Quotes About Presence

Nicholas, dressed in black and trailing them like a sinister storm cloud, had a dry little preoccupied smile.

It is a bittersweet joy, but real nonetheless—the way our lost loves are forever in our hearts and minds. They are, in fact, constant to our consciousness in a way they couldn't be when they were alive, because then we depended on their comings and goings—the highs and lows of their being with us, the vagaries of presence and convenience. But

Though the loved one has died, the memory, the sense of the person's presence, has not—nor the possibility, after a while, of taking continuing joy not only in the reminiscences from the past, but in the extension of the person's spirit into our ongoing lives.

Bodies can show up anywhere.

Be content to be what you are, and prefer nothing to it, and do not fear or wish for your last day.

The Thou encounters me by grace -- it cannot be found by seeking. But that I speak the basic word to it is a deed of my whole being, is my essential deed.

All real life is meeting.

No purpose intervenes between I and You, no greed and no anticipation; and longing itself is changed as it plunges from the dream into appearance. Every means is an obstacle. Only where all means have disintegrated encounters occur.

Feeling one "has"; love occurs.

As long as the firmament of the You is spread over me, the tempests of causality cower at my heels, and whirl of doom congeals.

Spirit is not in the I but between I and You.

What, then, does one experience of the You? -- Nothing at all. For one does not experience it. -- What, then, does one know of the You? -- Only everything. For one no longer knows particulars.

The basic word I-You can only be spoken with one's whole being. The basic word I-It can never be spoken with one's whole being.

There is something that can only be found in one place. It is a great treasure, which may be called the fulfilment of existence. The place where this treasure can be found is the place on which one stands.

The basic word I-You can only be spoken with one's whole being.

All real living is meeting.

Man wishes to be confirmed in his being by man, and wishes to have a presence in the being of the other…. Secretly and bashfully he watches for a YES which allows him to be and which can come to him only from one human person to another.

When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.

All actual life is encounter.

To look away from the world, or to stare at it, does not help a man to reach God; but he who sees the world in Him stands in His presence.

I shall look into your faces, And listen to what you say, And be very often near you, When you think I'm far away.

A great deal of the information embedded in a work of art is not – yet at least – accessible just by looking at an image of it while sitting at home. The deepest and richest experiences are not virtual but physical: they involve looking at real things and talking to real people.

Why do we rush about… looking for God who is here at home with us, if all we want is to be with him?

Union with God respects all distinctions between creation and Creator and is characterized by awareness of the presence and the transparency of perceived boundaries.