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1 " 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 , Verliebt in die verrückte Welt
2 " What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. "
― Viktor E. Frankl , Man's Search for Meaning
3 " Acts of violence-- Whether on a large or a small scale, the bitter paradox: the meaningfulness of death--and the meaninglessness of killing. "
― Dag Hammarskjöld , Markings
4 " It is possible that our present-day discussion about needs might be framed more by secular psychological theories than by Scripture. If this is so, we should be careful about saying, " Jesus meets all our needs." At first, this has a plausible biblical ring to it. Christ _is_a friend; God _is_ a loving Father; Christians _do_ experience a sense of meaningfulness and confidence in knowing God's love. It makes Christ the answer to our problems. Yet if our use of the term " needs" is ambiguous, and its range of meaning extends all the way to selfish desires, then there will be some situations where we should say that Jesus does not intend to meet our needs, but that he intends to change our needs. "
5 " Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level. "
― Ernest Becker , The Denial of Death
6 " A person au fait with the millenarian edict of knowing oneself does not need a tattoo, pierced ear, or gaudy neck chains to declare who they are. Eccentricity for its own sake is simply a boring fashion statement and not a thoughtful statement of what comprises a wholesome self. A self-poised person does not need to own a luxury car to determine their degree of self-worth. Nor does a self-determined person need to idolize celebrities, hate other people whom they do not wish to exemplify, or live vicariously through other people’s admirable deeds. A person with unique and contented self-identify does not flip through fashion magazines or scan the headlines of gossip magazines when loitering in the supermarket checkout stand. A person who contemplates the meaningfulness of their existence is not fixated with posing in other people’s raiment or observing other people’s nakedness. A person who knows who they are and realizes how to accomplish all of their life goals does not dally by people watching or become distracted by envying other people. "
― , Dead Toad Scrolls
7 " Until you can understand illogicality, and the meaningfulness of it, shun the Sufis except for limited, precise, self-evident services. "
― Idries Shah , The Sufis
8 " The mechanism by which spirituality becomes passionate is metaphor. An ineffable God requires metaphor not only to be imagined but to be approached, exhorted, evaded, confronted, struggled with, and loved. Through metaphor, the vividness, intensity, and meaningfulness of ordinary experiences becomes the basis of a passionate spirituality. An ineffable God becomes vital through metaphor: The Supreme Being. The Prime Mover. The Creator. The Almighty. The Father. The King of Kings. Shepherd. Potter. Lawgiver. Judge. Mother. Lover. Breath. The vehicle by which we are moved in passionate spirituality is metaphor. The mechanism of such metaphor is bodily. It is a neural mechanism that recruits our abilities to perceive, to move, to feel, and to envision in the service not only of theoretical and philosophical thought, but of spiritual experience. "
― George Lakoff , Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought
9 " Faith is the final triumph over incongruity the final assertion of the meaningfulness of existence. "
