Significance Quotes - Page 33

• At the end of the first half-century of engine-driven flight, we are confronted with the stark fact that the historical significance of aircraft has been primarily military and destructive.

  Charles Lindbergh

  Military, Flying, Historical

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• A nasty day! A nasty day! 'Twas thus I heard a critic say Because the skies were bleak and gray— And yet it somehow seemed to me The day was all that it should be. I looked it very closely o'er; Its hours still were twenty-four, With sixty minutes each—no less— For deeds of good and helpfulness; And every second full of chance To give the day significance; And every hour full of growth For everybody but the sloth— I couldn't see it quite that way, For though the skies were bleak and gray The day itself, it seemed to me, Was all a day could rightly be.

  John Kendrick Bangs

  Attitude, Sixty Minutes, Sky

  John Kendrick Bangs (1920). “The Cheery Way: A Bit of Verse for Every Day”

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• Many of the rites of passage, those rituals of growing up found in our society, are in the form of such comic, practical joking affairs--which we ignore in the belief that they possess no deeper significance. Yet it is precisely in their being regarded as unimportant that they take on importance. For in them we ritualize and dramatize attitudes which contradict and often embarrass the sacred values which we proclaim through our solemn ceremonies and rituals of nationhood.

  Ralph Ellison

  Growing Up, Attitude, Our Society

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• All sorts of Heroes are intrinsically of the same material; that given a great soul, open to the Divine Significance of Life, then there is given a man fit to speak of this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this, in a great, victorious, enduring manner; there is given a Hero, -- the outward shape of whom will depend on the time and the environment he finds himself in.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Hero, Fighting, Men

  Thomas Carlyle (1871). “The Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.271

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• In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by silence and by speech acting together, comes a double significance. In the symbol proper, what we can call a symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there. By symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Men, Silence, Acting

  Thomas Carlyle, G. B. Tennyson (1984). “Carlyle Reader”, p.276, CUP Archive

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• The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind.

  Joseph Conrad

  Real, Community, Crime

  Joseph Conrad (1905). “Lord Jim”, p.145, McClure, Phillips & Company

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• Significance is sweet.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Sweet

  Ivan Turgenev (2013). “Delphi Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated)”, p.573, Delphi Classics

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• Culture' is a finite segment of the meaningless infinity of the world process, a segment on which human beings confer meaning and significance.

  Max Weber

  Culture, World, Infinity

  Max Weber (2015). “On the Methodology of the Social Sciences”, p.115, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Social economic problems do not exist everywhere that an economic event plays a role as cause or effect - since problems arise only where the significance of those factors is problematical and can be precisely determined only through the application of methods of social-economics.

  Max Weber

  Play, Events, Roles

  Max Weber (2015). “On the Methodology of the Social Sciences”, p.96, Lulu Press, Inc

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• I need to learn. Joy is at the heart of God's plan for human beings. The reason for this is worth pondering awhile: Joy is at the heart of God himself. We will never understand the significance of joy in human life until we understand its importance to God. I suspect that most of us seriously underestimate God's capacity for joy.

  John Ortberg

  Heart, Joy, Needs

  John Ortberg (1997). “The Life You've Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People”, p.65, Harper Collins

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• My pictures are devoid of objects; like objects, they are themselves objects. This means that they are devoid of content, significance or meaning, like objects or trees, animals, people or days, all of which are there without a reason, without a function and without a purpose. This is the quality that counts. Even so, there are good and bad pictures.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Mean, Animal

  FaceBook post by Gerhard Richter from Feb 18, 2016

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• These pictures possibly give rise to questions of political content or historical truth. Neither interests me in this instance. And although even my motivation for painting them is probably of no significance, I am trying to put a name to it here, as an articulation, parallel to the pictures, as it were, of my disquiet and of my opinion.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Motivation, Names

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• To rush in upon an event before its significance has had time to separate from the surrounding circumstances may be enterprising, but is it useful? ... The recent prevalence of these hot histories on publishers' lists raises the question: Should - or perhaps can - history be written while it is still smoking?

