Quotes About Being

Here are the shadows left behind by a thousand moments, a thousand moods, of needs traced here on the wall by men who are gone. Here is the record of their being here.

Trust me, the being-dead part is much easier than the dying part. If you can watch much television, then being dead will be a cinch. Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.

No somos especiales. Tampoco somos escoria o basura. Simplemente, somos. Somos y ya está, y lo que pasa, simplemente pasa.

Somos y ya está, y lo que pasa, simplemente pasa.

Ich ärgere mich, also bin ich.

No somos especiales. Tampoco somos escoia ni basura. Simplemente, somos. Somos y ya está, y lo que pasa, simplemente pasa.

Noi non siamo speciali. Non siamo nemmeno merda. Noi siamo. Noi siamo soltanto e quello che succede succede soltanto.

The most undervalued thing in this world is the time, attention, concentration, and patient effort of unhurried human beings.

What I want is to live of that initial and primordial something that was what made some things reach the point of aspiring to be human.

He felt for a moment uncreated. Another kind of awake.

In this moment, there is plenty of time. In this moment, you are precisely as you should be. In this moment, there is infinite possibility. (17)

Usually, to be sure, man considers only the stubble field of transitoriness and overlooks the full granaries of the past, wherein he had salvaged once and for all his deeds, his joys and also his sufferings. Nothing can be undone, and nothing can be done away with. I should say having been is the surest kind of being.

Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.

Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.

Again I quoted a poet—to avoid sounding like a preacher myself —who had written, Was Du erlebst, kann keine Macht der Welt Dir rauben. (What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.) Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.

haber sido es también una forma de ser, quizá la forma más segura de ser.

would say, reification has become the original sin of psychotherapy. But a human being is no thing. This no-thingness, rather than nothingness, is the lesson to learn from existentialism.

Nada puede deshacerse y nada puede volverse a hacer. Haber sido es la forma más segura de ser.

What does all this prove? What has come through to us from the past? Two things: everything depends on the individual human being, regardless of how small a number of like-minded people there are, and everything depends on each person, through action and not mere words, creatively making the meaning of life a reality in his or her own being.

Nothing can be undone, and nothing can be done away with. I should say having been is the surest kind of being.

Freedom is not something we have and therefore can lose; freedom is what we are.

M]eaning cannot be grasped by merely intellectual means, for it supersedes essentially—or to speak more specifically—dimensionally, man's capacity as a finite being. [...] This meaning necessarily transcends man and his world and, therefore, cannot be approached by merely rational processes. [...] [W]hat we have to deal with is no intellectual or rational process, but a wholly existential act which perhaps could be described by [...] 'the basic trust in Being'.

M]eaning must not coincide with being; meaning must be ahead of being; meaning sets the pace of being. Existence falters unless it is lived in terms of transcendence toward something beyond itself.

The more comprehensive the meaning, the less comprehensible it is. Infinite meaning is necessarily beyond the comprehension of a finite being. Here is the point at which science gives up and wisdom takes over.