Significance Quotes - Page 5

• It would be something that another person had written down without understanding its significance; just a sentence or two that would be like a flash of light.

  Jeanne DuPrau

  Light, Two, Understanding

  Jeanne DuPrau (2016). “The City of Ember Complete Series”, p.93, Random House Books for Young Readers

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• Cleaning is considered a vital part of the training process in all traditional Japanese disciplines and is a required practice for any novice. It is accorded spiritual significance. Purifying an unclean place is believed to purify the mind.

  Mineko Iwasaki

  Spiritual, Practice, Discipline

  Mineko Iwasaki, Rande Brown (2012). “Geisha Of Gion: The True Story Of Japan's Foremost Geisha”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

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• I love enemies, though not in the Christian way. They amuse me, excite my blood. Being always on one’s guard, catching every glance, the significance of every word, guessing at intentions, frustrating their plots, pretending to be tricked, and suddenly, with a shove, upturning the whole enormous and arduously built edifice of their cunning and schemes—that’s what I call life.

  Mikhail Lermontov

  Christian, Blood, Enemy

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• Would you be willing to give your life to save the world if no one ever knew your name? If anonymity was the price you would have to pay for significance, would it be too great a price? To live a life of courage is not a guarantee of prestige or adulation. It only matters if you live and die fulfilling the mission you were born for.

  Erwin McManus

  Names, Giving, Pay

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• Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.

  Carl Jung

  Letting Go, Ego, Midlife

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• These dreams reminded me that, since I wished some day to become a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried to discover some subject to which I could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock, my consciousness would be faced with a blank, I would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent or perhaps that some malady of the brain was hindering its development.

  Marcel Proust

  Dream, Book, Philosophical

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume I: Swann's Way (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.251, Modern Library

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• He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor.

  Alain de Botton

  Believe, Eye, Intelligent

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• Trillian had come to suspect that the main reason [Zaphood] had had such a wild and successful life was that he never really understood the significance of anything he did.

  Douglas Adams

  Successful, Reason, Understood

  Douglas Adams (2009). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, p.60, Pan Macmillan

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• And if these incidents now seem full of significance and all of a piece, it's probably because I'm looking at them in the light of what came later.

  Kazuo Ishiguro

  Light, Pieces, Incidents

  Kazuo Ishiguro (2009). “Never Let Me Go”, p.71, Faber & Faber

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• I have no word of yours to assure me that our brief friendship held for you the same significance it held for me, but I must go on believing so. Every hope of the future is meaningless unless I have faith that you and I will share it together.

  Elizabeth George Speare

  Believe, Together, Goes On

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• In Tereza’s eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her: the novels. She had read any number of them, from Fielding to Thomas Mann. They not only offered the possibility of an imaginary escape from a life she found unsatisfying; they also had a meaning for her as physical objects: she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane from the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.

  Milan Kundera

  Book, Eye, Numbers

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• We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.

  Alain de Botton

  Views, Quality, Divergent

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.9, Vintage

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• The observations and encounters of a devotee of solitude and silence are at once less distinct and more penetrating than those of the sociable man; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. Images and perceptions which might otherwise be easily dispelled by a glance, a laugh, an exchange of comments, concern him unduly, they sink into mute depths, take on significance, become experiences, adventures, emotions.

  Thomas Mann

  Adventure, Sadness, Men

  Thomas Mann (1999). “Death in Venice, Tonio Kroger, and Other Writings: Thomas Mann”, p.115, A&C Black

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• Something begins in order to end: an adventure doesn't let itself be extended it achieves significance only through its death.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Adventure, Order, Achieve

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• No matter what anyone says, suicide takes guts. It's for heroes and martyrs, truly vainglorious men. Archie was none of these. He was a man whose significance in the Greater Scheme of Things could be figured along familiar ratios: Pebble : Beach Raindrop : Ocean Needle : Haystack

  Zadie Smith

  Suicide, Beach, Ocean

  Zadie Smith (2000). “White teeth”

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• Now to understand the significance of chastity within us, we have to know that chastity is the foundation of all dharmas. Unless and until you have sense of chastity you cannot have dharma.

  Nirmala Srivastava

  Love, Wisdom, Yoga

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• To be anthropocentric is to remain unaware of the limits of human nature, the significance of biological processes underlying human behavior, and the deeper meaning of long-term genetic evolution.

  E. O. Wilson

  Science, Long, Limits

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• The divinity of Jesus is not a dispensable extra that has no significance for our salvation. On the contrary, our salvation depends on it. We can be saved only by God Himself.

  Klaas Runia

  Christian, Jesus, Divinity

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• The central significance of prayer is not in the things that happen as results, but in the deepening intimacy and unhurried communion with God at His central throne of control in order to discover a sense of God's need in order to call on God's help to meet that need.

  Edward McKendree Bounds

  Prayer, Order, Needs

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• When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy it implies, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Couple, Justice, Diversity

  "The Second Sex". Book by Simone de Beauvoir, 1949.

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• Most of the time when "universal" is used, it's just a euphamism for "white"; white themes, white significance, white culture.

  Merle Woo

  White, Justice, Diversity

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• The most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others.

  Grayson L. Kirk

  Education, Personality, Important

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• Teamwork requires that everyone's efforts flow in a single direction. Feelings of significance happen when a team's energy takes on a life of its own.

  Pat Riley

  Teamwork, Effort, Feelings

  Pat Riley (1993). “The winner within: a life plan for team players”, Putnam Adult

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• An essential part of any successful action on the part of the United States is an understanding on the part of the people of America of the character of the problem and the remedies to be applied. ... It is virtually impossible at this distance merely by reading, or listening, or even seeing photographs or motion pictures, to grasp at all the real significance of the situation. And yet the whole world of the future hangs on a proper judgment.

  George C. Marshall

  Military, Real, Distance

  The Marshall Plan, delivered 5 June 1947 at Harvard University

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• In many college English courses the words “myth” and “symbol” are given a tremendous charge of significance. You just ain’t no good unless you can see a symbol hiding, like a scared gerbil, under every page. And in many creative writing course the little beasts multiply, the place swarms with them. What does this Mean? What does that Symbolize? What is the Underlying Mythos? Kids come lurching out of such courses with a brain full of gerbils. And they sit down and write a lot of empty pomposity, under the impression that that’s how Melville did it.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Kids, Writing, Mean

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