138 Quotes On Life'S Meaning

In our quest for understanding and fulfillment, exploring the meaning of life often becomes a profound journey. Countless thinkers, writers, and philosophers have pondered this timeless question, offering insights that resonate through the ages. In this collection, we've gathered 138 quotes that encapsulate the essence of life's purpose and significance. Whether you're seeking inspiration, introspection, or simply a moment of clarity, these quotes invite you to reflect and perhaps even discover your own path to meaning. Dive into this compilation of wisdom and let these words guide you through the intricacies of existence.

1. “Do you know a cure for me?""Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water.""Salt water?" I asked him."Yes," he said, "in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.” - Isak Dinesen

2. “In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done." And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely."Everything must have a purpose?" asked God."Certainly," said man."Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this," said God.And He went away.” - Kurt Vonnegut

3. “Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.” - Mark Haddon

4. “He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? But to act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” - Anonymous

5. “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” - Albert Camus

6. “Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own the future, too. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but there is something wrong with the picture. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature's highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we're expected! But there is no such place, that's why it's called utopia. The death of a child has no more meaning than the death of armies, of nations. Was the child happy while he lived? That is a proper question, the only question. If we can't arrange our own happiness, it's a conceit beyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of those who come after us.” - Tom Stoppard

7. “Many find in sex and economics the meaning of life and the reason of it all. The consequence of this is that the goal of life for many has become a relief of tension.” - Sachindra Kumar Majumdar

8. “To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

9. “Life is problems. Living is solving problems.” - Raymond E. Feist

10. “The purpose of life is to stay alive. Watch any animal in nature--all it tries to do is stay alive. It doesn't care about beliefs or philosophy. Whenever any animal's behavior puts it out of touch with the realities of its existence, it becomes exinct.” - Michael Crichton

11. “The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.” - W. Somerset Maugham

12. “It is a great priviledge to hear from the mouth of an initiate what struggles we are ensnared in and what the meaning is of the sacrifices we are required to make before veiled images. Even if we should hear something evil, it would still be a blessing to see our task as something beyond a senseless cycle of recurrence.” - Ernst Jünger

13. “Man must learn to know the universe precisely as it is, or he cannot successfully find his place in it. A man should therefore use his reasoning faculty in all matters involving truth, and especially as concerning his religion. He must learn to distinguish between truth and error.” - John A. Widtsoe

14. “Everything ends, and Everything matters. Everything matters not in spite of the end of you and all that you love, but because of it. Everything is all you’ve got…and after Everything is nothing. So you were wise to welcome Everything, the good and the bad alike, and cling to it all. Gather it in. Seek the meaning in sorrow and don’t ever turn away, not once, from here until the end. Because it is all the same, it is all unfathomable, and it is all infinitely preferable to the one dreadful alternative.” - Ron Currie Jr.

15. “Life is a fairy tale. Live it with wonder and amazement.” - Welwyn Wilton Katz

16. “Beyond work and love, I would add two other ingredients that give meaning to life. First, to fulfill whatever talents we are born with. However blessed we are by fate with different abilities and strengths, we should try to develop them to the fullest, rather than allow them to atrophy and decay. We all know individuals who did not fulfill the promise they showed in childhood. Many of them became haunted by the image of what they might have become. Instead of blaming fate, I think we should accept ourselves as we are and try to fulfill whatever dreams are within our capability.Second, we should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide.” - Michio Kaku

17. “As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. … That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life… Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.” - Anthony de Mello

18. “There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.” - Anais Nin

19. “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” - Francois Rabelais

20. “Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

21. “Friends are the family you choose (~ Nin/Ithilnin, Elven rogue).” - Jess C. Scott

22. “If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.” - Viktor Frankl

23. “Now all my tales are based on the fundemental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.... To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all.” - H.P. Lovecraft

24. “The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is...42!” - Douglas Adams

25. “I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time.” - Haruki Murakami

26. “Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.” - Henry Miller

27. “Life is meaningless, when we take a life we take nothing of value.” - Brent Weeks

