Quotes About Existence

Tennyson said that if we could but understand a single flower we might know who we are and what the world is. Perhaps he was trying to say that there is nothing, however humble, that does not imply the history of the world and its infinite concatenation of causes and effects. —JORGE LUIS BORGES, "The Zahir

It puzzled her that orgasm wasn't widely considered a phenomenon that challenges everything we believe about human existence—doesn't it serve as proof of an alternate state of being? Isn't the fact that people can feel this way, so in thrall to this enigmatic force, so carried by it, even for an instant, evidence that the state in which we spend most of our time is merely one possibility?

Then I reached down into myself and managed to say, 'you should celebrate, your birthday should be celebrated, because the world's a better place with you in it.' May you continue to pile on the years, but with more pleasure from now on.

Was the clay polluted on the day of creation?

Ik ga naar huis, hier dicht bij, naar wie ik liefheb, naar de mensen, met wie ik verbonden wil zijn. Jawel, mevrouw, die 'liaisons', altijd veranderend van kleur en inhoud, zijn de zin van mijn bestaan.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

It is not for nothing that the person stands between heaven and hell. He has to live so as to do justice to both the spirit and the flesh and to honor the fragility of life where it reveals itself to him. This he should do as a pragmatist out of a respect for the deep ambiguity contained in all of existence, not as a petty profiteer: he will be part of one of the two halves of the world soon enough.

All life with others carries the germ of the capacity of dissolution because souls are more than what they factually are.

You make something from things that have happened and from things that exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, and you make something through your invention that is truer than anything true and alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

If there were God, never would He have permitted what I have seen with my own eyes

No me importaba el sentido de la vida. Lo único que quería era saber cómo vivir. Tal vez si uno descubría cómo vivir podría deducir de ahí el sentido de la vida

ÎÈ™i împreun? mâinile È™i îÈ™i atinse palmele una de alta. Nu erau moarte È™i era de-ajuns s? le deschid? È™i s? le închid? ca s? simt? durerea vieÈ›ii.

Things are as they are.

A full description of a person's life, however uneventful or uninteresting, fills a large folder.

No doubt you thought I was dead. I sometimes think I am myself.

People have faces. […] Spirits don't have faces. And yet we recognise them. We know who is who. Spirits don't have eyes or mouths or ears either. And yet they can see and speak and hear. […] The spirits are all around us. […] They're right here, but we can't see them.

A lo largo de la historia, muy pocas personas han podido dedicarse sin más a algo distinto de sobrevivir. Cierto es que nunca han podido hacerlo tantas como hoy. Pero aun así la mitad de la humanidad, como mínimo, vive hoy sin opciones.

Acknowledging one's fear of the unknown is realising what it means to be a person. Our existence is basically a tragedy. Throughout our lives we strive to increase our knowledge, our abilities, our experiences. But the bottom line is that all of that will be lost in oblivion.

Dos conceptos resumen lo que ha sido y, probablemente, también lo que va a ser: supervivencia y destrucción.

Ihminen voi elää juurettomana. Mutta kuolla ei voi tietämättä, mihin työntää viimeiset ja kaikkein arvokkaimmat juurensa.

Ihminen voi olla kuollut, vaikka elää, ja olla elossa, vaikka onkin kuollut.

in the end it comes down to a who and a why. Only one who. And one lone why.

Il n'y a pas de barrière substantielle entre l'inorganique et le vivant, ni entre le vivant non humain et l'humain.

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.