Quotes About Existence

it seemed one could just say are you serious? for the rest of existence and it would never be unjustified and would always have to be answered and so would keep the conversation going

I try. What can I say?" She pauses. "Is all this really happening? I keep thinking that soon it will be over—the life expectancy of a cloud is supposed to be only twelve hours—and then I realize something has occurred that can never ever be over.

No matter what terror or loveliness the earth could produce—winds, seas—a person could produce the same, lived with the same, lived with all that mixed-up nature swirling inside, every bit.

He read his own obituary and an editorial lamenting his demise and praising his fortitude and immediately began to think up witty ways of writing to the paper to announce his continued and uninterrupted existence. The other two joined in the game with enthusiasm, and soon all three of them were howling with laughter and emptying bottles at a rate which would have alarmed even a depressed Scandinavian.

There comes a point in life where each one of us who survives begins to feel like a ghost that has forgotten to die at the right time

I am not a religious man, I am a materialist, but even I can see that priests are a kind of bacteria that enable people to find life digestible.

But in this life on earth we have not only the fear but the certainty that we shall lose it. For one day we must die. Therefore true happiness... lasting, everlasting happiness cannot be our lot on earth. Nor could it be otherwise. For everlasting happiness is only another name for God.

I had always suspected myself of being almost purposeless, of not really having any single serious reason for existing. Now I was convinced, in the face of the facts themselves, of my personal emptiness.

There are shadows for the shadows of things, as a reflection seen in a mirror of a mirror. We know there are circles within circles and dimensions beyond dimension. Reality is itself a shadow, only an appearance accepted by those whose eyes shun what might lie beyond.

To die is nothing. One is here, one is no longer here. It is only at the end one must be able to say 'I was a man'.

To survive? What is that? A mouse lives, a fly lives; one flees in terror, another lives in filth. They exist, they are, but do they live?

A body shouldn't heed what might be. He's got to do with what is.

A year? What is a year? All time is relative. One day may be a lifetime, a year can be forever. It is not the number of days but what goes into those days.

All copyrights are held by the Stationers' Company, and they pay a pittance. They control all and there is nowhere else to go. A man ekes out an existence only if he can do other things as well. A dramatist does scarcely better, for he must sell his copyright to the theatrical companies, and if he gets as much as six pounds he is fortunate. No, my friend, it is no way to earn a living.

How often it is that a whim may alter the course of our existences! How often the simple decision whether to go right or left when one leaves a doorway can change so much! A man may turn to the right and walk straightaway into all manner of evil, and to the left, all manner of good.

Each day is a day to live and in which to keep from dying, and a man's energies are directed out from himself and his thoughts as well.

One does not 'become' a Sun. One is or is not a Sun.

Man was born to die. It is our promise at birth.

If behaving as thought we had free will or God exists gets us results we want, we will not only come to believe those things; they will be, pragmatically, true.

Anxiety is the price tag on human freedom

Every thing is what it is" is a famous phrase in British philosophy, and the essence of the empirical view.44*

In modern societies, the reproduction of custom is no longer understood to be one of the chief purposes of existence, and the ends of life are not thought to be given; they are thought to be discovered or created. Individuals are not expected to follow the life path of their parents, and the future of the society is not thought to be dictated entirely by its past.

We may be surrounded by some greater reality, to which we are oblivious. And even if we could somehow perceive it in some entirely new way, it is extremely doubtful we would be able to comprehend what we perceived.

An idea doesn't die, said Trapp. It exists somewhere, in its own dimension, waiting to be perceived.