28. “The greatest create of power you have on earth, whether you are an angel, a spirit, a man or woman or child is to help others.” - Anne Rice

29. “Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we're a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that's our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.” - Michael Crichton

30. “Art—the meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory.” - Lawrence Durrell

31. “Whenever you become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you lost sight of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of consciousness is primary, all else secondary.” - Eckhart Tolle

32. “I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I've got.” - Hermann Hesse

33. “Wahrscheinlich kann man vom Nichtwollen seelisch nicht leben; eine Sache nicht tun wollen, das ist auf Dauer kein Lebensinhalt.” - Thomas Mann

34. “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.” - Christopher Hitchens

35. “The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair. I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on—only henceforth in my absence. (It's the second of those thoughts: the edition of the newspaper that will come out on the day after I have gone, that is the more distressing.) Much more horrible, though, would be the announcement that the party was continuing forever, and that I was forbidden to leave. Whether it was a hellishly bad party or a party that was perfectly heavenly in every respect, the moment that it became eternal and compulsory would be the precise moment that it began to pall.” - Christopher Hitchens

36. “Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?” - Kurt Vonnegut

37. “We’re on this planet for too short a time. And at the end of the day, what’s more important? Knowing that a few meaningless figures balanced—or knowing that you were the person you wanted to be?” - Sophie Kinsella

38. “The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

39. “Only when you accept that one day you'll die can you let go, and make the best out of life. And that's the big secret. That's the miracle.” - Gabriel Bá

40. “Anyone can get a job, but do you have a purpose?” - Tom Butler-Bowdon

41. “...‘All this suffering,’ I said, ‘and nothing but greed and violence to build on when the war is over.’‘Have another soda-mint,’ said Charles.I had one. Then I said, ‘Why are we here? That’s what I don’t understand. Why be here at all when it all has to be so beastly?’‘I suppose we just came, like mould on cheese.’‘Then why do we want to be happy? Mould on cheese doesn’t want to be happy.’ ...” - Joyce Dennys

42. “Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” - Joseph Campbell

43. “It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters,” - Amit Ray

44. “I have learned that you can go anywhere you want to go and do anything you want to do and buy all the things that you want to buy and meet all the people that you want to meet and learn all the things that you desire to learn and if you do all these things but are not madly in love: you have still not begun to live.” - C. JoyBell C.

45. “God and Destiny are not against us, rather they are for us, they are the ones who never forget the things we have long forgotten, the ones who hear the desires of our heart that our own heads can't hear, and they are the ones who never forget who we really are, long after our minds have forgotten the images of who we are. We come from God and we belong to Destiny, yet for some reason of ignorance we think that to be the master of our own fates and the captain of our own souls means to write everything down on a paper and plan everything out on a grid! Such great things to be done, and we think they are accomplished by our primitive ways! No. We must only know what we want. And want what we want. And then fly high enough to see all that which we want that we couldn't yet see.” - C. JoyBell C.

46. “There are powers far beyond us, plans far beyond what we could have ever thought of, visions far more vast than what we can ever see on our own with our own eyes, there are horizons long gone beyond our own horizons. This is courage- to throw away what is our own that is limited and to thrust ourselves into the hands of these higher powers- God and Destiny.To do this is to abide in the realm of the eternal, to walk in the path of the everlasting to follow in the footprints of God and demi-gods. The hardest part for man is the letting go. For some reason, he thinks himself big enough to know and to see what's good for him. But in the letting go........is found freedom. In the letting go........ is found the flight!” - C. JoyBell C.

