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Meaninglessness Quotes

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Meaninglessness Quotes

“Here lies the total abstraction and the source of all domination: in the breakdown of the dual relation. The strategy of domination is, indeed, to ensure that, through all the techniques of communication, through inescapable, streaming information, there can no longer be any response. It is a domination by signs empty of meaning. But, on the other side, there is an equal indifference and blank resistance.”

IndifferenceAbstractionMeaninglessnessVirtualityPost Modern Domination
Book:The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact
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“We have lost the capacity to trust, to love. We have lost the sensitivity to feel the infinite around us. We have forgotten how to relate with the totality. We have forgotten how to relate to trees, birds, animals, rivers and people. We have even forgotten how to relate with our own self, with our own body and with our own mind. We are living unrelated and meaningless, which is why a sadness is surrounding the whole humanity.”

HumanityMeditationSadnessTrustMiseryInfinityMeaninglessness
Book:God is Everywhere: You are Divine, Everything is Divine
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“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.”

ReligionBibleMeaninglessnessFutile
Book:Holy Bible: New International Version
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“I had someone once who made every day mean something. And now…. I am lost…. And nothing means anything anymore.”

LoveFeelingsBeautifulQuotesLostMemoriesLossLove QuotesGriefSadnessSadHeartbreakQuoteMemoryLove Quotes And SayingsGrievingBreakupBroken HeartGrief And LossMeaninglessLove QuoteLost LoveUnrequited LoveLove QuotationsHeartbrokenRemindersDeep ThoughtsSad QuotesWithout YouFeelings And EmotionsGrief QuotesMissing SomeoneDeep LoveThe PastBreakup QuotesUnrequitedHeartbreak QuotesLoss Of LoveSecret LoveMeaninglessnessMemories QuotesMemory QuoteBreak UpsLoss QuotesFeelings Of LoveBeautiful QuoteI Miss YouLost Love QuotesReminiscingSad QuoteMissing You QuotesReminiscenceHeartbroken QuotesThe One That Got AwayBreakup QuoteRanata SuzukiRanata Suzuki QuoteBreak Up QuoteLoss QuoteDeep Love QuotesThe Only OneReminisceAlways YoursMeaninglessness Of Life
Author:Ranata Suzuki
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“Then, taking his hat and shoving it onto his head, he would rush out into the mass of busy people and all at once look nothing at all like Father anymore: in fact, if it were not for the particular way his hat had been squished ever since one of her wooden animals sat on it, Shelley would hardly have been able to tell his brown-coated figure from anyone else’s.”

WorkSocietyIdentityBusyFathersMeaninglessnessCorporate LifeBusy People
Book:The Shivering Ground & Other Stories
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“Only by going through the fire of love, one becomes a heart. It is the fire of love that creates the soul. Not having a heart is what makes life meaningless, but millions of people live without a heart. The heart is the spiritual centre of our being. It is only the heart that can bring joy to our life.”

LoveGodTruthJoyReligionSpiritualityMiseryMeaninglessness
Book:God is Everywhere: You are Divine, Everything is Divine
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“We believe because it gives us faith. It gives us the willingness to go through our day, to keep the existentialist threat of meaninglessness away. We believe because we crave to be seen, to be known, to be understood. We believe because that is the only thing we can do. If there is no one to judge us - to tell us that we are good, and that if we are bad, we can be redeemed - why bother living at all? Why bother being good at all? If there is no one to look after us, and we are truly alone in this universe, what purpose do we have? We have nothing but the present moment, and only temporariness.”

