Quotes About Existence

I've known supreme happiness, and I'm not greedy enough to want what I have to go on forever. Every dream ends. Wouldn't it be foolish, knowing that nothing lasts forever, to insist that one has a right to do something that does? [...]but, if eternity existed, it would be this moment.

For me, beauty is always retreating from one's grasp: the only thing I consider important is what existed once, or ought to have existed.

We had stretched out our arms to each other and supported something in our joined hands, but this thing we were holding was like a sort of gas that exists when you believe in its existence and disappears when you doubt. The task of supporting it seems simple at first glance, but actually requires an ultimate refinement of calculation and a consummate skill.

There is nothing in the least special about you. I guarantee you a long life. You have not been chosen by the gods, you will never be at one with your acts, you do not have in you the green light to flash like young lightning with the speed of the gods and destroy yourself. All you have is a certain premature senility. Your life will be suited for coupon-clipping. Nothing more.

One could certainly think of a man not in terms of a body but as a single vital current. And this would allow one to grasp the concept of existence as dynamic and on-going, rather than as static.

We all know that the world is empty and that the important thing, the only thing, is to try to maintain order in that emptiness.

It was certainly not consolation that Kashiwagi sought in beauty. .. What he loved was that for a short while after his breath had brought beauty into existence in the air, his own clubfeet and gloomy thinking remained there, more clearly and more vividly than before. The uselessness of beauty, the fact that beauty which had passed through his body left no mark there whatsoever, that it changed absolutely nothing- it was this that Kashiwagi loved.

But there is no such thing as individual knowledge, a particular knowledge belonging to one special person or group. Knowledge is the sea of humanity, the field of humanity, the general condition of human existence.

For me, beauty is always retreating from one's grasp: the only thing I consider important is what existed once, or ought to have existed. By its subtle, infinitely varied operation, the steel restored the classical balance that the body had begun to lose, reinstating it in its natural form, the form that it should have had all along.

I had perceived dimly, too, that the only physical proof of the existence of consciousness was suffering. Beyond doubt, there was a certain splendor in pain, which bore a deep affinity to the splendor that lies hidden within strength.

Da li je bolest, u stvari, samo ubrzavanje života?

At such times I felt as though I was drenched up to my neck in the existence that was myself.

Insomma, esiste pure quel congegno che si chiama il cuore umano, e nessuno sa cos'è che lo fa battere.

Man does not live simply in order to die.

Once the world has been transformed into something meaningful, some feel they can die without regret. Others feel that they exist in a world without meaning, so what's the point of living? But where do these two sets of feelings converge? For Hanio, both paths led to the same thing: death.

For ideas are, in the long run, essentially foreign to human existence; and the body — receptacle of the involuntary muscles, of the internal organs and circulatory system over which it has no control — is foreign to the spirit, so that it is even possible for people to use the body as a metaphor for ideas, both being something quite alien to human existence as such.

In general, things that were endowed with life did not, like the Golden Temple, have the rigid quality of existing once and for all. Human beings were merely allotted one part of nature's various attributes and, by an effective method of substitution, they diffused that part and made it multiply.

Beneath the sky, wretched lonliness was no jot better or worse than good fortune and success. To put it another way, wherever you stood, the same starry sky was peering down.

It was a painful awakening. Why were things wrong just as they were? The questions which I had asked myself numberless times since boyhood rose again to my lips. Why are we all burdened with the duty to destroy everything, change everything, entrust everything to impermanency? Is it this unpleasant duty that the world calls life? Or am I the only one for whom it is a duty? At least there was no doubt that I was alone in regarding the duty as a heavy burden.

So then, this image of a lukewarm man that Sonoko was now seeing, this thing that appeared to be my character, aroused my disgust, made my entire existence seem worthless, and tore my self-confidence into shreds. I was made to distrust both my will and my character, or at least, so far as my will was concerned, I could not believe it was anything but a fake.

The Chief always insisted it would take acts such as this to fill the world's great hollows. Though nothing else could do it, he said, murder would fill those gaping caves in much the same way that a crack along its face will fill a mirror. Then they would achieve real power over existence.

Thus in a single phrase I can define the great illusion concerning 'love' in this world. It is the effort to join reality with the apparition. Presently I came to realize that my conviction—the conviction that I could never be loved-was itself the basic state of human existence

Avevo imparato ad atteggiare le labbra al sorriso di chi la sa lunga sulle vicende del mondo, un sorriso simile a quello di un giovane sacerdote. Avevo il senso di non essere né vivo né morto.

Beings in existence thus are annihilated from moment to moment, and this gives rise to time. The process whereby time is engendered by this moment-to-moment annihilation may be likened to a row of dots and a line.