Quotes About Existence

There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, he was nothing more than a comma on the page of History. It's sad, but that's all you can say about some people.

I'VE NEVER BEEN VERY SURE ABOUT WHAT IS RIGHT, said Bill Door. I AM NOT SURE THERE IS SUCH A THING AS RIGHT. OR WRONG. JUST PLACES TO STAND.

These weren't cheap modern books; these were books bound in leather, and not just leather, but leather from clever cows who had given their lives for literature after a happy existence in the very best pastures.

Either dragons should exist completely or fail to exist at all, he felt. A dragon only half-existing was worse than the extremes.

Granny Weatherwax looked out at the multi-layered, silvery world. "Where am I?" INSIDE THE MIRROR. "Am I dead?" THE ANSWER TO THAT, said Death, IS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN NO AND YES. Esme turned, and a billion figures turned with her. "When can I get out?" WHEN YOU FIND THE ONE THAT'S REAL. "Is this a trick question?" NO. Granny looked down at herself. "This one," she said.

But is all this true? said Brutha. Didactylos shrugged. Could be. Could be. We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork. You mean you don't KNOW it's true? said Brutha. I THINK it might be, said Didactylos. I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.

He'd always felt he had a right to exist as a wizard in the same way that you couldn't do proper maths without the number 0, which wasn't a number at all but, if it went away, would leave a lot of larger numbers looking bloody stupid.

YOU'RE ONLY PUTTING OFF THE INEVITABLE, he said. That's what being alive is all about.

Death paused. YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE, he said, THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE? 'Yes. Yes, of course.' Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.

I see evil when I look in my shaving mirror. It is, philosophically, present everywhere in the universe in order, apparently, to highlight the existence of good. I think there is more to this theory, but I tend to burst out laughing at this point.

You can't second-guess ineffability, I always say.

EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS, STAYS HAPPENED. What kind of philosophy is that? THE ONLY ONE THAT WORKS.

Inside Every Living Person is a Dead Person Waiting to Get Out…

Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, re-created anew. Therefore, he understood, there is, in truth, no Past, only a memory of the Past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.

He shrugged. - They're just people - he said. - They're just doing what people do. Sir. Lord Vetinari gave him a friendly smile. - Of course, of course - he said. - You have to believe that, I appreciate. Otherwise you'd go quite mad. Otherwise you'd think you're standing on a feather-thin bridge over the vaults of Hell. Otherwise existence would be a dark agony and the only hope would be that there is no life after death. I quite understand.

People's whole lives do pass in front of their eye before dying. The process is called Living

My personal theory is that he has a very firm grasp upon reality, it's simply not a reality the rest of us have ever met before.

Apes had it worked out. No ape would philosophize, The mountain is, and is not. They would think, The banana is. I will eat the banana. There is no banana. I want another banana.

I imagine that fish have no word for water.

Death stood alone, watching the wheat dance in the wind. Of course, it was only a metaphor. People were more than corn. They whirled through tiny crowded lives, driven literally by clock work, filling their days from edge to edge with the sheer effort of living. And all lives were exactly the same length. Even the very long and very short ones. From the point of view of eternity, anyway.

STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE'S HARDLY ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A... A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT.

THERE IS NO JUSTICE said Death JUST ME

He'd always known that the world was an interesting place, and his imagination had peopled it with pirates and bandits and spies and astronauts and similar. But he'd also had a nagging suspicion that, when you seriously got right down to it, they were all just things in books and didn't properly exist anymore.

Time and space were, from Death's point of view, merely things that he'd heard described. When it came to Death, they ticked the box marked Not Applicable. It might help to think of the universe as a rubber sheet, or perhaps not.