Quotes About Existence

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories. Outside

I read this line about love: Without it, life is just 'doing time' I don't think she intended by this only romantic love, or familial love or really any kind of love in particular. At least, I read it in the Platonic sense: Love with a capital L, and ideal form and essential part of the universe.

What could she know about the waves of time that simply come at a person, one after the other? What could she know about life as the temporary, always partial, survival of that process?

I do think art can and often does offer models of behavior, or at least suggests possibilities of behavior, but I dislike the aspirational tone of 'role model.' Roth's gift with Portnoy was large precisely because it had no aspirational element and no precise directions. Like any good gift, the less strings we find attached to it the better. The offer was not: You, too, can be like Portnoy. The offer was: Portnoy exists! Be as you please.

I do think art can and often does offer models of behavior, or at least suggests possibilities of behavior, but I dislike the aspirational tone of 'role model.' Roth's gift with Portnoy was large precisely because it had no aspirational element and no precise directions. Like any good gift, the less strings we find attached to it the better. The offer was not: The offer was: Portnoy exists! Be as you please.

Watching this manic desire to make or grow or do "something," that now seems to be consuming everybody, I do feel comforted to discover I'm not the only person on this earth who has no idea what life is for, nor what is to be done with all this time aside from filling it.

En este caso, el problema radica en que el hombre es un animal moral abandonado en un universo amoral y condenado a una existencia finita y sin otro significado que perpetuar el ciclo natural de la especie. Es imposible sobrevivir en un estado prolongado de realidad, al menos para un ser humano. Pasamos buena parte de nuestras vidas soñando, sobre todo cuando estamos despiertos.

Death lives with us everyday. Indeed our ways of dying are our ways of living. Or should I say our ways of living are our ways of dying?

So the struggle for existence continued till I seemed to see all the world before me with its myriads of wild creatures preying upon one another; the spirit of nature, unquenchable as the fires of the sun, continuing ceaseless and imperturbable in its inscrutable design.

A avut ea vreodat? ceva în afar? de prezent? se întreb?, dar a refuzat mereu s? se lase în voia prezentului, a încercat s?-l st?pâneasc?, cu mesajele ei de directoare, cu toate planurile pe care le-a f?cut, È™i acum prezentul îi spune: Eu nu sunt un ecou al amintirilor din trecut, nu sunt o punte spre planuri de viitor, eu sunt tot ce ai, chintesenÈ›a existenÈ›ei tale, ai încredere în mine fiindc? n-ai de ales.

How you get here is immaterial, it's being here that really matters.

it seems that tears and laughter, love and hate, make up the sum of life!

Like the dead-seeming, cold rocks, I have memories within that came out of the material that went to make me. Time and place have had their say.

You are alive aren't you? Well, so long as you have no grave you are covered by the sky. No limit to your possibilities. The distance to heaven is the same everywhere.

Death had found them watching, trying to see beyond seeing.

But it was night, it stayed night.

What need has Death for a cover, and what winds can blow against him? He stands in his high house that overlooks the world.

Death, that strange being with the huge square toes who lived way in the west. The great one who lived in the straight house like a platform without sides to it, and without a roof. what need has Death for a cover, and what winds can blow against him? He stands in his high house that overlooks the world. Stands watchful and motionless all day with his sword drawn back, waiting for the messenger to bid him come.

They seemed to be staring at the dark but their eyes were watching God.

Maybe nothin' ain't real sho' nuff. Maybe 'taint no world. No elements, no nothin'. Maybe wese jus' somewhere in God's mind. But when he wiggled his tired toes the world thudded and throbbed before him.

dey's parched up from not knowin' things. Dem meatskins is got tuh rattle tuh make out they's alive. Let 'em consolate theyselves wid talk. 'Course, talkin' don't amount tuh uh hill uh beans when yuh can't do nothin' else. And listenin' tuh dat kind uh talk is jus' lak openin' yo' mouth and lettin' de moon shine down yo' throat.

Living is abnormal.

What's the point of our life? Everything seems absurd until we die, and then it makes sense.

I find the world more absurd now than I did when I was a kid.