Significance Quotes - Page 23

• Without God, life has no purpose, and without purpose, life has no meaning. Without meaning, life has no significance or hope.

  Rick Warren

  Purpose, God Life, Life Has No Meaning

  Rick Warren (2011). “What on Earth Am I Here For? Purpose Driven Life”, p.15, Harper Collins

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• A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.

  Rollo May

  Giving, World, Patterns

  Rollo May (1991). “The Cry for Myth”, p.15, W. W. Norton & Company

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• ...I is another. If the brass wakes the trumpet, it’s not its fault. That’s obvious to me: I witness the unfolding of my own thought: I watch it, I hear it: I make a stroke with the bow: the symphony begins in the depths, or springs with a bound onto the stage. If the old imbeciles hadn’t discovered only the false significance of Self, we wouldn’t have to now sweep away those millions of skeletons which have been piling up the products of their one-eyed intellect since time immemorial, and claiming themselves to be their authors!

  Arthur Rimbaud

  Spring, Skeletons, Self

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• Americans have a taste for…rocking-chairs. A flippant critic might suggest that they select rocking-chairs so that, even when they are sitting down, they need not be sitting still. Something of this restlessness in the race may really be involved in the matter; but I think the deeper significance of the rocking-chair may still be found in the deeper symbolism of the rocking-horse. I think there is behind all this fresh and facile use of wood a certain spirit that is childish in the good sense of the word; something that is innocent, and easily pleased.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Horse, Thinking, Race

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• All my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Law, Cosmos, Fundamentals

  H. P. Lovecraft (2013). “The Classic Horror Stories”, p.453, OUP Oxford

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• I think men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable. But I think that the results which each man arrives at in his attempts to harmonize his science with his Christianity ought not to be regarded as having any significance except to the man himself, and to him only for a time, and should not receive the stamp of a society.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Christian, Men, Thinking

  James Clerk Maxwell (2002). “The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell:”, p.188, Cambridge University Press

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• Art is the principal way in which the human mind has tried to remake the world in a way that makes sense. The carefully edited, slow-motion, action replay of a rugby tackle, a car crash or a sex act has more significance than the original event. Thanks to virtual reality, we will soon be moving into a world where a heightened super-reality will consist entirely of action replays, and reality will therefore be all the more rich and meaningful.

  J. G. Ballard

  Meaningful, Art, Sex

  "JG Ballard: Theatre of Cruelty". Interview with Jean-Paul Coillard, www.jgballard.ca. 1998.

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• Who does not see that we are likely to ascertain the distinctive significance of religious melancholy and happiness, or of religious trances, far better by comparing them as conscientiously as we can with other varieties of melancholy, happiness, and trance, than by refusing to consider their place in any more general series, and treating them as if they were outside of nature's order altogether?

  William James

  Religious, Order, Doe

  William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.24, Courier Corporation

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• Mead's anthropology had many other red, white and blue- blooded virtues. One was the common anthropological conceit, out of which she made a career, to the effect that the ultimate value of studying other cultures was the use we could make of them to reconstruct our own - a heady kind of intellectual imperialism, as if the final meaning of others' lives was their significance for us.

  Margaret Mead

  Blue, Other Cultures, Careers

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• The Hindu religion appears ... as a cathedral temple, half in ruins, noble in the mass, often fantastic in detail but always fantastic with a significance crumbling or badly outworn in places, but a cathedral temple in which service is still done to the Unseen and its real presence can be felt by those who enter with the right spirit.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Real, Unseen, Details

  Sri Aurobindo (1970). “Letters on Yoga”, Lotus Press (WI)

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• I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success, The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam's scheme of things. "The thing is," I said finally, "he won the Nobel Prize." "Well," she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, "I'm not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat."

  Alan Bennett

  Beautiful, Mother, Land

  "Writing Home". Book by Alan Bennett, 1994.