  Barbara Tuchman

  History, Smoking, Events

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “Practicing History: Selected Essays”, p.25, Random House

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• It is the unspecified 'you' of modern love poems that I am mostly concerned with here. At least, the addressee is commonly a lover, and the very fact that the name is withheld is offered as a guarantee of the closeness and significance of the relationship.

  John Fuller

  Names, Poetry, Guarantees

  John Fuller (2011). “Who Is Ozymandias?: And other Puzzles in Poetry”, p.194, Random House

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• The Hour-Hand of Life --- Life consists of rare, isolated moments of the greatest significance, and of innumerably many intervals, during which at best the silhouettes of those moments hover about us. Love, springtime, every beautiful melody, mountains, the moon, the sea - all these speak completely to the heart but once, if in fact they ever do get a chance to speak completely. For many men do not have those moments at all, and are themselves intervals and intermissions in the symphony of real life.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Beautiful, Real, Heart

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1984). “Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”, p.247, U of Nebraska Press

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• From looking at your neighbor and realizing his true significance, and that he will die, pity and compassion will arise in you for him and finally you will love him.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Compassion, Realizing, Pity

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• The use of a thing is only a part of its significance. To know anything thoroughly, to have the full command of it in all its appliances, we must study it on its own account, independently of any special application.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Special, Use, Study

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• What is it that endowed things with meaning, value, significance? The creating heart, which desired, and, out of its desire, created. It created joy and woe. It wanted to satiate itself with woe. We must take all the suffering that has been endured by men and animals upon ourselves and affirm it, and possess a goal in which it acquires reason.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Heart, Men, Animal

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• Noble and wise men once believed in the music of the spheres: noble and wise men still continue to believe in the "moral significance of existence." But one day even this sphere-music will no longer be audible to them! They will wake up and take note that their ears were dreaming.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Wise, Dream, Believe

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• It is true, these Roman Catholics, priests and all, impress me as a people who have fallen far behind the significance of their symbols. It is as if an ox had strayed into a church and were trying to bethink himself. Nevertheless, they are capable of reverence; but we Yankees are a people in whom this sentiment has nearly died out, and in this respect we cannot bethink ourselves even as oxen.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Yankees, Oxen, People

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Yankee in Canada”, p.17, Graphic Arts Books

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• Of what significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of an inward dawn?--to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if the morning reveals nothing to the soul? It is merely garish and glaring.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspirational, Morning, Reflection

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.247, Simon and Schuster

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• The sole work and deed of universal freedom is therefore death, a death too which has no inner significance or filling, for what is negated is the empty point of the absolutely free self. It is thus the coldest and meanest of all deaths, with no more significance than cutting off a head of cabbage or swallowing a mouthful of water.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Death, Freedom, Cutting

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, A.V. Miller (tr.) (1998). “Phenomenology of Spirit”, p.360, Motilal Banarsidass Publ.

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• In all the thrashing about that results from our dwindling gold reserves, it's about time that this country and other countries get some perspective on the situation. The day this country is out of the stuff, that day gold becomes what it's worth as a metal and no longer will have much significance as a monetary measurement. It isn't the gold we have that makes this nation rich. It's what we make, our knowhow, our productivity. So long as this country produces more and better, the world will continue to want what we make.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Country, Long, Perspective

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• No one must think that Newton’s great creation can be overthrown in any real sense by this [Theory of Relativity] or by any other theory. His clear and wide ideas will for ever retain their significance as the foundation on which our modern conceptions of physics have been built.

  Albert Einstein

  Real, Thinking, Ideas

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• I knew what the sanctified life was not. Not a life filled with more rituals, more scrupulously observed. Not more praying. Not becoming a better person, being more charitable, more concerned with everyone else's pains. Sanctifying had something to do with a sense of constant wonder - feeling gratitude and finding significance everywhere, in every action, relationship and object.

  Vanessa L Ochs

  Gratitude, Pain, Feelings

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