Quotes About Existence

As immigrant artists for whom so much has been sacrificed, so many dreams have been deferred, we already doubt so much. Who do we think we are? We think we are people who risked not existing at all. People who might have had a mother and father killed, either by a government or nature, even before we were born. Some of us think we are accidents of literacy. I do.

My mother used to say that we'll all have three death: the one when our breath leaves our bodies to rejoin the air, the one when we are out back in the earth, and the one that will erase us completely and no one will remember us at all.

Please remind them that none of us have all the time we think we have in this troubled but still beautiful world.

Maybe we're all dying, one breath at a time.

There is a Haitian saying that might upset the aesthetic sensibilities of some women. 'Nou led, nou la,' it says. 'We are ugly, but we are here.' Like the modesty that is common in rural Haitian culture, this saying makes a deeper claim for poor Haitian women than maintaining beauty, be it skin-deep or otherwise. For women like my grandmother, what is worth celebrating is the fact that we are here, that against all odds, we exist.

But how long will this kind of tolerance last? How long can anyone bear to live with someone whose mind wanders off to a place where their love no longer exists?

To teach me that a lifetime can be vast as a hundred years or sudden as a few breaths? Enjoy this one you have left. It all passes so fast. In the time it takes to draw a breath.

We already have posterity, I said. When?' We were babies and we grew old

I might not be human. I might be nothing more than a set of algorithms, running on a spacesuit with a corpse inside it. But I'm not a monster.

A slash and a dot," he said. "I doubt it means anything to you, but this was once the mark of an alliance of progressive thinkers linked together by one of the very first computer networks. The Federation of Polities can trace its existence right back to that fragile collective, in the early decades of the Void Century.

To live is better than not to live. Even for a few hours, in the company of friends.

While we seek to fill up life in a way that will best secure the ends of our existence here, our whole plan and course of action should be such as will not hinder but serve our preparation for a future world.

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.

Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.

The realization that life is absurd and cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and ''historical tasks'' is an actual or potential assassin.

It's no use reminding yourself daily that you are mortal: it will be brought home to you soon enough.

I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place every day.

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.

The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself.