IS LIFE MEANINGFUL?
QUOTES AND COMMENTS





Left: Dalai Lama.
The Tibetan leader
points out the importance
of happiness
for a meaningful life.





AN HAPPY LIFE IS A MEANINGFUL LIFE

The meaning of life resides in joy and the feelings of harmony connected to happiness; without happiness, life loses meaning. Happiness is at the heart of our lives and our demand for a meaning. The quotes below underlines it.

One great question underlies our experience, whether we think about it consciously or not: What is the purpose of life? I believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. From the moment of birth, every human being wants happiness and does not want to suffer. From the very core of our being we simply desire contentment.
Dalai Lama, Tibetan spiritual and political leader, Voices from the Heart

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence becomes a mad lamentable experiment
George Santayana, 1863-1952, American philosopher, The Life of Reason

I don't know whether the universe, with its countless galaxies, stars, and planets, has a deeper meaning, but at the very least it is clear that we humans who live on this Earth face the task of making a happy life for ourselves.
Dalai Lama, Tibetan spiritual and political leader, Voices from the Heart

Isn’t precisely happiness what we all want, without exception?
Saint Augustine, 354-430, theologian and philosopher, Confessions

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP AS SOURCE OF MEANING

A life without love and friendship is a meaningless life. The meaning of life is, largely, given by love and friendship.


Life is sown with those miracles that only people who love can expect.
Marcel Proust, 1871-1922, French writer, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

There is only one way of happiness, in life: to love and be loved.
George Sand, 1804-1876, French writer, Lettre to Lina Calamatta

Only the soul that loves is happy.
Johann Goethe, 1749-1831, German writer, Egmont

Friendship dances around the world inviting us all to awaken to the recognition of happiness.
Epicurus, 341-270 a. C., Greek philosopher, Vatican Sayings

Of all the means which wisdom turns to in order to ensure happiness during all our life, by far the most important is friendship.
Epicurus, 341-270 a. C., Greek Philosopher, Principal Doctrines

HOLINESS, MAGIC, DREAMS AND MEANINGFUL

Holiness and magic give to man a superior and fantastic world, which can be a source of happiness and meaning; similarly, dreams and even myth and illusion are a source of consolation, of oblivion, of surpassing grief and so, to some degree, a way of giving meaning to our lives.

To the primitive man, the physical universe of rocks, trees, rivers and mountains glittered with meaning. The material world was considered alive and charming, and afforded a sacred stage to human beings and their activity.
Anne Bancroft, English author, Origens do sagrado

The primitive man’s life (…) was rich and full of meanings. At many levels it allowed the chance of a direct experience with the divine, sparkling with meaningful impressions that today are meaningless and trivial.
Anne Bancroft, English author, Origens do sagrado

Religion, mythology and magic bring great Guarantees and great Consolations, which minimize the very strong existential anguish of human beings, and temper their tragedies.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V

Myth fortifies man, concealing the incomprehensibility of his destiny and filling up the nothingness of death.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V

The human being is given over to the cruelty of the world. Hence the necessity of a compromise, which is obtained by mobilizing the myth to find supernatural comforts, by mobilizing the imaginary to shelter the soul in, and by mobilizing aesthetics and poetry to fully live reality.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V

GOD AS A SOURCE OF A MEANINGFUL LIFE

To religious thought the meaning of life is deeply associated with God, with magic and with holiness.

When I seek you, my God, I am seeking happiness. I will seek you in order for my soul to live, because my body lives from my soul, and my soul lives from You.
Saint Augustine, 354-430, theologian and philosopher, Confessions

Ecclesiastes shows that man without God is a total ignorant and in inevitable misery. For it is miserable to have the wish, but not the power. Sometimes he would be happy and assured of some truth, and yet he can neither know, nor even desire not to know.
Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662, French philosopher, physic and mathematician, Thoughts

No man is good without God: is anyone capable of rising above chance unless with God’s help? It’s him that prompts us to noble and exalted endeavors. In each and every good man, as Virgil says, a god (what god we are uncertain) dwells.
Seneca, Roman philosopher and politician, Letters to Lucilius

You are the Truth, oh my God, my light, health of my face. All people want this path, the only happy path, the joy that lives in truth.
Saint Augustine, 354-430, theologian and philosopher, Confessions

There is no salvation outside the Church.
Saint Augustine, 354-430, theologian and philosopher, De Baptismo contra Donatistas

MEANING AS A HUMAN MIND CREATION
To the laity, man makes the meaning of life through his options and values. Life’s meaning (or lack of meaning) is purely a human creation.

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count just with himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth, in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aims than those he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.
Jean Paul Sartre, 1905-1980, French writer and philosopher, Being and Nothingness

Life is nothing until it is lived, but it is yours to make sense of; the value of life is nothing other than the sense you choose.
Jean Paul Sartre, 1905-1980, French writer and philosopher, Existentialism is a Humanism

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.
Henry Thoreau, 1817-1862, American essayist, Journal

Life has the meaning we give it. It has our richness, our enthusiasm, our pride. Or our cowardice.
Miguel Torga, 1907-1995, Portuguese writer, Diário

These then are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
William James, 1842-1910, American philosopher, The Will to Believe


Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.
Erich Fromm, 1900-1980, American philosopher and psychologist, Man for Himself


Ignorant men do not know the excellence of what’s in their hands, until they've flung it away.
Sophocles, 496-406 b. C, Greek Poet, Ajax

THE INSTINCTIVE ELEMENT OF MEANING

Some authors underline the instinctive element of the meaning we attribute to life. This meaning is in our core: is instinctive and rooted in the chemistry of our minds, overcoming social and cultural elements.

Without affections and subjectivity, the meaning of life would be lost, and it will only remain laws, equations, models and forms.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V

The desire to live exists entire and undivided in each being, even in the most insignificant.
Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860, German philosopher, Parerga e Paralipomena

To live is like to love – all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
Samuel Butler, 1835-1902, English writer, Notebooks

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.
Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804, German philosopher, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics

If we weren’t interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that we would not bare it.
Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860, German philosopher, O mundo como vontade e como representaçã