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Quotes About Being

It is a fundamental tenet of Buddhist thought that before emptiness of self can be realized, the self must be experienced fully, as it appears. It is the task of therapy, as well as of meditation, to return those split-off elements to a person's awareness—to make the person see that they are not, in fact, split-off elements at all, but essential aspects of his or her own being.
~ Mark Epstein
Whatever is, is, and whatever is not, is not
~ Mark Helprin
Is it possible that, with each inhalation, we take in the world and awaken our soul? And with each exhalation, do we free ourselves of the world, which inevitably entangles us? Is this how we fill up and empty a hundred times a day, always seeking the gift of the two breaths? Perhaps this is the work of being.
~ Mark Nepo
There is a gravity of spirit that pulls the essence of who we are into being. Our job, like all our sister creatures, is to find the abundance of air and water and light, and to unfold what is already within us.
~ Mark Nepo
COMING OUT While there is much to do we are not here to do.   Under the want to problem-solve is the need to being-solve.   Often, with full being the problem goes away.   The seed being-solves its darkness by blossoming.   The heart being-solves its loneliness by loving whatever it meets.   The tea being-solves the water by becoming tea.
~ Mark Nepo
To exist is to drink oneself without thirst.
~ Annie Ernaux
I felt little interest in possible danger of their being run over: only a great relief that the bus must in any case come to a standstill, whether they were killed or not.
~ Anthony Powell
Man is born to live and not to prepare to live." —BORIS PASTERNAK
~ Anthony Robbins
not once more will/I be found with beings/who swallowed the rail of life//And one day I found myself with beings/who swallowed the nail of life/-as soon as I lost my matrix mamma,//and the being twisted under him,/and god poured me back to her/(the motherfucker)...
~ Antonin Artaud
And truly must it be reduced to this stinking gas, my body? To say that I have a body because I have a stinking gas that forms inside me? (To have done with the judgement of God, 1947)
~ Antonin Artaud
At times all I would need is a single word, a simple little word of no importance, to be great, to speak in the voice of the prophets; a word of witness, a precise word, a subtle word, a word well steeped in my marrow, gone out of me, which would stand at the other limit of my being and which, for everyone else, would be nothing.
~ Antonin Artaud
Uzam, zaman, boyut, oluÅŸ, gelecek, ilerisi, varl?k, varolmay??, ben, ben olmayan, hiçbir ÅŸey ifade etmiyorlar bana.
~ Antonin Artaud
Là ou ça sent la merde ça sent l'être. L'homme aurait très bien pu ne pas chier, ne pas ouvrir la poche anale, mais il a choisi de chier comme il aurait choisi de vivre au lieu de consentir à vivre mort. C'est que pour ne pas faire caca, il lui aurait fallu consentir à ne pas être, mais il n'a pas pu se résoudre à perdre l'être, c'est-à-dire à mourir vivant.
~ Antonin Artaud
For the activity of the mind is life
~ Aristotle
The void is 'not-being,' and no part of 'what is' is a 'not-being,'; for what 'is' in the strict sense of the term is an absolute plenum. This plenum, however, is not 'one': on the contrary, it is a 'many' infinite in number and invisible owing to the minuteness of their bulk.
~ Aristotle
the actuality of thought is life
~ Aristotle
Indeed, it is evident that the mere passage of time itself is destructive rather than generative [...] because change is primarily a 'passing away.' So it is only incidentally that time is the cause of things coming into being and existing.
~ Aristotle
Being cannot be one in form, though it may be in what it is made of. (Even some of the physicists hold it to be one in the latter way, though not in the former.) Man obviously differs from horse in form, and contraries from each other.
~ Aristotle
Now to investigate whether Being is one and motionless is not a contribution to the science of Nature.
~ Aristotle
For if Being is just one, and one in the way mentioned, there is a principle no longer, since a principle must be the principle of some thing or things.
~ Aristotle
For to define the infinite you must use quantity in your formula, but not substance or quality. If then Being is both substance and quantity, it is two, not one: if only substance, it is not infinite and has no magnitude; for to have that it will have to be a quantity. Again, (5) 'one' itself, no less than 'being', is used in many senses, so we must consider in what sense the word is used when it is said that the All is one.
~ Aristotle
1) an attribute is predicated of some subject, (35) so that the subject to which 'being' is attributed will not be, as it is something different from 'being'. [186b] Something, therefore, which is not will be. Hence 'substance' will not be a predicate of anything else. For the subject cannot be a being, unless 'being' means several things, in such a way that each is something. But ex hypothesi 'being' means only one thing.
~ Aristotle
Being will not have magnitude, if it is substance. For each of the two parts must be in a different sense.
~ Aristotle
It is, (10) then, clearly impossible for Being to be one in this sense.
~ Aristotle