47. “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.3 What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?4 A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.5 The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.6 The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north;around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns.7 All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full;to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.8 All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it;the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.9 What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.10 Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”?It has been already in the ages before us.11 There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembranceof later things yet to be among those who come after.” - Anonymous

48. “Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.” - Kurt Vonnegut

49. “The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. I am not speaking, of course, of the beauty which strikes the senses, of the beauty of qualities and appearances. I am far from despising this, but it has nothing to do with science. What I mean is that more intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp.” - Henri Poincare

50. “You discarded most of the lies along the way but held on to the one that said life mattered.” - Stephen King

51. “We modern human beings are looking at life, trying to make some sense of it; observing a 'reality' that often seems to be unfolding in a foreign tongue--only we've all been issued the wrong librettos. For a text, we're given the Bible. Or the Talmud or the Koran. We're given Time magazine, and Reader's Digest, daily papers, and the six o'clock news; we're given schoolbooks, sitcoms, and revisionist histories; we're given psychological counseling, cults, workshops, advertisements, sales pitches, and authoritative pronouncements by pundits, sold-out scientists, political activists, and heads of state. Unfortunately, none of these translations bears more than a faint resemblance to what is transpiring in the true theater of existence, and most of them are dangerously misleading. We're attempting to comprehend the spiraling intricacies of a magnificently complex tragicomedy with librettos that describe the barrom melodramas or kindergarten skits. And when's the last time you heard anybody bitch about it to the management?” - Tom Robbins

52. “We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth nothing but poor bees, destined to accomplish our task and then die.” - Muriel Barbery

53. “The only purpose of our lives consists in waking each other up and being there for each other.” - Johanna Paungger

54. “Could a body broken and blood spilled two thousand years ago restore my own damaged life?” - Frederica Mathewes-Green

55. “The pure power of a life can manifest as beatitude, or as an unspeakable, sheer violence...” - Jane Bennett

56. “A life thus names a restless activeness, a destructive-creative force-presence that does not coincide fully with any specific body. A life tear the fabric of the actual without ever coming fully 'out' in a person, place, or thing. A life points to ... 'matter in variation that enters assemblages and leaves them. A life is a vitality proper not to any individual but to 'pure immanence,' or that protean swarm that is not actual though it is real: 'A life contains only virtuals. It is made of virtualities.” - Jane Bennett

57. “Human resources are like natural resources; they're often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they're not just lying around on the surface. You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves.” - Ken Robinson

58. “The problem for us is not are our desires satisfied or not. The problem is how do we know what we desire.” - Slavoj Žižek

59. “To every thig there is a season,a time for every purpose under the sun.A time to be born,and a time to die.A time to plant,and a time to recap.A time to weep,and I time to laughA time to mourn,and a time to dance.” - Anonymous

60. “Not only is there often a right and wrong, but what goes around does come around, Karma exists, chickens do come home to roost, and as my mother, Phyllis, liked to say, “There is always a day of reckoning.” The good among the great understand that every choice we make adds to the strength or weakness of our spirits—ourselves, or to use an old fashioned word for the same idea, our souls. That is every human’s life work: to construct an identity bit by bit, to walk a path step by step, to live a life that is worthy of something higher, lighter, more fulfilling, and maybe even everlasting.” - Donald Van de Mark

61. “Why was this bloody world created?""As a sewer for the stars," a voice in front of him said. "Alternatively to know God and to glorify Him forever."" [...] The two answers are not, of course, necessarily alternative.” - Charles Williams

62. “I don't think it's a question of liking or disliking it," Tengo said..."It was the one thing he was best at." "Hmm. I see," Kumi said. She pondered this. "But that might very well be the best way to live your life.” - Haruki Murakami

63. “All I wanted and all Neal wanted and all anybody wanted was some kind of penetration into the heart of things where, like in a womb, we could curl up and sleep the ecstatic sleep that Burroughs was experiencing with a good big mainline shot of M. and advertising executives in NY were experiencing with twelve Scotch & Sodas in Stouffers before they made the drunkard's train to Westchester---but without hangovers.” - Jack Kerouac

64. “Why then you're as mad as me. No, madder. For I distrust 'reality' and its moron mother, the universe, while you fasten your innocence to fallible devices which pretend at happy endings.” - Ray Bradbury

65. “A life of short duration...could be so rich in joy and love that it could contain more meaning than a life lasting eighty years.” - Victor Frankl

