare hands, he has also matured to the point where he won't use it unwisely. So that kind of power has a built-in control. The discipline of getting the power changes you so that you won't abuse it. But scientific power is like inherited wealth: attained without discipline. You read what others have done, and you take the next step... There is no discipline... no mastery: old scientists are ignored. There is no humility before nature... A karate master does not kill people with his bare hands. He does not lose his temper and kill his wife. The person who kills is the person who has no discipline, no restraint, and who has purchased his power in the form of a Saturday night special. And that is the kind of power that science fosters, and permits.”

“I am reborn. This is my dawn. Real life has just begun. Deliberate living. Conscious attention to your immediate environment and its concerns. examples include: a job, a task, a book, anything requiring efficient concentration. (Circumstance has no value. It is how one relates to a situation that has value. All true meaning resides in the personal relationship to a phenomenon….what it means to you). The Great Holiness of FOOD, the Vital Heat. Positivism, the Insurpassable Joy of the Life Aesthetic. Absolute Truth and Honesty. Reality. Independence. Finality-Stability-Consistency.”

“(...) The people I chatted with in Kito's didn't seem to doubt that I'd been to the top of the Thumb; they just didn't mcuh care. (...) Less than a month after sitting on the summit of the Thumb, I was back in Boulder, nailing up siding on the Spruce Street Townhouses, the same condosI'd been framing when I left for Alaska. (...) It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it. When I decided to go to Alaska that April, like Chris McCandless, I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic. I thought climbing the Devils Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams. And I lived to tell my tale.”

“About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about? Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others—while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity—so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. Enough.”

“Our reward for surviving the hard knocks of a corporal life is arguably paltry. The inevitability of the big sleep is our final reward for laying it all on the line each day that we still breathe. A person whom elects to transform him or herself does so because they believe that life is worthwhile. If a troubled person mints a newly reconstituted persona, it might enable them serenely to accept everything life calls for, even struggle, loss, defeat, disintegration, and death.”

“Part of me thinks that your very vulnerability brings you closer to the meaning of life, just as for others, the quest to believe oneself white divides them from it. The fact is that despite their dreams, their lives are not inviolable. When their own vulnerability becomes real - when the police decide that tactics intended for the ghetto should enjoy wider visage, when their armed society shoots down their children, when nature sends hurricanes against their cities - they are shocked in a way that those of us who were born and bred to understand cause and effect can never be. And I would not have you live like them. You have been cast into a race in which the wind is always at your face and the hounds are always at your heels. And to varying degrees this is true of all life. The difference is that you do not have the privilege of living in ignorance of this essential fact.”

“Maybe you can imagine this in your own life. We no longer look at the sun but at our phones to see what kind of time has passed. We don't look out of our cells but at our cell, flipping to a social media stream and scrolling through what our friends are doing. While we scroll, we develop a resentment that our lives are less fun and fulfilling than the lives of our friends. The here and now, the people who are around and present, pale in front of the manicured and curated versions of another person's life. We begin to wonder, like Evagrius, if we have lost the love of our friends, and we begin to believe that there is "none to comfort" us. So we fill our evenings with overeating, because it feels comforting, or binge-watching our favorite show, because we are so tired that we just need to "relax." We split our attention between the screen of the television and the screen of our phones. Indeed, one of the most effective ways to avoid the gnawing questions of meaning is by staying busy enough to avoid them. A constant flow of information and distraction turns the mind and the heart away from the abyss of asking why. Why do we worry about tomorrow? Why do we toil and reap? What is the treasure of great price that all our lives are working toward? When we do pause between activities, we try to fill the void. We forget that we are more than our work or the things that we produce. Our busyness represents a profound loss of freedom, and one that occurs through a gradual winnowing away of what it means to be human. We replace that it means to be a person with a shallowness of activity”