Existence Quotes

I and this mystery, here we stand.

Life is one indivisible whole.

What is this talked-of mystery of birth. But being mounted bareback on the earth?

It is better to burn than to disappear.

I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once, and cannot add up the sum. I am incapable of determining ultimate worth or worthlessness; I have no judgment about myself and my life. There is nothing I am quite sure about. I have no definite convictions - not about anything, really. I know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundation or something I do not know.

For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.

And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without bread, and it only cannot live without beauty, for then there would be nothing at all to do in the world! The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here. Science itself would not stand for a minute without beauty

The sad truth is that man's real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites - day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail against the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life is a battleground. It always has been and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end.

Would there be trees if we didn't see them?

A poem, a sentence, causes us to see ourselves. I be, and I see my being, at the same time.

My philosophy is inverted Platonism: the further a thing is from true being, the purer, the lovelier, the better it is. Living inillusion as a goal!

It is not where we breathe, but where we Love, that we live.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

The world stands on absurdities, and without them perhaps nothing at all would happen.

Life without death and happiness without misery are contradiction and neither can be found alone, because each of them is a different manifestation of the same thing.

Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.

And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death.

We are most alive when we're in love.

The stream of tendency in which all things seek to fulfill the law of their being.

The gift of life is so precious that we should feel an obligation to pay back the universe for the gift of being alive.

Nor do I regret that I have lived, since I have so lived that I think I was not born in vain, and I quit life as if it were an inn, not a home.

There is a destination but no way there; what we refer to as way is hesitation.

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle...

I stick my finger into existence.. it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? What is this thing called the world? What does this word mean?

There was never a time when the world began, because it goes round and round like a circle, and there is no place on a circle where it begins. Look at my watch, which tells the time; it goes round, and so the world repeats itself again and again.

Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it comes into existence.

The future is a concept, it doesn't exist. There is no such thing as tomorrow. There never will be, because time is always now. That's one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now.

Reason was nowhere, time was an immovable object nailed high on the wall, except where the world kept shop.

As long as you don't practice it, this dying and becoming, You are only a dreary guest on this dark earth.

After all, I quite naturally want to live in order to fulfill my whole capacity for living, and not in order to fulfill my reasoning capacity alone, which is no more than some one-twentieth of my capacity for living. What does reason know? It knows only what it has managed to learn (and it may never learn anything else; that isn't very reassuring, but why not admit it?), while human nature acts as a complete entity, with all that is in it, consciously or unconsciously; and though it may be wrong, it's nevertheless alive.

Man is the only animal that must be encouraged to live.

It does not matter how you came into the world, what matters is that you are here.

Something cannot be made out of nothing. Nor can something be made to go back to nothing.

One must know that war is common, justice is strife, and everything happens according to strife and necessity.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.

Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.

I guess one of the great agonies of life is that we are constantly trying to finish that which is unfinishable

Life and death are one thread.

I live and breathe every element in life.

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage where every man must play a part, And mine is a sad one.

He who has attained the freedom of reason to any extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth - and not even as a traveler towards a final goal, for there is no such thing. But he certainly wants to observe and keep his eyes open to whatever actually happens in the world; therefore he cannot attach his heart too firmly to anything individual; he must have in himself something wandering that takes pleasure in change and transitoriness.

It's certain there are trout somewhere - And maybe I shall take a trout - but I do not seem to care.

I exist as I am, that is enough.

Even sleepers are workers and collaborators on what goes on in the universe.

Who am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted?

If the infinite had no me, then me would be its limit. It would not be the infinite, therefore it would not be.

In order to exist, man must rebel.

...nothing at all rides on the life or death of the individual.

. . . you may think I waste my breathPretending that there can be passionThat has more life in it than death

Why is life so tragic; so like a little strip of pavement over an abyss. I look down; I feel giddy; I wonder how I am ever to walk to the end.

Nothing proceeds from nothingness, as also nothing passes away into non-existence.

I believe... that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.

Between history and the eternal I have chosen history because I like certainties. Of it, at least, I am certain, and how can I deny this force crushing me.

Each of us visits this Earth involuntarily, and without an invitation. For me, it is enough to wonder at the secrets.

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.

Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.

Man's task is simple. He should cease letting his existence be a thoughtless accident.

Birth and death are not two different states, but they are different aspects of the same state.

Our natures lie in motion, without which we die.