Transcendent Meaning Quotes

The myth does not point to a fact; the myth points beyond facts to something that informs the fact

Art can be a medium for people to discover universal spirit, with imagery not isolated to one particular wisdom path, but pointing to the underlying truth that they all transmit.

We are made for larger ends than Earth can encompass. Oh, let us be true to our exalted destiny.

Our music, whose eternal being is forever bound up in its temporal sounds, is not merely an art, enriching beyond measure our cultural life, but also a message from higher worlds, raising and urging us on by it's reminders of our own eternal origins.

When we speak the word 'life,' it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach.

I won't forget those kind of things, but I just want to write them down and look at them. It's almost like when things like music come out and you're listening to a song and you have experiences with art or phenomena that supersede your simple relationship with them as just a piece of art. They're more than that. That's just what those quote are for me. They're big, they're important.

Art is about play and about transcendent meanings, not reducible to politics.

Do you know what good art is? It is saying "ta" to God.

God transforms, so to speak, this air into words, into various sounds. He makes you understand these various sounds through the modifications by which you are affected.

When you become consumed by God's call on your life, everything will take on new meaning and significance. You will begin to see every facet of your life - including your pain - as a means through which God can work to bring others to Himself.

Christianity is sustained by the knowledge that the object of man's life on earth is his development as an eternal being. Therefore, none of his expressions of life can be an end in itself, but must serve a higher purpose than the earthly life and happiness of the individual - or even than that of the race.

If you call 'religious' a man who believes in what I call a Supermeaning, a meaning so comprehensive that you can no longer grasp it, get hold of it in rational intellectual terminology, then one should feel free to call me religious, really.

Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned.

Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realised; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.

The novelist's intuition for the sacred differs from the translator's interrogation of the sacred.

People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state--it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle.... Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions. Source: The Wisdom of Heschel

In the Old Testament, the God of the Prophets never was completely on Israel's side. There was a primitive national religion, but it was always a transcendent God who had judgment first in the House of God. This is the true religion. It has a sense of a transcendent majesty and a transcendent meaning so that that puts myself and the foe under the same judgment.

Perhaps it was only that the sense of reaching out to something larger than yourself gives you some feeling that there is something larger - and there really has to be, because plainly you aren't sufficient to the situation.

Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth.

Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.

The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning...

Once my paintings are complete, the model no longer lives in the painting as themselves. I see something bigger, more symbolic - an archetype.