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1 " 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
2 " 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
3 " Our ability to detect and measure the passage of time is burdensome. The conception and sensation of time bears down upon all of us. It weighs us down; it compresses our souls. There is a variety of ways to escape the dull passage of time or the fearfulness of our accelerating march towards death. We must choose our mechanisms for dealing with the inexorability of time and our finiteness. We can fill our void with work or pleasure, laughter or pain, and fretfulness or courage. We can seek a sense of purposefulness or acknowledge the meaninglessness of life. We can seek to escape the drudgery and pain of life through alcohol, drugs, or pleasure seeking, or by working to support our families and create artistic testaments to our worldly existence. "
4 " 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. "
― Anne Rice , The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles, #2)
5 " Many of us feel alone and assaulted by the meaninglessness of what we are doing. But, at such times, we are doing; the problem is not a lack of activity with a point, but rather questions about the point of the activity. "
― Carolyn G. Heilbrun , The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty
6 " There wasn't a single item of importance [in the newspaper]. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of imporant things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the centre of his compass at his own home. "
7 " Anyway, it's a pretty good story," I said. " You have to admit." " Yeah?" He crumpled up the Kleenex, having dispatched the solitary tear. " You can have it. I'm giving it to you. After I'm gone, write it down. Explain everything. Make it mean something. Use a lot of those fancy metaphors of yours. Put the whole thing in proper chronological order, not like this mishmash I'm making you. Start with the night I was born. March second, 1915. There was a lunar eclipse that night, you know what that is?" " When the earth's shadow falls across the Moon." " Very significant. I'm sure it's a perfect metaphor for something. Start with that." " Kind of trite." I said.He threw the Kleenex at my head. It bounced off my cheek and fell on the floor. I bent to pick it up. Somewhere in its fibers, it held what may have been the last tear my grandfather ever shed. Out of respect for his insistence on the meaninglessness of life--his, everyone's--I threw it into the wastebasket by the door. "
8 " And Castle nodded sagely. 'So this is a picture of the meaninglessness of it all! I couldn't agree "
9 " When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time. "
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
10 " Although some of her passages seek to persuade the reader of the meaninglessness and marginalization of the mathematics, Hayles is content to use mathematics as a means for understanding Borges, perhaps in the same way a sponge riddled with holes is useful in sopping up fluid reality. "
