Quotes About Existence

Can you think that whatever made us—would stop trying?

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past? [...] How if you wake up in the night and know -and know the willow tree's not there? Can you live without the willow tree? Well, no, you can't. The willow tree is you

Act out being alive, like a play. And after awhile, a long while, it will be true... You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past? No. Leave it. Burn it.

Says one time he went out in the wilderness to find his own soul, an' he foun' he didn' have no soul that was his'n. Says he foun' he jus' got a little piece of a great big soul. Says a wilderness ain't no good 'less it was with the rest, an' was whole.

I BELIEVE THERE ARE MONSTERS BORN in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places.

It's a long slow process for a human to die. We kill a cow, and it is dead as soon as the meat is eaten, but a man's life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness.

I don't know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters.

Pre-Cambrian Memory.

I have thought the difference might be that my Mary knows she will live forever, that she will step from the living into another life as easily as she slips from sleep to wakefulness. She knows this with her whole body, so completely that she does not think of it any more than she thinks to breathe. Thus she has time to sleep, time to rest, time to cease to exist for a little.

Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all

This here ol' man jus' lived a life an' just died out of it. I don' know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters.

She shook her head slowly from side to side. "I'm jus' pain covered with skin.

Tom Joad lays it out: ... A fella ain't got a soul of his own - just a little piece of a big soul. The one big soul that belongs to everybody …

I believe that there is only one story in the world... Humans are caught in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hunger and ambitions in their avarice and cruelty and in their kindness and generosity too-- in a net of good and evil. A man after he has brushed off the dust and chips of life, will have left only the hard clean questions: was it good or was it evil? Have I done well or ill?

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past? No. Leave it. Burn it.

Well, maybe, like Casy says, a fella ain't got a soul of his own, but on'y a piece of a big one- an' then- Then what, Tom? Then it don' matter. Then I'll be all aroun' in the dark. I'll be ever'where- wherever you look. p419

It made him feel alive; he seemed to be living more acutely than at other times.

They gonna need help. They got to live before they can afford to die.

Liza accepted the world as she accepted the Bible, with all of its paradoxes and its reverses. She did not like death but she knew it existed, and when it came it did not surprise her.

Netikiu už poj??i? ribos egzistuojan?ia nuojauta, žaibu, vandeniline bomba ar net tokiais daiktais kaip žibut?s, žuv? pulkai, bet žinau, kad jie egzistuoja. Netikiu šm?klomis, nors esu j? mat?s.

Je sens que je suis un homme, et l'homme est une chose très importante, peut être plus importante qu'une étoile

Is thinking" focused not on ends but on the process of life

I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing—maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed— because 'Thou mayest.