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Meaning Quotes

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Meaning Quotes

“Philosophical confusions of the sort Wittgenstein is talking about here are not due to the mere transgression of some grammatical rule. Rather, they are due to the tacit hovering between different forms of use - uses that by themselves are perfectly all right. Now in order to treat such confusions, grammatical rules can be quite useful, despite - or even precisely because of - their circular character. For the use of these rules in such cases is not to prescribe particular uses and proscribe others. Indeed, such attempts at prescription and proscription would be counterproductive: for the problem is not that there are correct and incorrect ways of using the relevant words. Rather, the trouble is that two different uses are being conflated - so what we need is to get clear about the differences between them. What we need rules for is to capture the relevant patterns of use, describe them, and thereby make it clear that the confusion is due to an attempt to play two different games at the same time. This requires entering precisely into the sort of dialogue that Hacker's conception of grammatical rules seems to prevent, or at least make unnecessary - a dialogue that does not presuppose that the relevant 'pieces' and 'games' have already been identified but is genuinely open to the possibility of using language in a multitude of meaningful ways.”

LanguageMeaningGameMultitude
Book:The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics
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“You've a perfect right to call me as impractical as a dormouse, and to feel I'm out of touch with life. But this is the point where we simply can't see eye to eye. We've nothing whatever in common. Don't you see. . . it's not an accident that's drawn me from Blake to Whitehead, it's a certain line of thought which is fundamental to my whole approach. You see, there's something about them both. . . They trusted the universe. You say I don't know what the modern world's like, but that's obviously untrue. Anyone who's spent a week in London knows just what it's like. . . if you mean neurosis and boredom and the rest of it. And I do read a modern novel occasionally, in spite of what you say. I've read Joyce and Sartre and Beckett and the rest, and every atom in me rejects what they say. They strike me as liars and fools. I don't think they're dishonest so much as hopelessly tired and defeated." Lewis had lit his pipe. He did it as if Reade were speaking to someone else. Now he said, smiling faintly, "I don't think we're discussing modern literature." Reade had an impulse to call the debater's trick, but he repressed it. Instead he said quietly, "We're discussing modern life, and you brought up the subject. And I'm trying to explain why I don't think that murders and wars prove your point. I'm writing about Whitehead because his fundamental intuition of the universe is the same as my own. I believe like Whitehead that the universe is a single organism that somehow takes account of us. I don't believe that modern man is a stranded fragment of life in an empty universe. I've an instinct that tells me that there's a purpose, and that I can understand that purpose more deeply by trusting my instinct. I can't believe the world is meaningless. I don't expect life to explode in my face at any moment. When I walk back to my cottage, I don't feel like a meaningless fragment of life walking over a lot of dead hills. I feel a part of the landscape, as if it's somehow aware of me, and friendly.”

MeaningExistentialismWhiteheadPhenomenological ExistentialismColinwilson
Book:The Glass Cage
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“In the body there are two creatures, and they are both in enmity with each other. For one to do anything, the other has to be subjected to it. One has a mind and the other only has an appetite. The more the mind gets, the more it is satisfied, but the more the appetite gets, the more its hunger grows; its appetite is for imaginary things, it dreams that it is eating, but when it wake, which it dreads to do, it is empty and pangs.”

PurposeFaithMeaningMind And Body Connection
Book:Dinner Party
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“Starmer has found it difficult to escape this cycle of dependence because he cannot comprehend a crucial therapeutic insight: that the subject supposed to know knows nothing. Often, an analytic breakthrough comes when the patient realises that the Other to whom she has delegated her authority (or knowledge, or desire) is illusory: an empty signifier. This revelation allows her to take responsibility for her own desire, which is thereby transformed from a conduit for the Other’s will into what Lacan calls ‘decided desire’ or ‘determined desire’. When her experience is no longer mediated by the subject supposed to know, its possibilities are expanded. Dependence is supplanted by autonomy. And that, for Lacanians, is the real meaning of adulthood, although most adults never achieve it.”

MeaningZoneTheOfSalvageKeirStarmer
Author:Oliver Eagleton
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“What must always be remembered is that myth is a double system; there occurs in it a sort of ubiquity: its point of departure is constituted by the arrival of a meaning. […] the signification of the myth is constituted by a sort of constantly moving turnstile which presents alternately the meaning of the signifier and its form, a language-object and a metalanguage, a purely signifying and a purely imagining consciousness. This alternation is, so to speak, gathered up in the concept, which uses it like an ambiguous signifier, at once intellective and imaginary, arbitrary and natural.”

MythMeaningSignification
Book:Mythologies
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“The signifier of myth presents itself in an ambiguous way: it is at the same time meaning and form, full on one side and empty on the other. […] The meaning will be for the form like an instantaneous reserve of history, a tamed richness, which it is possible to call and dismiss in a sort of rapid alternation: the form must constantly be able to be rooted again in the meaning and to get there what nature it needs for its nutriment; above all, it must be able to hide there. It is this constant game of hide-and-seek between the meaning and the form which defines myth.”