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• In fact, the influence of Schoenberg may be overwhelming on his followers, but the significance of his art is to be identified with influences of a more subtle kind - not the system, but the aesthetic, of his art. I am quite conscious of the fact that my Chansons madécasses are in no way Schoenbergian, but I do not know whether I ever should have been able to write them had Schoenberg never written.

  Maurice Ravel

  Art, Writing, Should Have

  "Ravel: Man and Musician". Book by Arbie Orenstein, p. 126, 1975.

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• It was not certain what significance the ceremony held... but the formality was no less sacred for it being unintelligible

  Mervyn Peake

  Sacred, Certain, Ceremony

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.236, The Overlook Press

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• It is that happy stretch of time when the lovers set to chronicling their passion. When no glance, no tone of voice is so fleeting but it shines with significance. When each moment, each perception is brought out with care, unfolded like a precious gem from its layers of the softest tissue paper and laid in front of the beloved — turned this way and that, examined, considered.

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Passion, Voice, Shining

  Ahdaf Soueif (2012). “The Map of Love”, p.95, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• There was a heavy, dark pause of vast significance. Which Jim broke by flashing his hands and belting out, “Booga-wooga!” At least Eddie laughed. Adrian flipped Jim the bird and headed to the fridge for another beer.

  J.R. Ward

  Beer, Dark, Hands

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• People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art is a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world. As my artist’s statement explains, my work is utterly incomprehensible and is therefore full of deep significance.

  Bill Watterson

  Art, Mistake, Thinking

  "It's a Magical World". Book by Bill Watterson, October 1996.

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• If I choose to write about sheep, it's just because I happened to write about sheep. There is no deep significance.

  Haruki Murakami

  Writing, Sheep, Happened

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• If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame is one means to silence one's doubts. It has a function to be compared with that of the Egyptian pyramids or the Christian faith in immortality: it elevates one's individual life from its limitations and instability to the plane of indestructability; if one's name is known to one's contemporaries and if one can hope that it will last for centuries, then one's life has meaning and significance by this very reflection of it in the judgments of others.

  Erich Fromm

  Christian, Mean, Reflection

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.57, Open Road Media

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• Again Creb grunted. It was the usual noncommittal comment used by men when responding to a woman. It carried only enough meaning to indicate the woman had been understood, without acknowledging too much significance in what she said.

  Jean M. Auel

  Men, Usual, Too Much

  Jean M. Auel (2010). “The Clan of the Cave Bear (with Bonus Content): Earth's Children, Book One”, p.62, Bantam

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• I fancy you give me credit for being a more systematic sort of cove than I really am in the matter of limits of significance. What would actually happen would be that I should make out Pt (normal) and say to myself that would be about 50:1; pretty good but as it may not be normal we'd best not be too certain, or 100:1; even allowing that it may not be normal it seems good enough and whether one would be content with that or would require further work would depend on the importance of the conclusion and the difficulty of obtaining suitable experience.

  William Sealy Gosset

  Science, Giving, Would Be

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• I've never worked to make money. I understand we've got to eat and all that, but I never said I want to be a multimillionaire or a billionaire. To me, that's of no significance. I work to have the accomplishment.

  Bob Parsons

  Accomplishment, Want, Making Money

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• When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance.

  Ben Hecht

  Money, Blessing, People

  "A child of the century".

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• There is nothing insignificant-nothing.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Insignificant

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1836). “The Poetical and Dramatic Works of S. T. Coleridge. With a Life of the Author”, p.146

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• The greatest significance of the present student generation is that it is through them that the point of view of the subjugated is finally and inexorably being expressed.

  James A. Baldwin

  Views, Generations, Students

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• When you reflect upon the significance of Dr. King to this nation, it's criminal that he hasn't had a feature film that was centered around him until now. That, in and of itself, was emotional. But when you're doing scenes on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, with people still living in Selma and now in their 60s and 70s who had actually marched, who were there that original Bloody Sunday, that's humbling... that's deeply moving. You're no longer acting at that stage, you're just reacting, because it takes the filmmaking process to another dimension.

  David Oyelowo

  Kings, Moving, Sunday

  Source: aalbc.com

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