66. “Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.” - Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

67. “Often, when I have been feeling lonely, when a book as been thrust aside in boredom [...] I have lain back and stared at the shadows on the ceiling, wondering what life is all about [...] and then, suddenly, there is the echo of the swinging door, and across the carpet, walking with the utmost delicacy and precision, stalks Four or Five or Oscar. He sits down on the floor beside me, regarding my long legs, my old jumper, and my floppy arms, with a purely practical interest. Which part of this large male body will form the most appropriate lap? Usually he settles for the chest. Whereupon he springs up and there is a feeling of cold fur [...] and the tip of an icy nose, thrust against my wrist and a positive tattoo of purrs. And I no longer wonder what life is all about.” - Beverley Nichols

68. “Ye know full well that the meaning of life is to find your gift. To find your gift is happiness. Never tae find it is misery.” - Terry Pratchett

69. “I don't know the meaning of life. I don't know why we are here. I think life is full of anxieties and fears and tears. It has a lot of grief in it, and it can be very grim. And I do not want to be the one who tries to tell somebody else what life is all about. To me it's a complete mystery.” - Charles M. Schulz

70. “Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything. Granted, granted I'm a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what's to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is babble--that is, a deliberate pouring from empty into void.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

71. “Philosophers can debate the meaning of life, but you need a Lord who can declare the meaning of life.” - Max Lucado

72. “Just tell me why; why the fucking why?" To which the universe would hollowly respond, "My ways cannot be known, oh man." Which is to say, "My ways do not make sense, nor do the ways of those who dwell in me.” - Philip K. Dick

73. “In mysticism, knowledge cannot be separated from a certain way of life which becomes its living manifestation. To acquire mystical knowledge means to undergo a transformation; one could even say that the knowledge is the transformation. Scientific knowledge, on the other hand, can often stay abstract and theoretical. Thus most of today’s physicists do not seem to realize the philosophical, cultural and spiritual implications of their theories.” - Lois McMaster Bujold

74. “The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.” - Woody Allen

75. “If 'dead' matter has reared up this curious landscape of fiddling crickets, song sparrows, and wondering men, it must be plain even to the most devoted materialists that the matter of which he speaks contains amazing, if not dreadful, powers, and may not impossibly be, as Thomas Hardy has suggested, 'but one mask of many worn by the Great Face behind.” - Loren Eiseley

76. “The end is not the reward; the path you take, the emotions that course through you as you grasp life - that is the reward.” - Jamie Magee

77. “Human beings have their great chance in the novel.” - E.M. Forster

78. “The artist lives to have stories to tell and to learn to tell them well.” - Criss Jami

79. “Tell me that the purpose of life is to have fun, and without a care in the world I'll begin wreaking havoc on everything I pass. Now that's what I call pure, honest fun.” - Criss Jami

80. “Be a lover of the world, it is the only way to survive in it.” - Janosch

81. “Seja como for, as pessoas dedicadas à religião não querem reconhecer a realidade que contradiz o seu conto de fadas. Se realmente vivermos num universo sem Deus, elas perdem o emprego. O fluxo de dinheiro estagna.Por outro lado, há pessoas que escolhem viver a sua vida de uma forma completamente egocêntrica e homicida. Essas sentem que, se nada importa e elas podem fazer o que querem sem sofrer consequeências, vão fazê-lo. Mas também podemos ver as coisas de outra maneira: estamos nós e os outros todos, vivos e num barco salva-vidas, e temos de fazer as coisas da maneira mais decente possível para nós e para eles. A mim parece-me que esta seria uma forma de viver muito mais morale "cristã": reconhecermos a terrível verdade da existência humana e, perante isso, ainda escolhermos ser humanos decentes em vez de nos iludirmos sobre a existência de uma qualquer recompensa paradisíaca ou um qualquer castigo infernal. Parecia-me uma atitude muito mais nobre. Se há recompensa, castigo ou qualquer tipo de pagamento e agimos bem, então não estamos a fazer por razões muito nobres - os chamados princípios cristãos. É como os bombistas suicidas que agem alegadamente de acordo com princípios religiosos ou nacionais bastante nobres quando, na verdade, as suas famílias recebem uma recompensa em dinheiro e congratulam-se com um legado heróico - já para não falar da promessa de virgens para os perpetradores, embora me passe completamente ao lado como é que alguém prefere um grupo de virgens a uma mulher altamente experiente.” - Woody Allen

