Quotes About Existence

Only in the most literal sense are we born on the day we leave our mother's womb. In the larger, truer sense, we are born of the past—connected to its fluidity, both genetically and experientially.

Life is a river, she repeated. Only in the most literal sense are we born on the same day we leave our mother's womb. In the larger, truer sense, we are born of the past--connected to its fluidity, both genetically and experimentally.

Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

I cannot be awake, for nothing looks to me as it did before, or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.

There is no God any more divine than Yourself.

Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.

To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.

I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself.

I and this mystery, here we stand.

What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life? That you are here - that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Clear and sweet is my soul, clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.

A blade of grass is the journeywork of the stars

And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, / No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contained between my hat and my boots

You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life

I believe that much unseen is also here.

Song of Myself I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

All truths wait in all things, They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it, They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon, The insignificant is as big to me as any, (What is less or more than a touch?)" -from Song of Myself

Songs of myself These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing, If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing, If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing. This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is, This the common air that bathes the globe.