Meanness Quotes (page 26)
Men of the world who value the Way all turn to books. But books are nothing more than words. Words have value; what is of value in words is meaning. Meaning has something it is pursuing, but the thing that it is pursuing cannot be put into words and handed down. The world values words and hands down books but, though the world values them, I do not think them worth valuing. What the world takes to be values is not real value.
Zhuangzi
Nerd. Geek. Used to be if you self-identified that way, you'd get thrown into a locker and never have sex. Or worse, whatever that is. But to me and more and more people I know, being a nerd or a geek means having passion, power, intelligence. Being a nerd just means there is something in the world that you care deeply about--be it twelve-sided dice, a favorite sports team, your new laptop or Knight Rider.
Olivia Munn
My life is absolutely meaningless. When I consider the different periods into which it falls, it seems like the word Schnur in the dictionary, which means in the first place a string, in the second, a daughter-in-law. The only thing lacking is that the word Schnur should mean in the third place a camel, in the fourth, a dust-brush.
Soren Kierkegaard
Contrary to what is generally believed, meaning and sense were never the same thing, meaning shows itself at once, direct, literal, explicit, enclosed in itself, univocal, if you like, while sense cannot stay still, it seethes with second, third and fourth senses, radiating out in different directions that divide and subdivide into branches and branchlets, until they disappear from view, the sense of every word is like a star hurling spring tides out into space, cosmic winds, magnetic...
Jose Saramago
In reaction against the age-old slogan, "woman is the weaker vessel," or the still more offensive, "woman is a divine creature," we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that "a woman is as good as a man," without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is something so obvious that it is apt to escape attention altogether, viz: (...) that a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual...
Dorothy L. Sayers
Might not too much investment in teaching Shelley mean falling behind our economic competitors? But there is no university without humane inquiry, which means that universities and advanced capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. And the political implications of that run far deeper than the question of student fees.
Terry Eagleton
Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie, And young affection gapes to be his heir; That fair for which love groan'd for and would die, With tender Juliet match'd, is now not fair. Now Romeo is beloved and loves again, Alike betwitched by the charm of looks, But to his foe supposed he must complain, And she steal love's sweet bait from fearful hooks: Being held a foe, he may not have access. To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear; And she as much in love, her means much less. To meet her...
William Shakespeare
The silly ass had left the kitchen door open, and I hadn't gone two steps when his voice caught me squarely in the eardrum.'You will find Mr Wooster', he was saying to the substitue chappie, 'an extremely pleasant and amiable young gentleman, but not intelligent. By no means intelligent. Mentally he is negligible - quite negligible'. Well, I mean to say. What! I suppose, strictly speaking, I ought to have charged in and ticked the blighter off properly in no uncertain voice. But I doubht...
P. G. Wodehouse
For man seems to be unable to live without myth, without the belief that the routine and drudgery, the pain and fear of this life have some meaning and goal in the future. At once new myths come into being? political and economic myths with extravagant promises of the best of futures in the present world. These myths give the individual a certain sense of meaning by making him part of a vast social effort, in which he loses something of his own emptiness and loneliness. Yet the very violence...
Alan Watts
... with men it's rush, rush, rush, every minute. I'm glad I'm a sedentary spider."What does sedentary mean?" asked Wilbur."Means I sit still a good part of the time and don't go wandering all over creation. I know a good thing when I see it, and my web is a good thing. I stay put and wait for what comes. Gives me a chance to think.
E. B. White
She catches hold, then of this word "nothing," and stabs at it with a multitude of words and examples, and by means of a suitable interpretation, reduces it to this, that "nothing" can mean the same as "only a little thing" or "an imperfect thing;" she expounds in other words what the Sophists have hitherto taught regarding this passage: "Apart from me you can do nothing," that is to say "nothing perfectly.
Martin Luther