Quotes About Existence

C. S. Lewis was getting at this idea when he wrote, If your thoughts and passions were directly present to me, like my own, without any mark of externality or otherness, how should I distinguish them from mine?…You may reply, as a Christian, that God (and Satan) do, in fact, affect my consciousness in this direct way without signs of "externality." Yes: and the result is that most people remain ignorant of the existence of both.

God is not interested in your "spiritual life." God is just interested in your life.

Dostoyevsky, who was a believer, wrote that the "death of a single infant calls into question the existence of God."1

dear god, whose name i do not know. thank you for my life. i forgot... how BIG... thank you. thank you for my life.

If the world is as you dream it, why had I dreamed such a world?

Always be. Never try to become. You can be anything you want, just don't work at becoming. Remember to be it.

If you want to know what happiness is, you need to go to the philosophers. Start with the Wikipedia article "Philosophy of Happiness." Then go to the Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy, search for "happiness," and follow through the articles that come up to see what various philosophers have said. Then read the philosophers' works themselves. By the time you're done, you'll probably be dead, whether or not you are happy.

A civilization unable to differentiate between illusion and reality is usually believed to be at the tail end of its existence.

Forget the why and focus on the is

nie ma ?adnych dowodów na to, ?e celem naszego istnienia na tej planecie jest bycie wybitnie szcz??liwym czy te? szczególnie normalnym. (...) nasze zmartwienia i dziwactwa, nasze lÄ™ki i wewnÄ™trzne przymusy, krótko mówiÄ…c, wszystkie te najbardziej niemodne aspekty naszych osobowoÅ›ci caÅ'kiem czÄ™sto prowadzÄ… nas do interesujÄ…cych rzeczy.

All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.

As the art of life is learned, it will be found at last that all lovely things are also necessary; a wild flower by the wayside, tended corn, wild birds and creatures of the forest, as well as the tended cattle; because man doth not live by bread only.

What one person has, another cannot have; and that every atom of substance, of whatever kind, used or consumed, is so much human life spent, which, if it issue in the saving present life, or gaining more, is well spent, but if not, is either so much life prevented or so much slain.

A chama da vida arde por um tempo e então se apaga. As sepulturas aguardam pacientemente a hora de serem ocupadas. A morte é o fim de toda a vida. Viver é se remexer constantemente em um túmulo. As coisas vivem e morrem. Às vezes vivem bem, e às vezes mal, mas sempre morrem, e a morte é aquilo que reduz todas as coisas ao menor denominador comum.

The regular campaign staff, including the regular campaign manager, had no idea that the shadow staff existed.

Why would a just God allow this to happen? Was it all part of an evolutionary clockwork that God allowed to work through itself, unguided, an enormous experiment of some kind, for good reasons that humans couldn't perceive?

this life. We're just a bunch of meat. When we think something, it's just chemicals. When we love something, it's more chemicals. When we die, all the chemicals go back in the ground, and that's it. There's nothing left. You don't go anywhere, except in the ground. No heaven, no hell, no God, no nothing. Just . . . nothing.

TV. It's like if you're not on it, you don't exist. The single most pernicious idea in our culture.

I was just talking about you," Cardenia said, coming up to him. "To your imaginary friends, I see." "They're not imaginary. They're just not real." "Very subtle distinction.

That's the human brain," Attavio VI said. "It creates patterns when there aren't any. Imagines causality when there is none. Imagines a narrative where none exists. It's in the design of the brain itself. It's primed to lie.

I don't care whether I really exist or don't, whether I'm real or fictional. What I want right now is to be the person who decides my own fate. That's something I can work on. It's what I'm working on now.

I live the life I live, and it's the only life I have. No one else is out there in the universe living my alternate lives, and even if they were, I wouldn't be worrying about them because I have my life to live here, now.

They were the only people in all the universe who were not conscious. Although every creature could think and reason, it could not know itself as every other intelligent creature could know itself. The creatures lacked awareness of who they were as individuals, even as they lived and thrived and grew on the face of the moon of the planet.

How is it so far?" asked Cloud. "How is what so far?" "This," Cloud said, and motioned around him. "Life. The universe. Everything." "It's lonely," Jared said. "Huh," Cloud said. "Didn't take you long to figure that one out.