LifeBelievePurposeFaithBeliefCan DoLivingUnderstoodThreatGoodRedemptionMeaningExistentialDayWillCraveUnderstandKnowJudgeRedeemedMeaninglessnessSeenRedeem
Book:The Things We Don't Know
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“I’ve been able to cultivate in myself a vast interior world, with an ocean deep and blue, with calm waters and stormy waves; with the scorching sun at the surface and darkly salted, cold depths, far away from the sounds of the wold. I fill it at times with glaciers and at others with sunrises. I, too, have made a forest deep and filled with life. It is full of sounds that permeate the night, morning dew, and deep, foggy darkness. And I’ve explored the forest a thousand times, and a thousand times they’ve explored me too. There lies the depth of my being—the depth of my story. It is beyond the emptiness of words. I’ve found depth in that which is shallow, and I’ve made it my home.”

HomeNatureDepthWordsMeaningEmptinessShallowMeaninglessness
Book:The Golden Sun
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“Without purpose and meaning in our lives, we banish ourselves to wander this plane of existence with self-destructive tendencies until the bell tolls and our breath capsizes in our lungs, snatching our chance to redeem ourselves forever.”

ImportantPurposeChoicesExistencePerspectiveSelf ImprovementImportanceSelf AwarenessSignificantRedemptionMeaningChoiceSignificanceLungsBreathMeaninglessnessCapsize
Book:Rise of the Morningstar
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“Having arrived at this point, he had found no direction in which to go save that of further withdrawal into a subjectivity which refused existence to any reality or law but its own. During these postwar years he had lived in solitude and carefully planned ignorance of what was happening in the world. Nothing had importance save the exquisitely isolated cosmos of his own consciousness. Then little by little he had had the impression that the light of meaning, the meaning of everything was dying. Like a flame under a glass it had dwindled, flickered and gone out, and all existence, including his own hermetic structure from which he had observed existence, had become absurd and unreal.”

ExistenceSolitudeMeaningIsolationModernismSubjectivityMeaninglessnessEnnuiPostwarCollapse Of Meaning
Book:The Spider's House
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“A society coming apart at top and bottom, or passing over into another form, contains just as many possibilities for revelation as a society running along smoothly in its own rut. The individual is thrust out of the sheltered nest that society has provided. He can no longer hide his nakedness by the old disguises. he learns how much of what he has taken for granted was by its own nature neither eternal nor necessary but thoroughly temporal and contingent. He learns that the solitude of the self is an irreducible dimension of human life no matter how completely that self had seemed to be contained in its social milieu. In the end, he sees each man as solitary and unsheltered before his own death. Admittedly, these are painful truths, but the most basic things are always learned with pain, since our inertia and complacent love of comfort prevent us from learning them until they are forced upon us. It appears that man is willing to learn about himself only after some disaster; after war, economic crisis, and political upheaval have taught him how flimsy is that human world in which he thought himself so securely grounded. What he learns has always been there, lying concealed beneath the surface of even the best-functioning societies; it is no less true for having come out of a period of chaos and disaster. But so long as man does not have to face up to such a truth, he will not do so.”

TruthPainDeathSocietySolitudeConfrontationSystemRevelationMeaninglessnessNakednessUnshelteredSocietal DisintegrationStranger To AllUnprotectedness
Book:Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy
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“We are but cells living in a much larger organism, however, this does not make our existence less significant – for an organism without cells is no organism at all. We define it; we make it what it is. We are responsible for its health, its functionality, and above all, its purpose. A lone cell can restore the others, or a lone cell can spread a plague.”

