Quotes About Existence

Man cannot live on the human plane, he must be either above or below it.

The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.

Man is a masterpiece of creation . . .

Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind

The percept is the landscape before man, in the absence of man.

Man is the microcosm: I am my world.

The Principle which gives life dwells in us, and without us, is undying and beneficent, is not heard or seen or smelt, but it is perceived by the man who desires perception.

As a wise man once said: Wherever you go, there you are.

Among these things, one thing seems certain - that nothing certain exists and that there is nothing more pitiful or more presumptuous than man.

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

And how am I to face the odds Of man's bedevilment and God's? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made.

When the Negro musician or dancer swings the blues, he is fulfilling the same fundamental existential requirement that determines the mission of the poet, the priest and the medicine man.

The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a remarkable Christian forebearance among men.

Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence.

General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect: He can think.

If a man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God?

Meaning makes a great many things endurable---per haps everything.

It is of great advantage that man should know his station, and not imagine that the whole universe exists only for him.

You may have killed God beneath the weight of all that you have said; but don't imagine that, with all that you are saying, you will make a man that will live longer than he.

No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we're alone.

Myth expresses in terms of the world - that is, of the other world or the second world - the understanding that man has of himself in relation to the foundation and the limit of his existence.

The more man becomes irradiated with Divinity, the more, not the less, truly he is man.

It is one soul which animates all men.

Because reason...is the only thing that makes us men, and distinguishes us from the beasts, I would prefer to believe that it exists, in its entirety, in each of us.