Quotes About Existence

There are two ways to live your life: one as though nothing is a miracle and the other as though everything is a miracle.

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull facilities can comprehend only in the most primitive forms--this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of the devoutly religious men.

What is inconceivable about the universe is that it is at all conceivable.

What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. —"Old Man's Advice to Youth: 'Never Lose a Holy Curiosity.'" LIFE Magazine (2 May 1955) p. 64

Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.

I was completely astonished by the beauty of nature. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings.

Outside is pure energy and colorless substance. All of the rest happens through the mechanism of our senses. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings.

Lo más importante fue para mí el reconocimiento, confirmado por todos mis experimentos con LSD, que lo que de común se denomina «realidad», incluida la realidad de la propia persona, de ningún modo es algo fijo, sino algo de múltiple significación, y que no existe una realidad, sino varias; cada una de ellas encierra una distinta conciencia del yo.

Don't take life seriously, you'll never get out of it alive.

The business of a scientific school is the dissemination of useful knowledge, and this is a noble enterprise and indispensable withal society can not exist unless it goes on.

Assuming that man has a distinct spiritual nature, a soul, why should it be thought unnatural that under appropriate conditions of maladjustment, his soul might die before his body does or that his soul might die without his knowing it?

The only way to know yourself is to be, which means to forget all that you think you are. In the Bible, God says, "Be still and know that I am God." This is what I mean by simply 'be.' This statement could easily, without loss, be reduced to, "Be still and know," or just "Be still," or, as we have just said, "Be." Being is knowing, knowing is stillness, and this still knowing, which is being without limit, some people call God.

When I am silent it seems that nothing is happening, but everything is happening. Nothing ever stops happening. Everything is happening. To see into this is a way of melting down this carapace, this shell, of what we call existence.

A Human Thought is an actual Existence, and a Force and Power, capable of acting upon and controlling matter as well as mind.

Everything actual must also first have been possible, before having actual existence.

Reverence for life brings us into a spiritual relation with the world which is independent of all knowledge of the universe.

True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: 'I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live

I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live.

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

Ich bin Leben, das leben will, inmitten von Leben, das leben will.

The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah...and died to give his work its final consecration never existed. ["Modern Christian Thought: The twentieth century, Volume 2" by James C. Livingston, Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, p.13]