Quotes About Existence

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. If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is. This being so, who will dare to undertake the decision of the question? Not we, who have no affinity to Him.

Notre durée vaine et chétive

Let us then take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the Nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the Infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.

Nous sommes de bien petites mécaniques égarées par les infinis.

When I consider the brief span of my life absorbed into the eternity which comes before and after-- as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day --the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there, now rather than then.

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

Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Man's greatness come from knowing he wretched: a tree does not know it is wretched. (21)

Happiness is neither within us only, or without us; it is the union of ourselves with God.

We're not looking for this soft, peaceful existence which allows us to think about our unfortunate condition, nor the dangers of war or the burden of office, but the bustle which distracts and amuses us—The reason why we prefer the hunt to the kill. That is why we like noise and activity so much. That is why imprisonment is such a horrific punishment. That is why the pleasure of being alone is incomprehensible.

Omul nu este capabil sa vada nici nimicul din care provine, nici infinitul care-l impresoara.

Porque, finalmente, ¿qué es el hombre en la naturaleza? Una nada frente al infinito, un todo frente a la nada, un medio entre nada y todo. Infinitamente alejado de comprender los extremos, el fin de las cosas y su principio le están invenciblemente ocultos en un secreto impenetrable, igualmente incapaz de ver la nada de dónde ha sido sacado y el infinito en que se halla sumido

Passing time isn't a steady thing. People try to measure it, but some days seem to have years packed into them, and others pass in the blink of an eye. Some days matter, and others don't.

The truth was obscure, Too profound and too pure, To live it you had to explode

There is no equality. The only thing people all have in common is that they are all going to die.

When You Cease To Exist, Then Who Will You Blame?

Definition destroys ... there's nothing definite in this world

That he not busy being born is busy dying

I don't know what everybody else was fantasizing about but what I was fantasizing about was a nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard. [...] After a while you learn that privacy is something you can sell, but you can't buy it back.

The whole world's a bottle, And life's but a dram, When the bottle gets empty, It sure ain't worth a damn.

ah mama what care the dead t drink up their own toasts? spirits slurping candle syrup affects whose emptiness?

I don't think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking there's some kind of change.

I wrote you a song about a funny old world that's coming along. It seems sick and it's hungry, it's tired and it's torn. It looks like it's dying and it's hardly been born.

There was a lot of halting and waiting, little acknowledgment, little affirmation, but sometimes all it takes is a wink or a nod from some unexpected place to vary the tedium of a baffling existence.