82. “If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most Ill-adapted to its purpose in the world: for it is absurd to suppose that the endless affliction of which the world is everywhere full, and which arises out of the need and distress pertaining essentially to life, should be purposeless and purely accidental. Each individual misfortune, to be sure, seems an exceptional occurrence; but misfortune in general is the rule.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

83. “What is the meaning of it, Watson? said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.” - Arthur Conan Doyle

84. “Maybe the Truth of the Meaning of Life, Ancient and Arcane Knowledge of the Great Unknowable Universe is handed down only to persons presenting with the correct brand-name footwear. If you turn up wearing Shoe City knock-offs, you don't get to pass Go and collect Infinite Enlightenment.” - Tracy Engelbrecht

85. “I learned that one person hurting another really is like a hand curling into a fist to smash the foot. And that all that really matters is family and other people. And that the purpose of life is to find the Light of God, but not the light from some old guy with a beard sitting up there judging us. The light is the love we give each other on our way back home. And that God wouldn’t mind if we spent a little less time telling him how great he is and a little more time loving each other, and not just the people we’re supposed to love, but everyone.” - Paul H. Magid

86. “Live is meaningful only if you gave it a meaning.” - T. Harv Eker

87. “Le Requiem de Mozart. Un souffle de l'au-delà y plane. Comment croire, après une pareille audition, que l'univers n'ait aucun sens? Il faut qu'il en ait un. Que tant de sublime se résolve dans le néant, le coeur, aussi bien que l'entendement, refuse de l'admettre. Quelque chose doit exister quelque part, un brin de réalité doit être contenu dans ce monde. Ivresse du possible qui rachète la vie. Craignons le retombement et le retour du savoir amer...” - Emil Cioran

88. “Why would our brains have this capacity to sense the oneness of the universe, a sense that can be induced in many ways, even technological, if that capacity did not reflect an external reality?” - Kara Dalkey

89. “It didn't take long to realize I didn't hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don't mean nothing if you don't ast why you here, period” - Alice Walker

90. “Between the natural way and the path of grace there is a deep abyss. It is in that gap that we live our lives as a giant struggle between good and evil, Satan and God, despair and love. Whenever despair wins, it is the natural way. Whenever love wins, it is a moment of grace. When love is victorious and defeats despair completely, you've reached the path of grace.” - Haim Shapira

91. “Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, whom one loves sometimes, would you believe it, without even knowing why; some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with one's heart, out of old habit..."--Ivan Karamazov” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

92. “Одинок полетСветлячка в ночи.Но в небе - звезды."В чем же смысл интуитивно возникшего во мне трехстишья? Человек - одинокий светлячок в бескрайнем мраке ночи. Свет его так слаб, что освещает лишь крошечный кусочек пространства, а вокруг лишь холод, тьма и страх. Но если отвести испуганный взгляд от находящейся внизу темной земли и посмотреть ввысь (всего-то и надо - повернуть голову!), то увидишь, что небо покрыто звездами. Они сияют ровным, ярким и вечным светом. Звезды - твои друзья, они помогут и не бросят в беде. А чуть позже ты понимаешь другое, не менее важное: светлячок - тоже звезда, такая же, как все остальные. Те, что в небе, тоже видят твой свет, и он помогает им вынести холод и мрак Вселенной. Наверное, моя жизнь не изменится. Я буду такой же, как прежде, - и суетный, и вздорный, и подверженный страстям. Но в глубине моей души будет жить достоверное знание. Оно спасет и поддержит меня в трудную минуту. Я больше не мелкая лужа, которую может расплескать по земле сильный порыв ветра. Я - океан, и буря, прокатившись всесокрушающим цунами по моей поверхности, не затронет сокровенных моих глубин.” - Boris Akunin

