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Quotes About Existence

Kierkegaard lo niega: placer físico y reflexión no pueden convivir).
~ Soren Kierkegaard
Are we so thoroughly convinced that we have attained the highest point that there is nothing left for us but to piously make ourselves believe that we have not got so far — just for the sake of having something left to occupy our time? Is it such a self-deception the present generation has need of, does it need to be trained to virtuosity in self-deception, or is it not rather sufficiently perfected already in the art of deceiving itself?
~ Soren Kierkegaard
And doesn't everything die and return; the grass, the trees, the fields? Why not us?
~ S.M. Stirling
There are those of us who learn to live completely in the moment. For such people the Past vanishes and the future loses meaning. There is only the Present, which means that two of the three Aalim are surplus to requirements. And then there are those of us who are trapped in yesterdays, in the memory of a lost love, or a childhood home, or a dreadful crime. And some people live only for a better tomorrow; for them the past ceases to exist
~ Salaman Rushdie
Because Harry knew there was no forever. Not for them. Such things were impossible. There was only today, there was only tonight. And he'd do well not to forget it.
~ Sally Malcolm
Humanity, it seemed, was one of the galaxy's constants.
~ Sally Malcolm
Who what am I? My answer: I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each 'I', every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow the world.
~ Salman Rushdie
A sigh isn't just a sigh. We inhale the world and breathe out meaning. While we can. While we can.
~ Salman Rushdie
The fact of being alive compensated for what life did to one.
~ Salman Rushdie
Can one drown in one's element... If fish can drown in water, can human beings suffocate in air?
~ Salman Rushdie
Be so good as to cease to cast yourself in fictions. Pinch yourself, or slap yourself across the face if that's what it takes, but understand, please, that you are nonfictional, and this is real life.
~ Salman Rushdie
Most people define themselves by their work, or where they come from, or suchlike; we had lived too far inside our heads. It makes actuality damn hard to handle.
~ Salman Rushdie
this is our tragedy, she said in his words, our fictions are killing us, but if we didn't have those fictions, maybe that would kill us too.
~ Salman Rushdie
The point is always reached after which the gods no longer share their lives with mortal men and women, they die or wither away or retire... Now that they've gone, the high drama's over. What remains is ordinary human life.
~ Salman Rushdie
If by some bizarre chance there turns out to be a god [...], I'm willing to bet he's an atheist too.
~ Salman Rushdie
Because if the whole universe could just explode out of Nothing and then just Be, don't you see that the opposite could also be true? That it is possible to implode and Un-Be as well as to explode and Be? That it's possible to implode and Un-Be as well as to explode and Be? That all human beings, Napoleon Bonaparte, for example, or the emperor Akbar, or Angelina Jolie or your father, could simply return to Nothing once they're...done? In a sort of Little, by which I mean personal, Un-Bang?
~ Salman Rushdie
He needed her so badly, to reassure himself of his own existence, that he never comprehended the desperation in her dazzling, permanent smile, the terror in the brightness with which she faced the world, or the reasons why she hid when she couldn't manage to beam... every moment she spent in the world was full of panic, so she smiled and smiled and maybe once a week she locked the door and shook and felt like a husk, like an empty peanut-shell, a monkey without a nut.
~ Salman Rushdie
to admit we do not understand a phenomenon is not to admit the presence of the miraculous but merely, reasonably, to accept the limitations of human knowledge. God was invented to explain what our ancestors couldn't comprehend: the radiant mystery of being. The existence of the incomprehensible, however, is not a proof of god.
~ Salman Rushdie
Life has vanquished death and even the furniture celebrates.
~ Salman Rushdie
Bir yere ait olmayan insanlar ne olacak? Nereye? Nereye ait olmayan? Herhangi bir yere. Herhangi bir ÅŸeye, herhangi bir kimseye. Fiziksel olarak bir ba?? olmayanlar. Uzay boÅŸluÄŸundaki kuyrukluy?ld?zlar gibi hiçbir çekim gücüne tabi olmayanlar.
~ Salman Rushdie
Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come
~ Salman Rushdie
I sigh therefore I am . . . In the beginning and unto the end was and is the lung: divine afflatus, baby's first yowl, shaped air of speech, staccato gusts of laughter, exalted airs of song, happy lover's groan, unhappy lover's lament, miser's whine, crone's croak, illness's stench, dying whisper, and beyond and beyond the airless, silent void. A sigh isn't just a sigh. We inhale the world and breathe out meaning. While we can. While we can.
~ Salman Rushdie
And my grandfather... was forever knocked into that middle place, unable to worship a God in whose existence he could not wholly disbelieve. Permanent alteration: a hole.
~ Salman Rushdie
Our group takes what I'll call a Post-Atheist stance. Our position is that god is a creation of human beings, who only exists because of the clap-hands-if-you-believe-in-fairies principle. If enough people were sensible enough not to clap hands, then this Tinker Bell god would die. However, unfortunately, billions of human beings are still prepared to defend their belief in some sort of god-fairy, and, as a result, god exists. What's worse is that he is now running amok.
~ Salman Rushdie