Quotes About Existence

Sombre as fir trees, liquid cats Moved in the grass without a sound. They did not know the grass went round. The cats had cats and the grass turned gray And the world had worlds, ai, this-a-way: The grass turned green and the grass turned gray.

The greatest poverty is not to live In a physical world, to feel that one's desire Is too difficult to tell from despair.

The death of one god is the death of all.

Dwelling always in an in-between realm, between eras of the imagination, there exists a degree of perception at which what is real and what is imagined are one. — Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose (Library of America, October 1, 1997)

Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

A poem should stimulate the sense of living and of being alive.

I am and have a being and play a part.

That strange flower, the sun, Is just what you say. Have it your way. The world is ugly, And the people are sad.

The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.

We live in an old chaos of the sun.

I certainly do not exist from nine to six, when I am at the office.

in the presence of extraordinary actuality, consciousness takes the place of imagination.

The roundness of life's design may be a sign that there is a presence beyond ourselves.

Religion's just a well-oiled profit-driven denial of the randomness of it all.

Whatever is impermanent is dukkha' (Yad anicca? ta? dukkha?).

There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to say that life is moving, but life is movement itself. Life and movement are not two different things. In other words, there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found.

According to the Buddha's teaching the beginning of the life-stream of living beings is unthinkable. THe believer in the creation of life by God may be astonished at this reply. But if you were to ask him 'What is the beginning of God?' he would answer without hesitation 'God has no beginning', and he is not astonished at his own reply.

How can a will, or anything for that matter, arise without conditions, away from cause and effect, when the whole of existence is conditioned and relative, and is within the law of cause and effect?

A] being is nothing but a combination of physical and mental forces or energies. What we call death is the total non-functioning of the physical body. Do all these forces and energies stop altogether with the non-functioning of the body?

It is not correct to say that life is moving, but life is movement itself. Life and movement are not two different things. In other words, there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found.

Mere suffering exists, but no sufferer is found; The deeds are, but no doer is found.

T]he Absolute Truth is that there is nothing absolute in the world, that everything is relative, conditional and impermanent, and that there is no unchanging, everlasting, absolute substance like Self, Soul, Atman within or without.

whatever is impermanent is dukkha' (yad aniccam ta? dukkha ?).

When this physical body is no more capable of functioning, energies do not die with it, but continue to take some other shape or form, which we call another life.