Quotes About Existence

We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving.

I'm laughing because I know the secret of life. And the secret of life is that I have validated my existence. I know that I am worth more than my house, my bank account, or any physical thing.

How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a man is to become - to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being.

Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.

There is no success or failure in Nature.

Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.

The present moment is the only moment available to us and it is the door to all other moments.

I never thought about heaven per se. I think when you're dead, you're dead. If anything happens after that, you just hope you don't go to hell.

Without possessions, success, fame; who are you?

But tell me, said Beauchamp, what is life? Is it not a hall in Death's anteroom?

Oh Heaven! You sometimes bear with such injustice on earth, that I understand why there are wretches who doubt in your existence.

No matter; God wants Man, whom he has created and in whose heart he has so profoundly entrenched a love for life, to do all he can to preserve an existence that is sometimes so painful, but always so dear to him.

There is only one serious matter to be considered in life, and that is death.

You must needs have wished to die, to know how good it is to live.

Es gibt weder Glück noch Unglück auf dieser Welt, es gibt nur eine Vergleichung eines Zustandes mit einem anderen und mehr nicht.

Qu'Est-ce que la mort? Un degré de plus dans le calme et deux peut-être dans le silence.

There is neither happiness nor misfortune in this world, there is merely the comparison between one state and another, nothing more.

But tell me," said Beauchamp, "what is life? Is it not a hall in Death's anteroom?

I like ghosts. I have heard it said that the dead have never done, in six thousand years, as much evil as the living do in a single day.

I have lost all that bound me to life, death smiles and invites me to rest; I die after my own manner, I die exhausted and broken-spirited, as I fall asleep when I have paced three thousand times round my cell. No sooner had this idea taken possession of him than he became more composed, arranged his couch to the best of his power, ate little, and slept less, and found this existence almost supportable, because he felt he could throw it off at will, like a worn-out garment.

I have no fear of ghosts, and I have never heard it said that so much harm had been done by the dead during six thousand years as is wrought by the living in a single day.

Geluk en ongeluk zijn geen absolute grootheden, maar bestaan slechts in verhouding tot elkaar. Men moet hebben willen sterven om te weten hoe goed het leven is.

It is only by comparing the pains of actual being with the joys of the assumed existence, that you would desire to live no longer, but to dream thus forever.

Nothing passes the time, or shortens the path, like a thought which engrosses all the faculties of an individual's organization. Our external existence is a sleep, of which this thought is the dream; and while we are subjected to its influence, time has no longer any measure, nor is there any distance in space. We leave one place and arrive at another, and are conscious of nothing between.