Quotes About Existence

Time is just common, it's like water for a fish. Everybody's in this water, nobody gets out of it, or if he does the same thing happens to him that happens to the fish, he dies. And you know what happens in this water, time? The big fish eat the little fish. That's all. The big fish eat the little fish and the ocean doesn't care.

Time could not be bought. The only coin time accepted was life.

I don't believe in this nonsense about time. Time is just common, it's like water for a fish. Everybody's in this water, nobody gets out of it, or if he does the same thing happens to him that happens to the fish, he dies. And you know what happens in this water, time? The big fish eat the little fish. That's all. The big fish eat the little fish and the ocean doesn't care.

The real troubles with living is that living is so banal. Everyone, after all, goes the same dark road—and the road has a trick of being the most dark, most treacherous, when it seems most bright—and it's true that nobody stays in the garden of Eden.

I don't believe in this nonsense about time. Time is just common, it's like water for a fish. Everybody's in this water, nobody gets out of it, or if he does the same thing happens to him that happens to the fish, he dies. And you know what happens in this water, time? The big fish eat the little fish. That's all. The big fish eat the little fish and the ocean doesn't care.

The real troubles with living is that living is so banal.

But our humanity is our burden, our life; we need not battle for it; we need only to do what is infinitely more difficult—that is, accept it.

I know a lot of people done took their own lives and they're walking up and down the streets today and some of them is preaching the gospel and some is sitting in the seats of the mighty. Now, you remember that. If the world wasn't so full of dead folks maybe those of us that's trying to live wouldn't have to suffer so bad.

It was not only colored people who praised John, since they could not, John felt, in any case really know; but white people also said it, in fact had said it first and said it still. It was when John was five years old and in the first grade that he was first noticed; and since he was noticed by an eye altogether alien and impersonal, he began to perceive, in wild uneasiness, his individual existence.

The world had prepared no place for you, and if the world had its way, no place would ever exist. Now, this is true for everyone, but, in the case of a Negro, this truth is absolutely naked: if he deludes himself about it, he will die. This is not the way this truth presents itself to white men, who believe the world is theirs and who, albeit unconsciously, expect the world to help them in the achievement of their identity.

It's astounding the first time you realize that a stranger has a body—the realization that he has a body makes him a stranger. It means that you have a body, too.

The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass, and trees, but other people, has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can. And if one despairs - as who has not? - of human love, God's love alone is left.

Life is tragic, and therefore unutterably beautiful.

The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not he had ever, really, been present at his life. For if he had ever been present, then he was present still, and his world would open up before him.

One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.

The question of color was but another detail, somewhere between being six feet tall and being six feet under.

It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion teh conundrum of life

The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass, and trees, but other people, has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can.

One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us

The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass, and trees, but other people, has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can. And if one despairs—as who has not?—of human love, God's love alone is left.

We will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, armies, flags, & nations; in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me one should rejoice in the fact of death, one out to decide indeed to earn ones death by confronting with passion, the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life. It is that small beacon from that terrifying darkness from wence we come and wence we shall return.

The question is banal but one of the real troubles with living is that living is so banal.

He lived, now, in time, with the roar and the stink and the beauty and the horror of innumerable men: he had been dropped onto this inferno in the twinkling of an eye.

Someone once said to me that the people in general cannot bear very much reality. He meant by this that they prefer fantasy to a truthful recreation of their experience. People have quite enough reality to bear, by simply getting through their lives, raising their children, dealing with the eternal conundrums of birth, taxes, and death.