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Meaning Quotes

Browse 1351 quotes about Meaning.

Meaning Quotes

“Love is one of the most motivating and self-defining forces in our lives, whether we turn from it or allow ourselves to be drawn to it. If you allow romantic possibilities with others to consume all your time and energy, they will distract you from the things of interest that fill your life with passion and purpose.”

LoveLifeRomancePurposeMotivationPassionEnergyRelationshipsAcceptanceDenialMeaningPotentialTime ManagementDistractionForces Of NatureLife Defining
Book:Rise of the Morningstar
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“The deflation, or flattening out, of values in Modern art does not necessarily indicate an ethical nihilism. Quite the contrary; in opening our eyes to the rejected elements of existence, art may lead us to a more complete and less artificial celebration of the world.”

AcceptanceMeaningCelebrationNihilismModern ArtAnti HierarchyRejection Of Canon Of ValuesThe Negative
Book:Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy
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“Help others. Helping others gives you a sense of value and worth. Sometimes, we fall into the limitations of the mind, but by shifting the focus away from ourselves and onto others, we find meaning. Being selfless is a powerful tool to help grow your own confidence and self-esteem.” Excerpt From: Sarah Voldeng. “The Art of an Enlightened Woman.” Apple Books.”

MeaningWorthConfidence QuotesLimitations On Your LifeTools For Success
Book:The Art of an Enlightened Woman: A Manifesto
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“No one can tell you what your grief means. You are the only person who decides what meaning, if any, should be assigned to the death of your loved one. While well-meaning friends and family will have their own interpretations of the role of loss in your life, it is up to you and only you to decide what it all means.”

InspirationalDeathLossGriefDecisionsMeaningBereavementRole
Book:Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
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“I wonder if the hypochondriac him or herself is a metaphor, a condensed node of ideas about illness crushed together into one individual. I am pressed between these layers of meaning like a flower preserved between the pages of a book, trapped in narratives about my sickness that have already been written.”

MetaphorIllnessNarrativeMeaningHealth AnxietyIllness As Metaphor
Book:A Body Made of Glass: A Cultural History of Hypochondria – A Revelatory Medical Memoir and Biography of Health Anxiety
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“The ‘death’ of a metaphor is the loss of a connection between a metaphor and a specific word, not the loss of the conceptual metaphor itself. ‘Dead’ metaphors are words and phrases that were previously metaphoric, not conceptual metaphors that have disappeared. Conceptual metaphors generally ‘outlive’ the specific words and expressions that involve them.”

MetaphorMeaningConcept
Book:Mixed Metaphors: Their Use and Abuse
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“And as to ordinary metaphors, or those which have already received the public sanction, and which are commonly very numerous in every tongue, the metaphorical meaning comes to be as really ascertained by custom in the particular language as the original, or what is called the literal meaning of the word. And in this respect metaphors stand on the same foot of general use with proper terms.”

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Book:The Philosophy of Rhetoric
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“…in whatever light they [figurative words that have become literal] may be considered by the grammarian and the lexicographer, they cannot be considered as genuine metaphors by the rhetorician. I have already assigned the reason. They have nothing of the effect of metaphor upon the hearer. On the contrary, like proper terms, they suggest directly to his mind, without the intervention of any image, the ideas which the speaker proposed to convey by them.”

LanguageMetaphorMeaning
Book:The Philosophy of Rhetoric
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“...there is no real person whose embodiment plays no role in meaning, whose meaning is purely objective and defined by the external world, and whose language can fit the external world with no significant role played by mind, brain, or body. Because our conceptual systems grow out of our bodies, meaning is grounded in and through our bodies. Because a vast range of our concepts are metaphorical, meaning is not entirely literal and the classical correspondence theory of truth is false.”