PeopleImportantPurposeChoicesUnitedExistenceResponsibilityAwarenessPerspectiveImportanceUnityCarefulImprovementSignificantCellsSelfishnessMeaningChoiceSignificanceOrganismsSelflessnessCautionPlagueOthersMeaninglessnessDefinition
Book:Rise of the Morningstar
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“What infinite heart's-ease Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy! And what have kings, that privates have not too, Save ceremony, save general ceremony? And what art thou, thou idle ceremony? What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers? What are thy rents? what are thy comings in? O ceremony, show me but thy worth! What is thy soul of adoration? Art thou aught else but place, degree and form, Creating awe and fear in other men? Wherein thou art less happy being fear'd Than they in fearing. What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness, And bid thy ceremony give thee cure! Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out With titles blown from adulation? Will it give place to flexure and low bending? Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee, Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream, That play'st so subtly with a king's repose; I am a king that find thee, and I know 'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball, The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, The intertissued robe of gold and pearl, The farced title running 'fore the king, The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp That beats upon the high shore of this world, No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony, Not all these, laid in bed majestical, Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave, Who with a body fill'd and vacant mind Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread; Never sees horrid night, the child of hell, But, like a lackey, from the rise to set Sweats in the eye of Phoebus and all night Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn, Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse, And follows so the ever-running year, With profitable labour, to his grave: And, but for ceremony, such a wretch, Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep, Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king. The slave, a member of the country's peace, Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace, Whose hours the peasant best advantages.”

LifeValuesHumanityWorkSocietyMankindKingsSatisfactionEqualityFulfillmentEmptinessFlatteryCeremonyRoyaltyPeasantsExaltationMeaninglessnessPurpose In LifeBurdensAdulationHonorsFeudal SocietyPompEmpty Form
Book:Henry V
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“There is absolutely no worse death curse than the humdrum daily existence of the living dead.”

DeathLife PhilosophyDespairDepressionLife And LivingFulfillmentBoredomEmptinessLife And DeathHopelessPessimismDeath And DyingProcrastinationHopelessnessDiscontentSelf PityDead PeopleMeaninglessnessFulfilling Your PotentialFulfilling Your DestinyExistential CrisisFulfilling LifeDeath WishEmpty LifeZest For LifeMeaningful LivingLack Of AmbitionMeaninglessness Of LifeLiving DeadDead SoulsEmpty Soul
Author:Anthon St. Maarten
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“In a world where nothing matters, the most atrocious events are no longer horrifying; the most piteous victims no longer stir our compassion; the most frightening possibilities, like nuclear war and ecological destruction, no longer frighten us. Sometimes we explain it away as "compassion fatigue", but really it is a disconnection from reality. None of it seems real. We sit back, benumbed, watching the world slide slowly toward a precipice as if it were an on-screen enactment. Similarly, we watch the years of our own lives march on, indifferent to the preciousness of each passing moment. Only once in a while an alarm goes off, we panic for a moment with a thought like, "This is real! This is my life! What am I here for?" And then our environment tempts us back into stupor.”

SeparationDissociationMeaninglessnessDisconnection
Book:The Ascent of Humanity: Civilization and the Human Sense of Self by Eisenstein, Charles
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“But all this, all this shift and change, thought Bellamy, is part of the vast lie which surrounds me and wherein I move from one fantasy to another. I wanted to escape to solitude and darkness in a holy place, but the dark is just the old dark of meaninglessness and falsehood, which separates me from my friends and from the real world where people love and help each other.”

DepressionSeparationIsolatedIris MurdochNihilismMeaninglessnessThe Green KnightCut Off
Book:The Green Knight
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“We sit here and we talk about sports. We talk about our home improvement projects. We gossip about family members we don’t care about. We self-victimize and complain about petty problems we've created ourselves. We work like dogs to keep up with the Joneses but have no time to enjoy the things we work for. We work purposeless jobs that keep us mildly happy, never really enjoying what we do, but we also never get the balls to leave the job. We drink on the weekends to numb the pain but it never really cures it. We criticize anyone who tries to break away from the rat race, because the idea that there is a way out scares us more than dying in the state we’re in. We only give to causes that affect us personally, only follow religions that suit us, only listen to people who agree with us, and worst of all,” he paused, and in a sad, defeated finale to his rant, he said, “We lie to ourselves.”

SocietyHumilityPrideEgoDepressionSelf AwarenessSelfishnessNarcissismMeaninglessnessSelf Victimizing
Book:The Humble Good: A Novel
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“This capacity for living easily and familiarly at an extraordinary level of abstraction is the source of modern man's power. With it he has transformed the planet, annihilated space, and trebled the world's population. But it is also a power which has, like everything human, its negative side, in the desolating sense of rootlessness, vacuity, and the lack of concrete feeling that assails modern man in his moments of real anxiety.”

