Meaning

Famous quotes containing the word meaning:

    Do you know what Agelisas said, when he was asked why the great city of Lacedomonie was not girded with walls? Because, pointing out the inhabitants and citizens of the city, so expert in military discipline and so strong and well armed: “Here,” he said, “are the walls of the city,” meaning that there is no wall but of bones, and that towns and cities can have no more secure nor stronger wall than the virtue of their citizens and inhabitants.
    François Rabelais (1494–1553)

    I begin, then, with some remarks about ‘the meaning of a word.’ I think many persons now see all or part of what I shall say: but not all do, and there is a tendency to forget, or to get it slightly wrong. In so far as I am merely flogging the converted, I apologize to them.
    —J.L. (John Langshaw)

    To lose sensibility, to see what one sees,
    As if sight had not its own miraculous thrift,
    To hear only what one hears, one meaning alone,
    As if the paradise of meaning ceased
    To be paradise, it is this to be destitute.
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)