Quotes About Existence

I believe in the reality of God the way scientists believe in the reality of electrons. I see things happening that would not happen unless there is a God.

Pain is the price we pay for being alive. Dead cells—our hair, our fingernails—can't feel pain; they cannot feel anything. When we understand that, our question will change from, "Why do we have to feel pain?" to "What do we do with our pain so that it becomes meaningful and not just pointless empty suffering?

One would think there was enough unavoidable tragedy in everyone's existence to keep him from seeking the hideous and unsightly," he mused. "And yet it may be the fact that each has his cross to bear that leads him to come in contact with the world's wretchedness as a sort of palliative to his own."[11]

The underlying foundation of life in New England was one of profound, unutterable, and therefore unuttered, melancholy, which regarded human existence itself as a ghastly risk, and, in the case of the vast majority of human beings, an inconceivable misfortune.

The past, the present, and the future are really one: they are today

For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one's feeling, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still must we eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again,—still bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions,—pursue, in short, a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled.

In the midst of life we are in death,'" said Miss Ophelia.

Of course, in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through…

For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one's feelings, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still we must eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again, - still bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions, - pursue, in short, a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold, mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled.

One might debate whether it is preferable to be a cat or a person, but why get into it? If you are reading this now, you are not a cat and never will be. So along with the good days, you're going to experience the entire range of painful emotions that make us human.

God didn't put me on this street to provide disability awareness training to everyone who happens by. In fact, no god put anyone anywhere for any reason, if you want to know.

He's just a little boy born into this world through no fault of his own. All of us are people born into this world through no fault of our own. My name is Hallelujah. I was born into this world at sunrise on Easter Sunday through no fault of my own.

Birth is as safe as life gets.

Do we as Christians mentally inhabit the world presented to us by faith as the real world?

Reality is only just a word.

It was not any one thing that scared him. It was everything. It was his life. His life terrified him. He didn't see how he was going to get through the rest of it.

God has put within our lives meanings and possibilities that quite outrun the limits of mortality.

The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth.

Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial—notoriously less stable and less inherent than the nature of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.

How can you kill something that never existed? We're all winners in the ovarian derby, yet I never heard anyone crying about the—if you will excuse the biological term—the sperm who were the losers in the race.

Boundaries have to be continuously sealed off, but it's a hopeless job, for everything touches everything else in this world. A beginning never disappears, not even with an ending.

Only when she was alone did she have the sense that she really existed; other people might be frightened precisely because of that sense, but she was frightened of other people because they stole it from her.

Look at the way he evokes nature, but only obliquely, in comparison. Did you notice? What one remembers are not the fighting soldiers, but the image of nature - and that goes on existing. The battle has vanished, but the rivers are still there, one can still hear them, and then one becomes, oneself, that shepherd. It's as if he wanted to say that all of existence is a metaphor for another reality and that the whole point is to grasp that other reality.

Alles zal vergeten worden en ten slotte verdwijnen en dan nooit gebeurd zijn. En het is deze gedachte, die hem plotseling de verdorven kracht geef om te doen wat hem te doen staat.