PowerProgressAnxietyMeaningControlFeelingAbstractionAlienationHomelessnessModernityMeaninglessnessConcreteness
Book:Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy
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“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it...We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be 'healing.' A Certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to 'get through it,' rise to the occasion, exhibit the 'strength' that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.”

DeathLossGriefMourningFuneralMeaninglessness
Author:Joan Didion
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“And thus far it was a life: in the void. Wragby was there, the servants . . . but spectral, not really existing. Connie went for walks in the park, and in the woods that joined the park, and enjoyed the solitude and the mystery, kicked the brown leaves of autumn, and picked the primroses of spring. But it was all a dream; or rather it was the simulacrum of reality. The oak-leaves were to her like oak-leaves seen ruffling in a mirror, she herself was a figure somebody had read about, picking primroses that were only shadows or memories, or words. No substance to her or anything . . . no touch, no contact! Only this life with Clifford, this endless spinning of webs of yarn, of the minutiae of consciousness, these stories Sir Malcolm said there was nothing in, and they wouldn't last. Why should there be anything in them, why should they last? Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Sufficient unto the moment is the appearance of reality.”

LifeRealityDescriptionDetachedMeaninglessnessDisassociationD H LawrenceLady Chatterley S LoverRemovedThe Void
Book:Lady Chatterley’s Lover
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“Garraty thought that memories were like a line drawn in the dirt. The further back you went the scuffier and harder to see that line got. Until finally there was nothing but smooth sand and the black hole of nothingness that you came out of. The memories were in a way like the road. Here it was real and hard and tangible. But that early road, that nine in the morning road, was far back and meaningless.”

MemoriesNothingnessStephen KingBlack HoleMeaninglessnessMemories QuotesThe Long WalkRichard BachmanGarratyMcvries
Book:The Long Walk
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“Superficiality is a mentality. Those who love for superficial reasons will also hate for superficial reasons; those who vote for one candidate for superficial reasons will also dislike the other for superficial reasons; those who live for superficial reasons are more susceptible to burying themselves deeply in an existential debt, and then it comes: regret when on the bed of death.”

VotingMentalityExistentialSearch For MeaningSuperficialityMeaninglessnessSuperficial CultureGo DeeperLack Of PurposeFind A Purpose
Author:Criss Jami
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“...it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.”

BarsNihilismMeaninglessnessNadaLord S Prayer
Book:A Clean Well-Lighted Place
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“And this notion of the meaninglessness of our lives here began to enflame us. I took up the theme again that music and acting were good because they drove back chaos. Chaos was the meaninglessness of day-to-day life, and if we were to die now, our lives would have been nothing but meaninglessness.”

ActingMusicChaosDay To DayMeaninglessnessAnne RiceLestat De LioncourtThe Vampire ChroniclesThe Vampire LestatMeaninglessness Of Life
Book:The vampire Lestat
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“What emerges from these separate strands of (modern) history is an image of man himself that bears a new, stark, more nearly naked, and more questionable aspect. The contraction of man's horizons amounts to a denudation, a stripping down, of this being who has now to confront himself at the center of all his horizons. The labor of modern culture, whenever it has been authentic, has been a labor of denudation. A return to the sources; "to the things themselves," as Husserl puts it; toward a new truthfulness, the casting away of ready-made presuppositions and empty forms - these are some of the slogans under which this phase in history has presented itself. Naturally enough, much of this stripping down must appear as the work of destruction, as revolutionary or even "negative": a being who has become thoroughly questionable to himself must also find questionable his relation to the total past which in a sense he represents.”

TruthHistoryDoubtTraditionExistentialismModernityReductionNegationMeaninglessnessSelf QuestioningNakedness
Book:Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy
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