Quotes About Existence

Il tempo è ciò in grazia del quale ogni cosa, in ogni momento, diventa nulla nelle nostre mani.

When will you begin to exist then? When will you begin to be here, to live? Regardless

Whatever is happening at this moment, that is your life. The future is not your life; it never arrives. What is actually here is always only this moment.

in the world but not of it"...

To be saved is here, local and mortal

Reflective I found a weed that had a mirror in it and that mirror looked in at a mirror in me that had a weed in it

I have a life that did not become, that turned aside and stopped, astonished: I hold it in me like a pregnancy or as on my lap a child not to grow or grow old but dwell on

It isn't just the dying part; it's the thought of the day coming when I will have already been dead five, ten, two hundred years. All those centuries piling on top of me, like so many fallen trees. The fact that I will neither know nor care is of little comfort because I'm not, as yet, dead. The only cure for the fear of death is death.

The thought that this happened and then this happened and then this and this and this, the relentless march of event and emotion tied together simply because day follows day and turns into week following week becoming months and years reinforces the fact that the only logical ending for chronological order is death.

You call yourselves 'realists', but you remain strangers to reality and blind to its totality, dreamless sleepers wandering aimlessly in search of life's true meaning and purpose which lie buried among the ruins of your own greatest longings.

Faced with the mind-surpassing grandeur of the universe, we cannot but admit that there is meaning which is greater than man.

Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics. To us a single act of injustice--cheating in business, exploitation of the poor--is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence: to us, an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world.

Architecture of Time       Technical civilization is man's conquest of space. It is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing an essential ingredient of existence, namely, time. In technical civilization, we expend time to gain space. To enhance our power in the world of space is our main objective. Yet to have more does not mean to be more. The power we attain in the world of space terminates abruptly at the borderline of time. But time is the heart of existence.

Time...which is eternity in disguise.

A world without time would be a world without God, a world existing in and by itself, without renewal, without a Creator.

We may assume it is God we care for, but it may be our own ego we are concerned with. To examine our religious existence is, therefore, a task to be performed constantly.

Het begin van geluk is gelegen in het begrip dat het leven zonder verwondering niet de moeite waard is geleefd te worden. (p.56)

God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.

God is not in things of space, but in moments of time.

Above all, remember that the meaning of life is to live as if it were a work of art. You're not a machine. When you're young, start working on this great work of art called your own existence.

In trying to understand Jewish existence a Jewish philosopher must look for agreement with the men of Sinai as well as with the people of Auschwitz.

Above all, remember that the meaning of life is to live it as if it were a work of art. You're not a machine. When you're young, start working on this great work of art called your own existence.

It is not utility that we seek in religion but eternity.

Six days a week the spirit is alone, disregarded, forsaken, forgotten.