FormMythMeaningSignificationSignifiers
Book:Mythologies
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“[When asked about his thoughts on gods] I think it's like a movie that was way too popular. It's a story that's been told too many times and just doesn't mean anything. Man lived on the planet — [placing his fingers an inch apart], this is 5000 years of semi-recorded history. And God and the Bible, that came in somewhere around the middle, maybe 2000. This is the last 2000, this is what we're about to celebrate [indicating about an 1/8th of an inch with his fingers]. Now, humans, in some shape or form, have been on the earth for three million years [pointing across the room to indicate the distance]. So, all this time, from there [gesturing toward the other side of the room], to here [indicating the 1/8th of an inch], there was no God, there was no story, there was no myth and people lived on this planet and they wandered and they gathered and they did all these things. The planet was never threatened. How did they survive for all this time without this belief in God? I'd like to ask this to someone who knows about Christianity and maybe you do. That just seems funny to me.”

HumansFunnyBeliefAtheismAtheistMythMeaningMovieCelebrationPopularityPlanetMillions Of Years
Author:Eddie Vedder
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“Ukiwa makini, nadhani, utapata maana ya ujumbe unaopewa na Roho Mtakatifu kwa wale wanaomwamini Mungu au ‘daemon’ (tofauti na ‘demon’) kwa wale wasiomwamini Mungu. Mimi, kwa mfano, huwa najali muda. Jicho langu likicheza au kiungo changu chochote cha mwili kikiuma ghafla na kuacha, au hata kisipoacha, jambo lolote ninalolifikiria muda huo ambapo jicho linacheza au kiungo changu cha mwili kinauma najua ni ujumbe kutoka kwa Mungu na una uhusiano na jambo hilo ninaloliwaza. Hivyo, kuanzia sekunde hiyo napaswa kuwa makini sana na jambo lolote ninalolifikiria.”

GodBodyCarefulMeaningHoly SpiritDemonConnectionMunguMessageShetaniSecondDaemonMwiliRoho MtakatifuMaanaSekundeI ThinkMakiniUhusianoUjumbeJicho LanguKiungo ChanguMy EyeMy OrganBeing CarefulI Care About TimeNadhaniNajali MudaThose Who Believe In GodThose Who Do Not Believe In GodUkiwa MakiniWale Wanaomwamini MunguWale Wasiomwamini Mungu
Author:Enock Maregesi
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“I know, Granddad, the woods are thick and I'm a city slicker, but Ash was with me, and it was just as well we went looking, because when we finally caught up with Ramsay he'd got himself stuck down a hole in an old jetty." "A jetty? In the woods?" "Not right in the woods, it was in a clearing, an estate. The jetty was by a lake in the middle of the most incredible overgrown garden. You'd have loved it. There were willows and massive hedges and I think it might once have been rather spectacular. There was a house, too. Abandoned." "The Edevane place," Louise said quietly. "Loeanneth." The name when spoken had that magical, whispering quality of so many Cornish words and Sadie couldn't help but remember the odd feeling the insects had given her, as if the house itself was alive. "Loeanneth," she repeated. "It means 'Lake House.”

MeaningEstateCornishLoeannethSadie Sparrow
Book:The Lake House
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“For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.” But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art.”

LifeMeaningExcuses
Book:Existentialism is a Humanism
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“Messages marking the start of a romance used to require forethought and an effort to be at least somewhat charming; back when they were written in ink and delivered by horse or carrier pigeon or personally in the flesh, or even just the postal service last century, they were supposed to count. Now that they’re delivered in more of a stream of consciousness than speech and at the speed of light to computers and phones where myriad other forms of communication are possible and likely taking place simultaneously, they’re practically meaningless.”

RomanceMessagesSocial MediaMeaningCourtshipThe InternetPitching Woo
Book:In Limbo
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“If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this—the absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage—such events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality—to draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are “raw files.” But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero’s personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him.”

WritingPurposeFateMeaningCharacterizationPlotting
Book:The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone
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“We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them. Peace is built on understanding, and wars are built on misunderstandings. Never underestimate the power of a single word, and never recklessly throw around words. One wrong word, or misinterpreted word, can change the meaning of an entire sentence and start a war. And one right word, or one kind word, can grant you the heavens and open doors.”

ThinkingWritingIdeasWarReadingLanguagePeaceUnderstandingTalkingPowerDoorsIgnoranceCommunicationWordsCommunicateIntellectThoughtDialogueMeaningControlInterpretationUnderestimatePower Of WordsMisunderstandingUnderstandWordSpeakingTranslationSuzy KassemWarsMisinterpretationExchangeSentenceInterpretMisunderstandConveyTonesMisinterpretatedRight Word
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“I have all this empty time in front of me. Tonight and tomorrow and the week after and the next month and all down through the years as I never marry and become a dried-up woman. Evenings spent folding paper. Days cleaning someone else's house. Free afternoons spent shopping a bit, stopping in tea shops because my feet hurt. That is what lives are, aren't they? Attempts to fill our time with activity designed to prevent us from realizing that there is no meaning?”