93. “George, she says it's the truth that matters. We live and die for the chance to maybe tell a little bit of the truth, maybe shame the Devil just a little bit before we go.” - Mira Grant

94. “He had sprung from a rigid Puritan stock, and had been brought up to think much more intently of the duties of this life than of its privileges and pleasures.” - Henry James

95. “You will have fewer regrets in life if you start focusing and taking responsiblity for where you are and where you want to be.” - Deborah Day

96. “Sophie Bach from The Maker:You’re a human being with a personality and a will, and you make choices and think and create. Is there no meaning to you, Adrien Bach?And what about us? Is the way we feel about each other just simulated emotions from some biological process—nothing more?” - Wes Moore

97. “Just say up on the hill is the meaning of life and someone knew it and they wanted everyone else to enjoy it. So they put a red vinyl sofa up there.” - Melina Marchetta

98. “The chances of finding out what’s really going on in the universe are so remote, the only thing to do is hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied.” - Douglas Adams

99. “Poetry doesn’t pay. But I need it. And so do you.” - Cory Basil

100. “There is a coherent plan to the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.” - Fred Hoyle

101. “Look at the stars. See their beauty. And in that beauty, see yourself.” - Draya Mooney

102. “There was a message written in pencil on the tiles by the roller towel. This was it:What is the purpose of life?Trout plundered his pockets for a pen or pencil. He had an answer to the question. But he had nothing to write with, not even a burnt match. So he left the question unanswered, but here is what he would have written, if he had found anything to write with:To bethe eyesand earsand conscienceof the Creator of the Universe,you fool.” - Kurt Vonnegut

103. “The wonderful things in life are the things you do, not the things you have.” - Reinhold Messner

104. “What is the meaning of life?Life has the meaning that you give it.” - Steven Redhead

105. “To sit and contemplate - to remember the faces of women without desire, to be pleased by the great deeds of men without envy, to be everything and everywhere in sympathy and yet content to remain where and what you are.” - Virginia Woolf

106. “There's no sense forcing yourself if you don't feel like it. Tell you the truth, I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time.” - Haruki Murakami

107. “Whatever wisdom I have has been hard-earned – each meaning carefully culled out of the dictionary of human experiences and emotions and put in its precise place in the matrix. Meaning doesn’t come easy. The Great Crossword Setter in the Sky is capricious and wilful, demanding absolute obedience. You can waste the better part of a lifetime arguing about the randomness of the clues, the setting of the squares, why a certain square is black and not white as you need it to be, question the whole point of doing the crossword – what, after all, is to be gained by solving it. Only after all the chattering is over and you give your complete attention to it, does the perfection of the pattern reveal itself. As is, where is, everything fits. And at the end, when it’s all done, there is no reward to be had – the joy of doing it right is all the reward there ever is. (A Deepavali Gift)” - Manjul Bajaj

108. “Perhaps that was the point; life, if you did it right, meant learning and changing. If you didn't, you died- or stopped growing - which amounted to more or less the same thing. So I would slide in and out of different roles until I discovered the one that fit me best.-Deuce, (183)” - Ann Aguirre

109. “What was the point of finding something worth living for if my life was no longer in my own hands?” - Brodi Ashton

110. “In the moment I faced dying, I finally knew my reason for living.” - Brodi Ashton

