Quotes About Existence

14. You have functioned as a part of something; you will vanish into what produced you. Or be restored, rather. To the logos from which all things spring. By being changed.

For the entire earth is but a point, and the place of your own habitation but a minute corner in it. (...) Remember then to withdraw into the little field of self. Above all, never struggle or strain; but be master of yourself.

The whole Universe is change, and life itself is but what you deem it.

He who dreads death, dreads either an extinction of all sense, or dreads a different sort of sensation. If all sense is extinguished, there can be no sense of evil. If a different sort of sense is acquired, you become another sort of living creature; and don't cease to live.

Remember how long thou hast been putting off these things, and how often thou hast received an opportunity from the gods, and yet thou dost not use it. Thou must now at last perceive of what universe thou art a part, and of what administrator of the universe thy existence is an efflux, and that a limit of time is fixed for thee, which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind, it will go and thou wilt go, and it will never return.

Is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?

Remember how long thou hast been putting off these things, and how often thou hast received an opportunity from the gods, and yet dost not use it. Thou must now at last perceive of what universe thou art a part, and of what administrator of the universe thy existence is an efflux, and that a limit of time is fixed for thee, which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind, it will go and thou wilt go, and it will never return.

To those who ask, Where hast thou seen the gods or how dost thou comprehend that they exist and so worshippest them, I answer, in the first place, they may be seen even with the eyes; in the second place neither have I seen even my own soul and yet I honour it. Thus then with respect to the gods, from what I constantly experience of their power, from this I comprehend that they exist and I venerate them. The safety of life is this, to

Everything transitory - the knower and the known

Were you to live three thousand years, or even thirty thousand, remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment; and furthermore, that he can have no other life except the one he loses. This means that the longest life and the shortest amount to the same thing. For the passing minute is every man's equal possession, but what has once gone by is not ours.

Soon you'll be ashes, or bones. A mere name, at most—and even that is just a sound, an echo. The things we want in life are empty, stale, and trivial. Dogs snarling at each other. Quarreling children—laughing and then bursting into tears a moment later. Trust, shame, justice, truth—"gone from the earth and only found in heaven." Why are you still here? Sensory objects are shifting and unstable; our senses dim and easily deceived

Whatever happens to every man, this is for the interest of the universal:

37. If you've seen the present, then you've seen everything -- as it's been since the beginning, as it will be forever. The same substance, the same form. All of it.

Don't ever forget these things: The nature of the world. My nature. How I relate to the world. What proportion of it I make up. That you are part of nature, and no one can prevent you from speaking and acting in harmony with it, always.

How quickly all things disappear, in the universe the bodies themselves, but in time the remembrance of them;

The person who lives shortest owns the exact same amount of life as the one who lives longest. For the present is all we have and all we can lose. When we die, we don't "lose" the past or future—we never owned them.

Some things are hurrying into existence, and other are hurrying out of it; and of that which is coming into existence, part is already extinguished. Motions and changes are continually renewing the world, just as the uninterrupted course of time is always renewing the infinite duration of ages.

How many of them who came into the world at the same time when I did, are already gone out of it?

At all times, look at the thing itself—the thing behind the appearance—and unpack it by analysis: cause substance purpose and the length of time it exists.

That whatever happens has always happened, and always will, and is happening at this very moment, everywhere. Just like this. What links one human being to all humans: not blood, or birth, but mind.

The time of a man's life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption.

If souls can be neither created nor destroyed, does the air around us contain the souls of all who have lived before and all who are yet to be born?

Some things are rushing into existence, others out of it. Some of what now exists is already gone. Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity. We find ourselves in a river. Which of the things around us should we value when none of them can offer a firm foothold?

Is it not plain that the inferior exists for the sake of the superior? But the things which have life are superior to those which have not life, and of those which have life the superior are those which have reason.