Quotes About Existence

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.

Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.

How immensely the world is simplified when tested for its worthiness of destruction. This is the great bond embracing and unifying all that exists.

technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind.

God's transcendence is at an end. But he is not dead; he has been incorporated into human existence.

The "meaning of life" is really the center about which the novel moves.

No more semblance or disemblance, no more God or Man, only an immanent logic of the principle of operativity.

When there hasn't been anything there, nothing can be said to have vanished from the place where it has not been. (Out Of The Deep)

Fancies were all very well for a change, but must be only occasional guests in a world devoted to reality.

They say death's a going to bed; I doubt it; but anyhow life's a long undressing. We came in puling and naked, and every stitch must come off before we get out again. We must stand on our feet in all our Rabelaisian nakedness, and watch the world fade.

After all, what is man but a hoard of ghosts? Oaks, that were acorns, that were oaks...

And it always seems to me,' he went on ruminatingly, 'that, after all, we are nothing better than interlopers on the earth, disfiguring and staining wherever we go.

once i began to read I began to exist

I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.

We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.

Creo que las distintas religiones son puertas diferentes para una misma casa. A veces creo que la casa existe, y otras veces que no. Ese es el gran misterio.

He has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubborn illusion.

We all—in the end—die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

But on the other hand, perhaps it's like an on-off switch," he said. "Click! And you're gone." Then he paused again and smiled slightly. "Maybe that's why I never liked to put on-off switches on Apple devices.

If the object were to have feelings, these would be based on its desire to fulfill its essence. The purpose of a glass, for example, is to hold water; if it had feelings, it would be happy when full and sad when empty. The essence of a computer screen is to interface with a human. The essence of a unicycle is to be ridden in a circus. As for toys, their purpose is to be played with by kids, and thus their existential fear is of being discarded or upstaged by newer toys.

The body exists to serve the spirit

The obvious yet still astonishing conclusion: with no such thing as absolute simultaneity, there is no such thing as "real" or absolute time.

Man stands on this diminutive earth, gazes at the myriad stars and upon billowing oceans and tossing trees—and wonders. What does it all mean? How did it come about?

These revolutions arose from the discovery, beginning just over a century ago, of the three fundamental kernels of our existence: the atom, the bit, and the gene.