existence quotes

Relationships are like traffic lights. And I just have this theory that I can only exist in a relationship if it’s a green light.

In a way, the whole tangible universe itself is a vast residue, a skeleton of countless lives that have germinated in it and have left it, leaving behind them only a trifling, infinitesimal part of their riches.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

All things in the world come from being. And being comes from non-being.

There was something undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before Heaven and Earth. Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It operates everywhere and is free from danger. It may be considered the mother of the universe. I do not know its name; I call it Tao.

The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we’re not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from… Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.

Without gambling, I would not exist.

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

I think if we didn’t contradict ourselves, it would be awfully boring. It would be tedious to be alive.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

Life is our dictionary.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

I’m fascinated by the fact that we can’t grasp anything about time.

Thou know’st the first time that we smell the air we wawl and cry. When we are born we cry, that we are come to this great state of fools.

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution – this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.

There may not be one Truth – there may be several truths – but saying that is not to say that reality doesn’t exist.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

The unnatural, that too is natural.

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.

Certain though I am – and ever more certain – that I must press on in life as though Christ awaited me at the term of the universe, at the same time I feel no special assurance of the existence of Christ. Believing is not seeing. As much as anyone, I imagine, I walk in the shadows of faith.

You may say, ‚Well, dragons don’t exist.‘ It’s, like, yes they do – the category ‚predator‘ and the category ‚dragon‘ are the same category. It absolutely exists. It’s a superordinate category. It exists absolutely more than anything else. In fact, it really exists.

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.

What is the Tao Te Ching? Five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a God-realized being named Lao-tzu in ancient China dictated 81 verses which are regarded by many as the ultimate commentary on the nature of existence.

There’s place and means for every man alive.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

I do think there must be some kind of interaction between your living life and the life that goes on from here.

Contention existed before the earth was formed.

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

Don’t think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

Some day science may have the existence of mankind in power, and the human race can commit suicide by blowing up the world.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

We all dream. We dream vividly, depending on our nature. Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist.

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.

Real life? Well, I just hope mine isn’t investigated. They might find that I don’t really exist – that I’m just a hologram.

Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

It has been discovered that all the world is made of the same atoms, that the stars are of the same stuff as ourselves. It then becomes a question of where our stuff came from. Not just where did life come from, or where did the earth come from, but where did the stuff of life and of the earth come from?