Importance Quotes

“I know
you don’t always understand,
but let me point to the first
wet drops landing on the stones,
the noise like fingers drumming
the skin. I can’t help it. I will
never get over making everything
such a big deal.”
― Ada Limon, The Carrying

“If I can draw you the right way, maybe you'll be able to see yourself through my eyes," I said, "If all goes well, of course."

"That's why we needs pictures."

"You're right--that's why we need pictures. Or literature, or music, or anything of that sort.”
― Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore

“Don’t search for something grand, as your values might be hidden behind something that you discard as ordinary.”
― Dr Prem Jagyasi

“Through the radical undoing and debilitation of repeated pain we are reacquainted with the essentialities of place and time and existence itself; in deep pain we have energy only for what we can do wholeheartedly and then, only within a narrow range of motion, metaphorically or physically, from tying our shoelace to holding the essential core conversations that are reciprocal and reinforcing within the close-in circle of those we love. Pain teaches us a fine economy, in movement, in the heart’s affections, in what we ask of ourselves and eventually in what we ask in others.”
― David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

“Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised; and the rememberer and the remembered; and all this in a nook of this part of the world; and not even here do all agree; no not anyone with himself; and the whole earth too is a point.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“I have begun to believe in, and even to preach, a poetry of necessity. This is a recognition not just of the necessity of poetry to our lives, but also the fact that necessity is what drives most of the poetry that matters, or the way that it matters.”
― Kevin Young, The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing

“You don't scream when You know its worthless, your scream will bounce back to you as he doesn't even care about it.”
― Asmara Rizvi

“It's the darkness that enhances the value of light, your success is defined by how you shine in adversity.”
― Dr Prem Jagyasi

“The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance.”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“A great library is anything and everything. It is not for its current custodians to judge what the future will find to be of importance, and it is this eclecticism that gives it the mystique, that is the wonder of it.”
― Penelope Lively, Ammonites And Leaping Fish: A Life In Time

“and the uniform jacket he wore was so tattered and dirty that there could only be one reason he still had it. It must mean something to him, hold some particular importance.”
― Noor Al-Shanti, Children of the Dead City

“He may have a title, but it does not determine his true worth.”
― Chantal Gadoury, Winterdream: A Retelling of The Nutcracker

“Both voice and self are established in early childhood. People who have not been given voice then have the lifelong need to be heard. The self goes under construction with unexpectedly large cost overruns in order to acquire a sense of value and importance.”
― Alis Cerrahyan, Dance Like Nobody's Watching

“Normal is never one of a kind.”
― Richie Norton

“He looked as if it hadn’t occurred to him that it might not matter.”
― Lois Lowry, A Summer to Die

“...Alan, the first winter we knew him, stood at my desk in the Cathedral library and remarked, "I think you and Hugh live more existentially than most people."

I felt we'd made it: we, like Sartre and Camus and Kierkegaard, were existential; we were really with it. It doesn't matter that I'm still not quite sure what living existentially means, though I have a suspicion that it's not far from living ontologically, because it's one of those words that's outside the realm of provable fact and touches on mystery. Nothing important is completely explicable.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet

“What we value is important to us. It rises in the finite hierarchy of things we pay attention to. We are willing to put effort and energy in it. What we value however arises from our perspective; the way our brain synthesizes reality filtering facts it sees through its library of memories, its catalogue of knowledge and its store of experience. Our perspective then determines how we see the world and sense our place in it which means it establishes our position in what I will call our known universe. The perspective we have then feeds our sense of identity; what we feel we are and our sense of how others see us modified through our need for others to see us in a specific way. Our sense of identity, in turn, gives rise to our values. Our values determine our energy expenditure and guide our attention. Our attention determines what’s important to us.

You can see here how a misstep anywhere along this chain can derail us.”
― David Amerland

“Of what importance is it? To get married, bear a child, nurture the child until adulthood then destroy the whole process.”
― Abayomi Kayode Patrick

“Relationships take time, but we don’t want to take the time. In reality, too busy is a myth. People make time for the things that are really important to them.”
― Jonathan Hayashi, Ordinary Radicals: A Return to Christ-Centered Discipleship

“The young body has not the importance except the sex; conversely, young and healthy thoughts, whatever the age is, inspire one to discover the secrets of the universe.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“She might do what the mortals did, and strain to convince herself that the death of her Boy and the loss of her husband had happened for some reason, that some restitution would be made for her, that she would be paid for her suffering with a truer and more tolerable understanding of the world, but she didn't think she had the muscles for it.”
― Chris Adrian, The Great Night

“The importance we give our disappointment is what turns it into a tragedy.”
― Nitya Prakash

“A forest full of trees is as important and valuable as a mine full of gold.”
― Paul Bamikole

“I would encourage you to always look at the little things, for little though they are, they hold great things. And I would likewise encourage you to pay enough attention to the big things so that you don’t lose the little things that lie within them.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Both voice and self are established in early childhood. People who have not been given a voice then, have the lifelong need to be heard. The self goes under construction with unexpectedly large cost overruns in order to acquire a sense of value and importance.”
― Alis Cerrahyan, Dance Like Nobody's Watching

“A good way to ascertain what matters to you is to imagine the following: You wake up in the morning to the realisation that you have but a day to live. How would you want to spend that day? Who would you want to spend that time with?”
― Adiela Akoo

“Sometimes, the things we say are even more important than the actions we take.”
― E.Y. Laster, Of Captivity & Kings

“If I am constantly evaluating my importance in your life, I'll be sure to reevaluate your presence in mine.”
― Nitya Prakash

“Never mind how sophisticated your computer, smartphone or tablet is, it cannot replace the importance of the intimate process of recording by hand into a good old-fashioned diary - by Jozef.”
― Jozef Simkovic, How to Kiss the Universe: An Inspirational Spiritual and Metaphysical Narrative about Human Origin, Essence and Destiny

“Elle dit elle-même qu’elle ne s’en souvient pas, et que cela de toute façon ne l’a pas empêchée de naître et ne l’empêchera pas de mourir.”
― Philippe Claudel, Brodeck