Quotes About Existence

Modern mass culture, aimed at the consumer, the civilization of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being

Artistic creation, after all, is not subject to absolute laws, valid from age to age; since it is related to the more general aim of mastery of the world, it has an infinite number of facets, the vincula that connect man with his vital activity; and even if the path towards knowledge is unending, no step that takes man nearer to a full understanding of the meaning of his existence can be too small to count.

Artistic creation, after all, is not subject to absolute laws, valid from age to age; since it is related to the more general aim of mastery of the world, it has an infinite number of facets, the link that connect man with his vital activity; and even if the path towards knowledge is unending, no step that takes man nearer to a full understanding of the meaning of his existence can be too small to count.

I believe in one thing: the human spirit is immortal and indestructible. In the beyond there could be anything, it is of no importance whatsoever. What we call death is not death. It's a rebirth. A caterpillar becomes a cocoon. I think there is a life after death and it is that that is unnerving. It would be so much simpler to conceive of oneself as a telephone cord that is unplugged. Then you could live any way that you wanted. God would have no importance of any kind.

In any case it is perfectly clear that the goal for all art—unless of course it is aimed at the 'consumer', like a saleable commodity—is to explain to the artist himself and to those around him what man lives for, what is the meaning of his existence. To explain to people the reason for their appearance on this planet; or if not to explain, at least to pose the question.

How strangely people live. They seem to be in command of the situation and they do not understand that they have been given the chance of living and actually using the opportunity to be free. Everything in this life is terrible, apart from the freedom of will that we possess.

I want to underline my own belief that art must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out towards it; that art must give man hope and faith. And the more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal that stands in opposition to it—otherwise life would become impossible! Art symbolises the meaning of our existence.

I am as a speck of dust in the sun, and not even so much, in this solemn, mysterious, unknowable universe.

Darkness is only light's absence.

Darkness is only light's absence. -Things that Are

We are given no escape from ultimate questions. In one way or another they are in us, whether we like it or not. Scientific truth is exact, but it is incomplete.

East coasters ... attenders at the church of What Is

317 is a prime, not because we think so, or because our minds are shaped in one way rather than another, but because it is so, because mathematical reality is built that way.

each of us describes our existence by means of objects which are indifferent to us, which survive us, and which are then thrown back into the common stock from which they are soon gathered again and ascribed other roles in other circumstances.

To deny or ignore the existence of an enemy is to give him a great chance against you; and the flesh is in the believer to the very end, a force of evil to be reckoned with continually, an evil force inside a man, and yet, thank God, a force which can be so dealt with by the power of God, that it shall have no power to defile the heart or deflect the will.

However, as God is the ever-living, ever-present, ever-acting One who upholds all things by the word of His power, and in whom all things exist, the relationship of the creature to God could only be one of unceasing, absolute, and universal dependence. As God by His power once created, so by that same power God maintains every moment.

Death is more universal than life. Everyone dies, but not everyone lives.

Who on earth would not long to be fought for? Is this not the very heart of human existence, to be worth fighting for, worth losing everything for?

Her head jerked around. It's so unlikely to be alive, isn't it? The right temperature, and gravity, the right atoms combining at the precise moment, you'd think it would never happen. She stood looking at a painting with a hand to her cheek, then watched the cat making its way across the sofa toward the bird. Life, it's so unlikely, she said, then turned to me again. It's so much better than we think, isn't it?

It's so unlikely to be alive, isn't it? The right temperature, and gravity, the right atoms combining at the precise right moment, you'd think it would never happen.

For while our middle-aged author would probably consider himself a Rosencrantz or Guildenstern, certainly never a protagonist, the truth of existence has not quite pierced his soul: That in real life, there are no protagonists. Or, rather, the reverse: Itss nothing but protagonists. It's protagonists all the way down.

the truth of existence has not quite pierced his soul: That in real life, there are no protagonists. Or, rather, the reverse: It's nothing but protagonists. It's protagonists all the way down.

real life, there are no protagonists. Or, rather, the reverse: It's nothing but protagonists. It's protagonists all the way down.

In depression, all that is happening in the present is the anticipation of pain in the future, and the present qua present no longer exists at all. Depression is a condition that is almost unimaginable to anyone who has not known it.