Quotes About Existence

Identity seems to be non-existent at a personal level—at best we can end up in a minority, and those who discuss it most are just those people who are aware of its absence in themselves.

There may be deep thought, but deep people don't exist. Our bodies must float on the surface, otherwise we drown.

The psyche exists (quite happily, one might add) on an entirely different plane than the body: whereas the body is inextricably bound to time, degrading day-by-day on its 85-year death trek, the psyche is, indeed, ageless, blending its memories into a single unit. It simply collects information—and "maturing" is really nothing more than a judgement of the quality of that information.

Somethingism is better than nihilism.

If death is perfect enlightenment, life appears to be the perfect opposite.

It is difficult to reconcile oneself to the view that a single life determines our lot. We seem to come toward the end of our life just when we begin to get some insight.

Birth and death are the two states that bracket our lives. One thrusts us crying into consensual reality from the Pleroma and the other ushers us back there at the end of life.

Your first discovery when you travel," wrote Elizabeth Hardwick, "is that you do not exist." In other words, it is not just the others who have been left behind; it is all of you that is known. Gone is the power or punishment of your family name, the hard-earned reputations of forebears, no

through the miracle of consciousness, the human psyche provides the mirror in which Nature sees herself reflected.

Human consciousness created objective existence and meaning, and man found his indispensable place in the great process of being.

The capacity to be alone is a valuable resource when changes of mental attitude are required. After major alterations in circumstances, fundamental reappraisal of the significance and meaning of existence may be needed. In a culture in which interpersonal relationships are generally considered to provide the answer to every form of distress, it is sometimes difficult to persuade well-meaning helpers that solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support.

We say nothing essential about the cathedral when we speak of its stones. We say nothing essential about Man when we seek to define him by the qualities of men.

Living is being born slowly. It would be a little too easy if we could borrow ready-made souls.

Surely a man needs a closed place wherein he may strike root and, like the seed, become. But also he needs the great Milky Way above him and the vast sea spaces, though neither stars nor ocean serve his daily needs.

No single event can awaken within us a stranger whose existence we had never suspected. To live is to be slowly born.

Of course I'll hurt you. Of course you'll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.

More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use.

Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.

Man's "progress" is but a gradual discovery that his questions have no meaning

Night, when words fade and things come alive.

Nothing is born, nothing dies.

Man spends his life in reasoning on the past, in complaining of the present, in fearing future.

Death is terrible, but still more terrible is the feeling that you might live for ever and never die.

You ask What is life? That is the same as asking What is a carrot? A carrot is a carrot and we know nothing more.