Significance Quotes

“Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Without God, life has no purpose, and without purpose, life has no meaning. Without meaning, life has no significance or hope.”
― Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

“While it is better to be loved than hated, it is also far better to be hated than ignored.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“Their feelings were suppressed so carefully in everyday life, forced into smaller and smaller spaces, until seemingly minor events took on insane and frightening significance. It was permissible to touch each other and cry during football matches.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Whether you try too hard to fit in or you try too hard to stand out, it is of equal consequence: you exhaust your significance.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“We have to be bigger than the things we suffer.”
― Shelly Crane, Undeniably Chosen

“The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“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, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

“A life isn't significant except for its impact on other lives.”
― Jackie Robinson

“The difference between real life and a story is that life has significance, while a story must have meaning.

The former is not always apparent, while the latter always has to be, before the end.”
― Vera Nazarian

“No matter the self-conceited importance of our labors we are all compost for worlds we cannot yet imagine.”
― David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

“It's harder to pick and choose when you're dead. It's like a photograph, you know. It doesn't matter as much.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“He thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“How good is it to remember one's insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of an animal amid billions of animals; and one's abode, the earth, a little grain of sand in comparison with Sirius and others, and one's life span in comparison with billions on billions of ages. There is only one significance, you are a worker. The assignment is inscribed in your reason and heart and expressed clearly and comprehensibly by the best among the beings similar to you. The reward for doing the assignment is immediately within you. But what the significance of the assignment is or of its completion, that you are not given to know, nor do you need to know it. It is good enough as it is. What else could you desire?”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Things don’t have significance: they only have existence.
Things are the only hidden meaning of things.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep

“Why does every road eventually narrow into a point at the horizon? Because that's where the point lies.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.”
― Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion

“When a man gives you a rose what you see may not be what he intends. You may think he sees you as delicate or frail. Perhaps you dislike a suitor who considers you sweet and nothing else. Perhaps the stem is thorn, and you assume he thinks you likely to hurt a hand too quick to touch. But if he trims the thorns you might think he has no liking for a thing that can defend itself with sharpness. There's so many ways a thing can be interpreted.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Science is an organized pursuit of triviality.

Art is a casual pursuit of significance.

Let's keep it in perspective.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“You just had to get some idea of what matters and what doesn't, and how much, and try not to be scared of the stuff that doesn't. Put it in perspective.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“Never do anything local or insignificant”
― Sunday Adelaja

“The distance between significance and irrelevance is shorter than you think. It could be traveled in a single day, a single moment, or even a single word.”
― Sean Norris, Heaven and Hurricanes

“...I have taught myself to believe that what exists is what matters. What is visible is what counts.

[LEO NAVARRA, in a letter to his son Ettore]”
― Maaza Mengiste, The Shadow King

“On a cosmic scale, it seems that the life of a single plant or animal is completely insignificant. Then, on the same scale, I also am insignificant; and you, too. In fact, everyone and everything is insignificant, and therefore no one and nothing is insignificant.”
― Giannis Delimitsos

“I know you feel it in your bones that you are meant to do something significant.

But who defines what this “significant” purpose is?

It’s our ego that says that, not your heart.

Our true selves, which the heart reflects, knows no hierarchy, no rank in actions. It does not judge an activity as being superior or inferior to another activity. Your heart only knows joy and no joy, resonance and dissonance.

Ask your heart, what is it you find joy in?
What resonates with you?
What can you lose yourself in these days?

Even if you answer these questions with a mundane, ordinary activity, know that that is your purpose right now. Know that doing that is going to help you align with your core self and become a great channel to bring forth original thoughts, thoughts that shake the world.

Let your daily practice be formed out of joy, not out of discipline. And if it doesn’t give you joy, take a rest. Move away from it for now. And come back to it later when you can enjoy it.”
― RegardsRei

“How perverse, she thought, that some of the more intense moments of one's life should take place in intimacy with people one does not know.”
― Penelope Lively, Perfect Happiness

“Sometimes I watched my shadow gliding beside me on the snow, and used it as proof that I was real. I was here. But often I felt like a ghost on those moonlit snowfields, a spirit trapped between worlds of the living and the dead, guided by nothing more than will and memory, and an indestructible longing for home.”
― Nando Parrado, Miracle in the Andes

“Why was she being this idiotic about him? He was only a cat.

There is no "only a," she told herself. Nothing and no one is "only a.”
― Margaret Atwood, Old Babes in the Wood: Stories

“English: "Some ‘nonsenses’ are misunderstood meanings."

Česky: „Některé ‚nesmysly‘ jsou nepochopené smysly.”
― Sebastián Wortys

“I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn’t ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men