Quotes About Being

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry or art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is constantly ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight.

One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole…But nothing exists apart from the whole!

But there is no such substratum; there is no being behind doing, effecting, becoming; the doer is merely a fiction added to the deed-the deed is everything.

Knowledge kills action, for action requires a state of being in which we are covered with the veil of illusion.

I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgets himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his going under.

The beast lives unhistorically; for it 'goes into' the present, like a number, without leaving any curious remainder.

To impose the character of being upon becoming is the supreme test of power.

When death brings at last the desired forgetfulness, it abolishes life and being together, and sets the seal on the knowledge that being is merely a continual has been, a thing that lives by denying and destroying and contradicting itself.

Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of Being. Everything dies, everything blooms again; eternally runs the year of Being. Everything breaks, everything is joined anew; eternally is built the same house of Being. Everything separates, everything greets itself again; eternally true to itself remains the ring of Being.

Reason' is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. In so far as the senses show becoming, passing away, change, they do not lie.… But Heraclitus will always be right in this, that being is an empty fiction. The 'apparent' world is the only one: the 'real' world has only been lyingly added…

I am of today and of the has-been (he said then); but there is something in me that is of tomorrow and of the day-after-tomorrow and of the shall-be.

Wir haben den Begriff Zweck erfunden: in der Realität fehlt der Zweck... Man ist nothwendig, man ist ein Stück Verhängniss, man gehört zum Ganzen, man ist im Ganzen, - es giebt Nichts, was unser Sein richten, messen, vergleichen, verurtheilen könnte, denn das hiesse das Ganze richten, messen, vergleichen, verurtheilen... Aber es giebt Nichts ausser dem Ganzen!

In a like manner, as soon as we know the meaning of being and the meaning of nonbeing, we know that a thing cannot be and not be at one and the same time, and under the same formal consideration.

Being is the soul of every concept, of every judgment and of every reasoning.

Things have a life of their own. It's simply a matter of waking up their souls.

Il est de toute nécessité que je perde conscience de la réalité individuelle de l'être que je puis être amené à supprimer.

The state of being lost, he seemed to imply, granted him a kind of freedom.

I'm such a tomboy - I was raised in the South - and I also really wanted to work in New York, being so different from California, though it was a freezing-cold winter.

That which is not, shall never be; that which is, shall never cease to be. To the wise, these truths are self-evident.

In the past, people generally believed they could acquire magic in two ways: through learning the craft, either from another practitioner or from books; or through obtaining magic from a powerful being-think Faust or the classic, demonized witch, both of whom get their mojo from Satan.

When you take your attention into the present moment, a certain alertness arises. You become more conscious of what's around you, but also, strangely, a sense of presence that is both within and without.

Oh, hour of forgiven sin, moment of perfect pardon, our soul shall never forget you while, within you, life and being find immortality!