Quotes About Existence

Can a cat vanish, but not its grin? Can structure exist without matter? This may be possible in the abstract interpretation of Plato and Plotinus; in a concrete sense, it is impossible. Structured matter can be interpreted as an excitation of unstructured matter, just as the cat with the grin may be seen as an excitation of the nongrinning cat.

If the universe as we know it is nothing but a vacuum fluctuation with a purloined total energy that is not much different from zero, it may exist for quite a while before the vacuum decides to call in the loan.

Light is an excitation of empty space proper, of the vacuum. It is no more and no less.

All in all, we come to the conclusion that no more than 1 percent of all matter in the universe falls in the visible category.

People always leave traces. No person is without a shadow.

Life is a flimsy branch over an abyss.

All that we can remember is almost nothing. Memory is greater than we are, but memory is living and mortal as well.

I went to sleep in Chaos, and then I awoke like the first man.

I had no children and shall have none. There are moments when this troubles me, when I reflect that with me a line will end which has lasted since the beginning of humanity.

No hay más infierno que el furor de vivir.

En la luz, la apariencia; en la sombra, nosotros. La sombra es la realidad de milagro que traduce lo invisible.

J'ai rêvé de ce que j'oublie, Je vis de ce qu'on m'a laissé.

Then, by dint of seeing the days born in the morning and miscarrying in the evening, I became afraid to die, and this fear was my first passion.

We catch only glimpses of life. Death is the one thing we really have time to see. A day is coming when I shall be no more. I am crying because I shall surely die.

Like all human beings, like me, like us, they wished for what they did not have. "I am alone and I want what I have not and what I shall never have." It is by this need that people live, and by this need that people die.

And night came, as every night will come, until the last one, which will be too vast. There is no hell, no inferno except the frenzy of living The last cry, as it was the first.

Yo no sé lo que soy, ni adónde voy, ni lo que hago; pero, yo también he gritado desde el fondo de mi abismo, hacia un poco de luz.

Estamos crucificados; no como Dios, que lo fue en carne sobre una cruz, sino que estamos crucificados sobre el tiempo y el espacio.

There is no paradise except that which we create in the great tomb of the churches. There is no hell, no inferno except the frenzy of living.

Happiness needs unhappiness. Joy goes hand in hand with sorrow. It is thanks to the shadow that we exist. We must not dream of an absurd abstraction. We must guard the bond that links us to blood and earth.

All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

The universe is a machine for making gods.

For a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.