ReasonTruthMetaphorMeaningObjectivityCorrespondenceConceptualizationEmbodied MindEmbodied Realism
Book:Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought
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“A metaphor is not merely a linguistic expression (a form of words) used for artistic or rhetorical purposes; instead, it is a process of human understanding by which we achieve meaningful experience that we can make sense of. A metaphor, in this "experiential" sense, is a process by which we understand and structure one domain of experience in terms of another domain of a different kind.”

PhilosophyLanguageMetaphorMeaningLinguistics
Book:The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason
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“There are hundreds of ways that we distract ourselves from self-reflection, from asking those fundamental questions that really matter – movies, podcasts, games, social media. An endless stream of information you have to digest that does not allow you to spend any time alone with yourself. When you have nothing to do for a long-long time, that is when your mind starts to itch. It is then that you experience the unbearable heaviness of being. I think it happens to you too. Your most random thoughts intermingle in a chaotic descent into your own mental maelstrom, producing the strangest conclusions, as your brain explores the deepest corners of your mind.”

LovePurposeThoughtsMeaningDistractionSelf ReflectionEscapismSelf Reflection Quotes
Book:Breakfast Buddies
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“The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is--not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself. The best Nature does for us is to work in us such moods in which thoughts of high import arise. Does any aspect of Nature wake but one thought? Does she ever suggest only one definite thing? Does she make any two men in the same place at the same moment think the same thing? Is she therefore a failure, because she is not definite? Is it nothing that she rouses the something deeper than the understanding--the power that underlies thoughts? Does she not set feeling, and so thinking at work? Would it be better that she did this after one fashion and not after many fashions? Nature is mood-engendering, thought-provoking: such ought the sonata, such ought the fairytale to be. "But a man may then imagine in your work what he pleases, what you never meant!" Not what he pleases, but what he can. If he be not a true man, he will draw evil out of the best; we need not mind how he treats any work of art! If he be a true man, he will imagine true things; what matter whether I meant them or not? They are there none the less that I cannot claim putting them there! One difference between God's work and man's is, that, while God's work cannot mean more than he meant, man's must mean more than he meant. For in everything that God has made, there is a layer upon layer of ascending significance; also he expresses the same thought in higher and higher kinds of that thought: it is God's things, his embodied thoughts, which alone a man has to use, modified and adapted to his own purposes, for the expression of his thoughts; therefore he cannot help his words and figures falling into such combinations in the mind of another as he had himself not foreseen, so many are the thoughts allied to every other thought, so many are the relations involved in every figure, so many the facts hinted in every symbol. A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for he was dealing all the time things that came from thoughts beyond his own.”

UnderstandingThoughtsMoodMeaningFeelingThinkDefinite
Book:The Fantastic Imagination of George MacDonald
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“By all kinds of traps and sign-boards, threatening the extreme penalty of the divine law, exclude such trespassers from the only ground which can be sacred to you. It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality. Our very intellect shall be macadamized, as it were,--its foundation broken into fragments for the wheels of travel to roll over; and if you would know what will make for the most durable pavement, surpassing rolled stones, spruce blocks, and asphaltum, you have only to look into some of our minds which have been subjected to this treatment so long.”

ThinkingMindBrainThoughtsIntellectMeaningGossipTrivia
Book:Life Without Principle
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“Just think about this: haven’t we been going just to and fro? The whole world rather. Years back, it was good to take vitamin supplements and today they are considered hampering body’s natural immune. Sometime back, people were desperate to land up in high paying jobs, today there is a big entrepreneurship fad. Back in years, it was a pride to be settled in the city, now people are giving up all responsibilities to settle at a peaceful country side. What are we all really doing? We are moving from pillar to post, forward and backward on theories. We are all as confused as the next person. And unfortunately, we are all going to leave this world with barely being able to decipher much.”

ThinkingLifePhilosophyWisdomRealityDeathFaithQuotesWisePerceptionThoughtsPhilosopherConfusionMeaningDeepUnderstandComplex
Author:Jasleen Kaur Gumber
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