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

“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

“If I were to be asked what we are, I should answer: 'We are the door to everything that can be, we are the expectation that no material response can satisfy, no trick with words deceive. We seek the heights. Each one of us can ignore this search if he has a mind to, but mankind as a whole aspires to these heights; they are the only definition of his nature, his only justification and significance.”
― Georges Bataille, Erotism: Death and Sensuality

“The life of a human, according to the Scottish philosopher David Hume, was of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“In contrast to dopamine-fueled feelings of pleasure, feelings of happiness are caused by another neurotransmitter—serotonin. Serotonin also helps create feelings of contentedness, significance, and importance. Among other functions, serotonin is a mood stabilizer. Sure, dopamine will give you the quick pleasure rush, but serotonin will keep you happy in the long term—a positive upbeat mood that chases the blues away.”
― Simon Marshall, The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion

“...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

“Complaints are useless said one, complaints are like alarms said second. Neither are complaints useless neither alarms - only useless alarms are useless, great complaints can lead to great things.

If no one knows of the fire, who calls [or] comes to help.

Character of the act.”
― Vithaeristw

“If looking at stars makes you feel insignificant, look at ants.”
― Sukant Ratnakar, Quantraz

“Sometimes as I am falling asleep in a dark, quiet room I have for a moment a great and treasurable illusion of the past. The wall of a tent leans up over my face, not visible but audible, a slanting plane of faint sound: the susurrus of blown snow. Nothing can be seen. The light-emission of the Chabe stove is cut off, and it exists only as a sphere of heat, a heart of warmth. The faint dampness and confining cling of my sleeping-bag; the sound of the snow; barely audible, Estraven’s breathing as he sleeps; darkness. Nothing else. We are inside, the two of us, in shelter, at rest, at the center of all things. Outside, as always, lies the great darkness, the cold, death’s solitude.

In such fortunate moments as I fall asleep I know beyond doubt what the real center of my own life is, that time which is past and lost and yet is permanent, the enduring moment, the heart of warmth.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“If one sole purpose is to live comfortably
One will miss the opportunity to live usefully
If one purpose only concerns their tiny little existence 
One will live and pass by with no meaningful significance.”
― Ricardo Derose

“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