Quotes About Essence

Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.

Beneath their strict conventionalisation one could grasp the minute and accurate observation and graphic skill of the artists; and indeed, the very conventions themselves served to symbolise and accentuate the real essence or vital differentiation of every object delineated.

The verb "to be" here means to generate your own presence, your real presence.

Forgetting, along with hypocrisy, were, to him, the necessary arts central to living.

It is highly unlikely that we, who can know, determine, and define the natural essences of all things surrounding us, which we are not, should ever be able to do the same for ourselves--this would be like jumping over our own shadows.

Life may contain the essence (what else could?); recollection, the repetition in imagination, may decipher the essence and deliver to you the elixir; and eventually you may even be privileged to make something out of it, to compound the story. But life itself is neither essence nor elixir, and if you treat as such it will only play its tricks on you.

A life without thinking is quite possible; it then fails to develop its own essence – it is not merely meaningless; it is not fully alive. Unthinking men are like sleepwalkers

Liberties in the sense of civil rights are the results of liberation, but they are by no means the actual content of freedom, whose essence is admission to the public realm and participation in public affairs.

Augustine's pietistic, confessional stream of discourse also broke with the tradition of Western thought by reconfiguring the idea of the soul, not only as rational "essence" but also as "the mysterious and unknown realms of [the] inner world that were no less hidden . . . than the distant realms of the outer world

The totalitarian attempt at global conquest and total domination has been the destructive way out of all impasses. Its victory may coincide with the destruction of humanity; wherever it has ruled, it has begun to destroy the essence of man. Yet to turn our backs on the destructive forces of the century is of little avail.

Uma vida sem pensamento é totalmente possível, mas ela fracassa em fazer desabrochar sua própria essência – ela não é apenas sem sentido; ela não é totalmente viva. Pessoas que não pensam são como sonâmbulos [...] Em nome de interesses pessoais, muitos abdicam do pensamento crítico, engolem abusos e sorriem para quem desprezam. Abdicar de pensar também é crime.

Replicas never have the ghosts. They're bodies without souls.

Surroundings are irrelevant. Exteriors, you learn, are temporal and illusionary and thus meaningless.

Most of what we take as being important is not material, whether it's music or feelings or love. They're things we can't really see or touch. They're not material, but they're vitally important to us.

I think I'm learning how to release every day. Recognizing that everything you encounter, touch, or love can become part of you, and in essence never disappears, as long as you can recall it to memory or heart. It's all so connected that we lose everything, but also, we never lose anything.

George had performed musical alchemy, distilling the essence of Christmas into music. Adding a lyric which told the tale of betrayed love was a masterstroke and, as he did so often, he touched hearts.

I say to my industrialist friends, when you have guests from out of town, I don't care how important they are, you should feed them the essence of Italian culture: spaghetti, bread and olive oil.

You have to go to what the essence of what Pennywise is about - the dark power of adulthood. It's not coincidence all the grown-ups in town are evil. This is not a story about a monster. It's a story about the end of childhood.

The conflict of forces and the struggle of opposing wills are of the essence of our universe and alone hold it together.

Freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society -- once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

It is no use painting the foot of the tree white, the strength of the bark cries out from beneath the paint.

Everyone thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed.

Character is the tree, reputation is the shadow.