Quotes About Existence

From ancient times, those systems of thought that merit the name 'philosophy' or 'religion' have developed an all-embracing worldview with at least two dimensions. The first is a theory of value, or ethics, that relates to how human life should be lived. The second is a theory of being, or ontology, which posits the structure of existence, or of the world.

Thus all apparent things that appear or exist are empty of any essence, and have only a conceptual or nominal identity. Not the slightest distinction exists between the designation and the nature of things that it symbolizes. For there is a constant coemergence, which cannot be realized by external means.

If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.

Paradox is not just a logician's art. It is every man's tool to understand the real world we inhabit for a short time, and how it shapes our everlasting life. Paradox is a tool so common that a carpenter once used it to explain the depth of our existence.

If truth is relative, to what is it relative?

death does not. Once death exists, I will not. Why should I fear something I will never experience?

Along with the usual secular values (such as appropriate tolerance/intolerance, morality, critical thinking, appreciation for reason and science), don't forget to impart social graces, playfulness, and humor. Those go far in our short existences.

Life's cheap out here, Daniel. With a little budgeting I can get by till you go off to college." "And then?" My dad reached for whatever he was drinking that day. "There don't always have to be a then." He poured, drank, swallowed, grimaced. Left his hand on the bottleneck. "Hell, there ain't really a now, so why should there be a then?

There is one class to whom reflection is a fault; is not only a fault, is a sin; is not only a sin, is an atrocity - who cannot bear to exist without their own existence dis-existencing somebody else's existence.

The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who, by profession or culture, are identified as 'Christians' will become disciples – students, apprentices, practitioners – of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.

So when Jesus directs us to pray, "Thy kingdom come," he does not mean we should pray for it to come into existence. Rather, we pray for it to take over at all points in the personal, social, and political order where it is now excluded: "On earth as it is in heaven." With this prayer we are invoking it, as in faith we are acting it, into the real world of our daily existence.

How does a bird feel when it dies? A fish, a bug...the infinite worm? I think it weeps.

Death is sleep without knowledge of the pleasure of life.

No matter how far you are separated from other people if you have an idea of time why then you are in the same world with them you are part of them but if you lose time the others go on ahead of you and you are left alone hanging in air lost to everything forever.

What's so noble about being dead?

A man doesn't say I will starve myself to death to keep from starving, or that he'd spend all of his money to save money. Why should he be willing to die for the privilege of living?

Now the truth of the matter is that there are a lot of things people don't understand. Take the Einstein theory. Take taxes. Take love. Do you understand them? Neither do I. But they exist. They happen.

The thing I like most about time is that it's not real. It's all in the head. Sure, it's a useful trick if you wanna meet someone at a specific place in the universe to have tea or coffee. But that's all it is, a trick. There's no such thing as the past, it exists only in the memory. There's no such thing as the future, it exists only in our imagination. If our watches were truly accurate the only thing they would ever say is now.

Life without momentum is not truly life. A person needs movement, or they eventually begin to forget that they even exist.

I think I like big issues, but I don't believe in God or religion.

Is it necessary to believe in the existence of the six realms and the heavens and hells to be a Buddhist? Not necessarily. It is possible to interpret these as, perhaps, referring to other dimensions of existence, parallel universes, or simply states of mind.

Il avait plutôt l'impression d'être tombé dans l'amour, avec Mohammed : dans un petit espace circulaire au centre même de son existence, où rien, pratiquement, ne faisait de l'ombre.

How would you know she is a ghost? Many of the living are vague and adrift too, it's not a failing unique to the departed.

In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. The words come to him from a long way off.