111. “-i was "far and away"-riding my motorcycle along an american back road, skiing through the snowy Quebec woods, or lying awake in a backwater motel. the theme i was grappling with was nothing less than the Meaning of Life, and i was pretty sure i had defined it: love and respect.love and respect, love and respect-i have been carrying those words around with me for two years, daring to consider that perhaps they convey the real meaning of life. beyond basic survival needs, everybody wants to be loved and respected. and neither is any good without the other. love without respect can be as cold as pity; respect without love can be as grim as fear.love and respect are the values in life that most contribute to "the pursuit of happiness"-and after, they are the greatest legacy we can leave behind. it's an elegy you'd like to hear with your own ears: "you were loved and respected."if even one person can say that about you, it's a worthy achievement, and if you can multiply that many times-well, that is true success.among materialists, a certain bumper sticker is emblematic: "he who dies with the most toys wins!"well, no-he or she who dies with the most love and respect wins...then there's love and respect for oneself-equally hard to achieve and maintain. most of us, deep down, are not as proud of ourselves as we might pretend, and the goal of bettering ourselves-at least partly by earning the love and respect of others-is a lifelong struggle.Philo of Alexandria gave us that generous principle that we have somehow succeeded in mostly ignoring for 2,000 years: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” - Neil Peart

112. “Sometimes, the simple things are more fun and meaningful than all the banquets in the world ...” - E.A. Bucchianeri

113. “Deus ex machina not only erases all meaning and emotion, it's an insult to the audience. Each of us knows we must choose and act, for better or worse, to determine the meaning of our lives...Deus ex machina is an insult because it is a lie.” - Robert McKee

114. “That one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem to be an evil mockery by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself.” - Leo Tolstoy

115. “...things are the way they are in our universe because if they weren't, we wouldn't be here to notice.” - Brian Greene

116. “Love is seeking the good and being the good.” - Erica Goros

117. “[I]t's difficult to make people see that what you have been taught counts for nothing, and that the only things worth having are the things you find out for yourself. Also, that when so many brands of what Chesterton calls 'fancy souls' and theories of life are offered you, there is no sense in not looking pretty carefully to see what you are going in for. [...] It isn't a case of 'Here is the Christian religion, the one authoritative and respectable rule of life. Take it or leave it'. It's 'Here's a muddling kind of affair called Life, and here are nineteen or twenty different explanations of it, all supported by people whose opinions are not to be sneezed at. Among them is the Christian religion in which you happpen to have been brought up. Your friend so-and-so has been brought up in quite a different way of thinking; is a perfectly splendid person and thoroughly happy. What are you going to do about it?' -- I'm worrying it out quietly, and whatever I get hold of will be valuable, because I've got it for myself; but really, you know, the whole question is not as simple as it looks.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

118. “I made sure to pay attention to everything I was doing. To be fully in the moment. Because that's all life is, really, a string of moments that you knot together and carry with you. Hopefully most of those moments are wonderful, but of course they won't all be. The trick is to recognize an important one when it happens. Even if you share the moment with someone else, it is still yours. Your string is different from anyone else's. It is something no one can ever take away from you. It will protect you and guide you, because it IS you. What you hold here, in your hand, in this box, this is my string."Until recently, I thought it was death that gave meaning to life--that having an endpoint is what spurred us on to embrace life while we had it. But I was wrong. It isn't death that gives meaning to life. Life gives meaning to life. The answer to the meaning of life is hidden right there inside the question. "What matters is holding tight to that string, and not letting anyone tell us our goals aren't big enough or our interests are silly. But the voices of others aren't the only ones we need to worry about. We tend to be our own worst critics. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: 'Most of the shadows in this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.' ... Wisdom is found in the least expected places. Always keep your eyes open. Don't block your own sunshine. Be filled with wonder.” - Wendy Mass

119. “We are here because over billions of years, countless variables fell into place, any of which could have taken another path. We are essentially a beautiful fluke, as are the millions of other species with which we share this planet. Our cells are composed of atoms and dust particles from distant galaxies, and from the billions of living organisms that inhabited this planet before us.” - Wendy Mass

120. “I blame my dad for my sweet tooth. His motto was 'Life is short; eat dessert first.' How can I argue with that?” - Wendy Mass

121. “Good begets good; evil begets evil; and even if the good you give is met by evil, you have no choice but to go on giving better than you get. Otherwise-and these were Willy's exact words-why bother to go on living?” - Paul Auster

