Quotes About Existence

The most beautiful life that has been imagined is the life of the knight Don Quixote who created danger where he did not find it. But more beautiful still is the lived life of him who finds danger in all places. All creation stands on the edge of being; all creation is risk. He who does not risk his soul can only ape the creator.

The only possible relationship with God is to address him and to be addressed by him, here and now—or, as Buber puts it, in the present.

But a person, I would say, is an individual living really with the world. And 'with' the world, I don't mean in the world- just in real contact, in real reciprocity with the world in all the points in which the world can meet man.

Feelings are 'entertained'; love comes to pass. Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love.

One who truly meets the world goes out also to God.

There is something that can only be found in one place. It is a great treasure, which may be called the fulfilment of existence. The place where this treasure can be found is the place on which one stands.

Because we cannot circle above all existence – sleepless, unbroken, boundless, glowing – we content ourselves with being submerged and awakening .

The legendary anecdote goes one stop beyond: the single incident in question conveys the meaning of life.

Feelings one "has"; love occurs. Feelings dwell in man, but man dwells in his love.

The world is not divine sport; it is divine destiny. There is divine meaning in the life of the world; of man, of human persons, of you and of me.

I contemplate a tree. I can accept it as a picture: a rigid pillar in a flood of light, or splashes of green traversed by the gentleness of the blue silver ground. I can feel it as movement: the flowing veins around the sturdy, striving core, the suckling of the roots, the breathing of the leaves, the infinite commerce with earth and air - and the growing itself in its darkness.

The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.

I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.

The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.

When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.

Every person born into the world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique....If there had been someone like her in the world, there would have been no need for her to be born." --Martin Buber as quoted in Narrative Means for Sober Ends, by Jon Diamond, p.78

All actual life is encounter.

For God does not want to be believed in, to be debated and defended by us, but simply to be realized through us.

By definition prostitutes did not exist, because prostitution has been eliminated by the Revolution. Charges could be brought against them for spreading venereal disease, performing depraved acts or leading a nonproductive life, but by law there were no whores.

The dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its meaninglessness." .

The Theatre of the Absurd is a theatrical embodiment and manifestation of existentialism

There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.

We cannot tell that we are constantly splitting into duplicate selves because our consciousness rides smoothly along only one path in the endlessly forking chains

Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation …. Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes