Quotes About Existence

Is not our entire life a waiting-room where we fidget about until the arrival of the train which takes us to the Great Beyond?

Every man believes to some extent that the world began when he was born and, at the moment of leaving it, suffers at having to let the Universe remain unfinished.

Days lived, whether full or empty, whether busy or serene, are but days gone by, and the ashes of the past weigh the same in every hand.

Chaque homme, parce qu'il croit un peu que le monde est né en même temps que lui, souffre, au moment de quitter la vie, de laisser l'univers inachevé.

Posso sapere (o ignorare) tutto quello che voglio, il mondo resta quello che è.

A un certo punto c'è qualcosa che ci resiste. È quello che chiamo "inemendabilità", il carattere saliente del reale.

Per un castoro – possiamo averne una ragionevole certezza – i mutui e i divorzi non esistono, mentre le montagne e i laghi esistono eccome.

It's an imperfect world; always will be, as long as human beings are around...

It is so much easier to covet what one hasn't than to revel in what one has. Also, it is so much easier to be enthusiastic about what exists than about what doesn't. The future doesn't exist. The past does.

Love and Death—for him they were exquisitely one.

Death was incomparably the greater, the finer soul. Death was the one true bridal.

They were viewed very much like castles, I suppose: as crumbling, obsolete relics, with no real modern function other than as tourist attractions. But when the skies darkened and the nation called, both reawoke to the meaning of their existence. One shielded our bodies, the other, our souls.

Isn't that all we are? Just a brain kept alive by a complex and vulnerable machine we call the body? The

When the artist finds himself he is lost. The fact that he has succeeded in never finding himself is regarded by Max Ernst as his only lasting achievement.

The ants Geiser recently observed under a dripping fir tree are not concerned with what anyone might know about them; nor were the dinosaurs, which died out before a human being set eyes on them. All the papers, whether on the wall or on the carpet, can go. Who cares about the Holocene? Nature needs no names. Geiser knows that. The rocks do not need his memory.

Was mir auf die Nerven ging: die Molche in jedem Tümpel, in jeder Eintagspfütze ein Gewimmel von Molchen - überhaupt diese Fortpflanzerei überall, es stinkt nach Fruchtbarkeit, nach blühender Verwesung. Wo man hinspuckt, keimt es!

Sunt orb. N-o ÅŸtiu întotdeauna, doar uneori. Apoi îns? m? întreb din nou dac? poveÅŸtile pe care mi le pot imagina nu sunt totuÅŸi viaÅ£a mea. DeÅŸi nu cred. Nu pot s? cred c? ceea ce eu v?d este chiar mersul lumii.

Es ist schade«, sagte ich rauchend, »daß du ein Geist bist.«

Jemand sagte mir, daß Dinge, die wir für Erinnerung halten, Gegenwart sind. Es überzeugt. Dann wieder verwirrt es. Denn es nimmt den Dingen, die uns begegnen, schlechterdings die Zeit, und oft weiß ich nicht mehr, wo in meinem Leben ich mich eigentlich befinde. Das ist sehr abenteuerlich. Ich treffe Leute, die gar nicht mehr sind, und rede mit ihnen.

To keep on looking at one's wristwatch, just in order to convince oneself that time is passing is absurd. Time has never yet stood still just because a person is bored and stands at the window, not knowing what he is thinking.

The trick is to discern a market – before there is any proof that one exists.

You are valuable because you exist. Not because of what you do or what you have done - but simply because you are.

Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend on within or without himself."1

II y a deux sortes de gens. Il y a ceux qui vivent, jouent et meurent. Et il y a ceux qui ne font jamais rien d'autre que se tenir en équilibre sur l'arête de la vie. Il y a les acteurs. Et il y a les funambules.