Quotes About Existence

I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.

My practice is "nowhere", my opinion is here.

Whether he sleeps or wakes, whether he runs or walks, whether he uses a microscope or a telescope, or his naked eye, a man never discovers anything, never overtakes anything or leaves anything behind, but himself. Whatever he says or does he merely reports himself. If he is in love, he loves; if he is in heaven, he enjoys, if he is in hell, he suffers. It is his condition that determines his locality.

This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night.

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made.

Being is the great explainer.

I am grateful for what I am and have. My Thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing to definite - only a sense of existence

Ich ging in die Wälder, weil ich bewusst leben wollte. Ich wollte das Dasein auskosten. Ich wollte das Mark des Lebens einsaugen! Und alles fortwerfen, das kein Leben barg, um nicht an meinem Todestag Innezuwerden, daß ich nie gelebt hatte.

There is no life but this.

Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth.

I wish to forget, a considerable part of every day, all mean, narrow, trivial men (and this requires usually to forego and forget all personal relations so long), and therefore I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplified. I enter some glade in the woods, perchance, where a few weeds and dry leaves alone lift themselves above the surface of the snow, and it is as if I had come to an open window. I see out and around myself.

It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.

Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam.

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear.

It seems as if no man had ever died in America before, for in order to die you must first have lived. These men, in teaching us how to die, have at the same time taught us how to live.

What is man but a mass of thawing clay?

The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

I cannot tell you what I am, more than a ray of the summer's sun. What I am I am, and say not. Being is the great explainer.

En tuant le temps on blesse l'éternité.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Let men cultivate the moral affections, lead manly independent lives; let them make riches the means and not the end of existence, and we shall hear no more of the commercial spirit. . . . This curious world which we inhabit is more wonderful than it is convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.