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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

“But that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Never do anything local or insignificant”
― Sunday Adelaja

“Library Book with Many Precisely Turned-Down Corners

I unfold carefully the thoughts of one who has come before me,
the way a listening dog’s ears
may be seen lifting
to some sound beyond its person’s quite understanding.”
― Jane Hirshfield, Ledger: Poems

“We cannot even think, without leaving a mark somewhere on the cosmos.”
― William Golding, The Pyramid

“I decided many moons ago to stop reading into the little actions of men.”
― Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“You see but short beyond the present whirl
Of circumstance, your little wrongs and petty ills.

But when it all has passed and you have lost
The swinging rhythmic cadence of the marching feet,
Then you will reck as paltry small the cost,
And memory will purge the bitter from the sweet.”
― Robert Penn Warren

“Our friend from Turkey says language is so delicate he likens it to a darling.

We will take this word in our arms.
It will be small and breathing.
We will not wish to scare it.
Pressing lips to the edge of each syllable.
Nothing else will save us now.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“Leave him alone for a moment or two,
and you’ll see him with his head
bent down, brooding, brooding,
eyes fixed on some chip,
some stone, some common plant,
the commonest thing,
as if it were the clue.
The disturbed eyes rise,
furtive, foiled, dissatisfied
from meditation on the true
and insignificant.”
― Robert Lowell, For the Union Dead

“A king is but a man, and a crown is just a hat. It is the kingdom that endures.”
― Nefertari Cobra

“I walk from one room in the house to another & the dog follows.
Sometimes
when I sit, he sits beside me, puts his wide paw on my knee—his devotion,

a heavy gift.”
― Kathleen Graber, The River Twice: Poems

“Success is what you achieve. Significance is who is better because of you.”
― Chris Sund, You Are Capable of More: A No-Excuses Guide to Becoming Your Best Self