122. “Whatever we are, whatever we make of ourselves, is all we will ever have – and that, in its profound simplicity, is the meaning of life.” - Philip Appleman

123. “Love is a connection with another person, either through birth or through something else that I cannot even explain. It is often just an attraction at first. But it goes far deeper than that. It is a determination to care for the other person no matter what and to allow oneself to be cared for in return. It is a commitment to make the other happy and to be happy oneself. It is not possessive, but neither is it a victim. And it does not always bring happiness. Often it brings a great deal of pain, especially when the beloved is suffering and one feels impotent to comfort. It is what life is all about. It is openness and trust and vulnerability.” - Mary Balogh

124. “Life and all that is in itis a gift from the infinite mind;And the only way that life can go wrongis by the limited finite mind.” - Eric Foley Saucier

125. “How are we to spend our lives, anyway? That is the real question. We read to seek the answer, and the search itself--the task of a lifetime--becomes the answer.” - Lynne Sharon Schwartz

126. “What else is life from the time you were born but a struggle to matter, at least to someone?” - Elliot Perlman

127. “There are essentially two questions in life - a spiritual question and a material question. The spiritual question is 'Who am I?' The material question is 'What am I to do with my life?' One leads to the other.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

128. “In order to lead a meaningful life, you need to cherish others, pay attention to human values and try to cultivate inner peace.” - Dalai Lama

129. “The single most important human insight to be gained from this way of comparing societies is perhaps the realization that everything could have been different in our own society – that the way we live is only one among innumerable ways of life which humans have adopted. If we glance sideways and backwards, we will quickly discover that modern society, with its many possibilities and seducing offers, its dizzying complexity and its impressive technological advances, is a way of life which has not been tried out for long. Perhaps, psychologically speaking, we have just left the cave: in terms of the history of our species, we have but spent a moment in modern societies. (..) Anthropology may not provide the answer to the question of the meaning of life, but at least it can tell us that there are many ways in which to make a life meaningful.” - Thomas Hylland Eriksen

130. “To think what is true, to sense what is beautiful and to want what is good, hereby the spirit finds purpose of a life in reason.” - Johann Gottfried Herder

131. “Was this how trauma worked? she wondered. Those closest to it remained dumbfounded by the fact that those who weren't present could derive meaning from it?” - Kevin Wilson

132. “Ordinary people who live their lives peacefully, whose days gently resemble each other, may happen one day to stop and wonder why and what for do they do the things they do and have been doing for so many years?” - Haim Shapira

133. “—¿Y qué ocurre cuando uno muere?—Tampoco yo lo sé.—Entonces, ¿por qué tener miedo? —dice Oswald—. Yo creo que no ocurre nada. Y si ocurre algo que es mejor que nada, pues mejor que mejor.—¿Y si lo que ocurre es peor que nada? —le digo.—No existe nada peor que nada. Pero si no es nada, no podré saberlo porque yo no seré nada.Oyéndolo hablar así, siento que Oswald es un genio.—Pero, y si no existes, ¿qué? —le pregunto—. El mundo entero seguirá viviendo sin ti. Como si nunca hubieras pasado por aquí. Y el día en que todas las personas que has conocido también hayan muerto, será como si nunca, nunca hubieras existido. ¿No te parece una pena que pase eso?—Si salvo a Max, no. Si lo salvo, existiré para siempre.” - Matthew Dicks

134. “If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.” - Albert Camus

135. “I still do not understand why some people think they mean nothing to anyone; while their simple smile gives unlimited reasons for others to live.” - M.F.Moonzajer

136. “the most radical question which anyone can be asked is not how much their possessions cost, but whether they have found something of value - that is, something that makes living worthwhile.” - Alister E. McGrath

137. “Lord, give me what you have made me want; I praise and thank you for the desire that you have inspired; perfect what you have begun, and grant me what you have made me long for.” - Anselm of Canterbury

138. “Lat at nigh have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were mean to be? Are you a writer who doesn't write, a painter who doesn't pain, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.” - Steven Pressfield