Quotes About Existence

Some say that to the gods we are like flies that boys idly swat on a summer day. Others say that not a feather from a sparrow falls to the ground without the will of the Heavenly Father." Those are the only two options.

For we are not pure spirits who happen to be trapped in bodies. We are not even spirits who only have bodies, for we do not have bodies as we have possessions. We are bodies as well as souls.

Science asks what and how, philosophy asks why, myth and religion ask who. Who's

The result of change cannot actually exist before the change.

As for the thing that changes, although it can be what it will become, it is not yet what it will become. It actually exists right now in this state (an acorn); it will actually exist in that state (large oak tree). But it is not actually in that state now. It only has the potentiality for that state.

More accurately stated, man is not both angel and animal because he is neither angel nor animal; he is between angels and animals, a unique rung on the cosmic ladder.

you have nothing worth dying for, you will die. If you have nothing worth living for except mere living, you will not live.

Death. Toast. The story of our lives.

To practice Zen means to realize one's existence in the beauty and clarity of this present moment, rather than letting life unravel in useless daydreaming of the past and future. To 'rest in the present' is a state of magical simplicity.

Transfixed by the bright gaze of a lizard, I become calm. This stone on which the lizard lies was under the sea when lizards first came into being, and now the flood is wearing it away, to return it once again into the oceans.

For people who must live from day to day, past and future have small relevance, and their grasp of it is fleeting; they live in the moment, a very precious gift that we have lost.

To practice Zen means to realize one's existence in the beauty and clarity of this present moment, rather than letting life unravel in useless daydreaming of the past and future. To rest in the present is a state of magical simplicity.

As the hand held before the eye conceals the greatest mountain, so the little earthly life hides from the glance the enormous lights and mysteries of which the world is full, and he who can draw it away from before his eyes, as one draws away a hand, beholds the great shining of the inner worlds. RABBI NACHMANN OF BRATZLAV

I nod to Death in passing, aware of the sound of my own feet upon my path. The

And it is a profound consolation, perhaps the only one, to this haunted animal that wastes most of a long and ghostly life wandering the future and the past on its hind legs, looking for meanings, only to see in the eyes of others of its kind that it must die.

The absurdity of a life that may well end before one understands it does not relieve one of the duty (to that self which is inseparable from others) to live it through as bravely and as generously as possible.

Nothing exists but atoms and the void"—so wrote Democritus. And it is "void" that underlies the Eastern teachings—not emptiness or absence, but the Uncreated that preceded all creation, the beginningless potential of all things.

only to be wholly present in this moment, moment after moment

Religion is not to go to God by forsaking the world but to find Him in it.

Days and months are the travellers of eternity. So

Nen is mindfulness, attention to the present with a quality of vibrant awareness, as if this present moment were one's last.

If I live to be sixteen, I shall never fully understand the rich complexities of human nature. Not sure that I want to, either. It would be a lifetime's work, and brooding over the mysteries of existence is bad for your health. Look what happens to philosophers. Most of them end up barking mad, taking to the bottle, or becoming professors of existentialism at obscure universities.

Is better to get an instant life, Instead of just there for life

It comes down to this. When we die, not only will our bodies be gone, but so will the people we remember. We live in the world, and we recall the world, and one day we won't do either anymore. The church bells will ring and the drunks will drink.