LifeTimeMeaningBoredomLivesSpare TimeMothers And Other MonstersFilling Time
Author:Maureen F. McHugh
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“The ultimate destination of this practice of negation is to see through and release even the attachment to the process of negation itself, allowing the full experience and truth and of what they are to be embraced. Many students reach this crossroad and find themselves unsure of how to proceed. We extend our hand to you, honoring the dedication of your soul, and invite you in to embrace The Way of All. This path encompasses everything, while acknowledging and honoring the inherent freedom that is truly available to you. It allows for action rooted in a soul-based, engaged, and invested self. We are here to encourage you and say that there is meaning, and You are the meaning.”

MeaningWorld ViewNegationParadigm ShiftThe SeedSoul PlayNegation Of NegationNegation Of World
Book:"The Seed" Journal: A Space for Recording Your Soul Experiences and Expansive Journeys
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“What’s especially irritating in grammars (have you noticed how exquisitely impossible it is for us to be talking about this?) – the most irritating part of grammars is the chapter on verbs, since these are what give meaning to sentences… An honest sentence should always have any number of possible meanings… Verbs!… A friend of mine who committed suicide – every time I have a longish conversation I suicide a friend – was going to dedicate his life to destroying verbs… - Why did he commit suicide? – Wait, I still don’t know… He wanted to discover and develop a method for surreptitiously not completing sentences. He used to say that he was searching for the microbe of meaning… He committed suicide – yes, of course – because one day he realized what a tremendous responsibility he’d assumed… The enormity of the problem made him go nuts…”

MeaningVerbs
Book:The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition
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“Friends are the family you choose (~ Nin/Ithilnin, Elven rogue).”

LoveLifeHumansTruthLife LessonsHumanityFriendshipFamilySocietyHuman NatureFriendsReflectionYoung AdultInsightMeaningMeaning Of LifeInsightfulYoung Adult FictionHumankindHuman BehaviorUrban FantasySocial IssuesSocial ScienceSocial CommentaryElvesReflectiveCyberpunkYoung Adult SeriesUrban Fantasy SeriesYoung Adult NovelsYoung Adult LiteratureElvenInside OurselvesYa Urban FantasyNq Mobile Omar KhanOmar Khan Nq Mobile
Book:The Other Side of Life
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“We want life to make sense. If we don’t find meaning and orientation, we are bound to fabulate a living and invent an inspiring life story. When we write out a chosen script, we’ll have to make time to hunker down into attuning it to the hitches of the road map, time and again, with fractious patience. ( "Everybody his story" )”

LifeInspiringLivingPatienceChosenMeaningMake SenseWriteOrientationFindScriptInventEverybodyBoundMake TimeRoad MapHunker DownLifestoryAttuneFabulateFractiousHitchesTime And Again
Author:Erik Pevernagie
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“The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself. The fools who write articles about me think that one morning I suddenly decided to write and began to produce masterpieces. There is no special trick about writing or painting either. I wrote constantly for 15 years before I produced anything with any solidity to it.... The thing of course, is to make yourself alive. Most people remain all of their lives in a stupor. The point of being an artist is that you may live.... You won't arrive. It is an endless search.”

LifeWritingArtPracticeLivingMeaningArtists
Author:Sherwood Anderson
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“Hegel’s account avoids falling into a careless historicism by virtue of its appeal to the infinite ends at work in subjectivity, but it maintains its strong historicist commitment by virtue of the way in which Hegel takes himself to have shown that the universal has to particularize itself— a thesis we could formulate rather abstractly as the notion that for speculative (philosophical) concepts, meaning is determined by use but not exhausted by use, such that within a certain historical development, such concepts can be developed into better actualizations. Hegel’s type of philosophical history is not an a priori theory about how those historical particulars were necessitated to line up with each other, nor is it some happy talk Whig account of progress, nor is it a self-congratulatory tale of progressive enlightenment and error-correction, nor is it the explication of any laws of history or any claims about how various regimes inevitably converge at some final point or inevitably lead to a certain result. It is rather an examination of the metaphysical contours of subjectivity and how the self interpreting, self-developing collective human enterprise has moved from one such shape to another in terms of deeper logic of sense-making and how that meant that subjectivity itself had reshaped itself over the course of history. It is not a thesis about what constitutes true causality in history, nor is it even a thesis that unintelligibility causes such breakdowns. Hegel’s philosophy of history is concerned with what various things mean to subjects, individually and collectively, in the historical configurations into which they are thrown.”

HistoryMeaningSubjectivityHegelPinkardMaking Sense Of Making SenseMeaning As Use
Book:Does History Make Sense?: Hegel on the Historical Shapes of Justice
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“She called herself a nighshifter, and it took me a second to realize that she meant she works the night shift, and not that she shifts between being a human being and moonlit blackness. I was kind of hoping to watch her morph for me.”

HumorCommunicationMoonMeaningMoonlightShapeshifterShapeshiftingMorph
Book:There are Two Typos of People in This World: Those Who Can Edit and Those Who Can't
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