Existence Quotes
A great and frequent error in our judgment of human nature is to suppose that those sentiments and feelings have no existence, which may be only for a time concealed. The precious metals are not found at the surface of the earth, except in sandy places.
Arthur Helps
To lead people, walk beside them ... As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate ... When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves!
Lao Tzu
The anguish of death hangs over and leads the human spirit to wonder about the mysteries of existence, man's destiny, life, the world.
Edgar Morin
In God alone, essence (what He is) and existence (that he is) coincide.
Avicenna
I have never felt any rest in sleep. For a few seconds I am numbed, then a new life begins, freed from the conditions of time and space, and doubtless similar to that state which awaits us after death. Who knows if there is not some link between those two existences and if it is not possible for the soul to unite them now?
Gerard De Nerval
[My father] impressed upon me from the first, that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known: that the question, "Who made me?" cannot be answered, because we have no experience or authentic information from which to answer it; and that any answer only throws the difficulty a step further back, since the question immediately presents itself, "Who made God?
John Stuart Mill
Today we are familiar with the funereal abbreviation “RIP” (“Rest in Peace”).
Ancient Romans had something comparable, a seven-letter abbreviation that spoke volumes:
“I was not; I was; I am not; I care not.”
The meaning is clear.
There was no existence before birth.
A person existed only after being born.
After death there once more was no existence.
Bart Ehrman
We become extraordinary when we realize how extraordinary our existence is.
Anis Mojgani
Goethe's devil is a cultivated personage and acquainted with the modern sciences; sneers at witchcraft and the black art even while employing them, and doubts most things, nay, half disbelieves even his own existence.
Thomas Carlyle
Eternal life is personal existence in continuity with the present life, but transfigured.
Georgia Harkness
And that's all it takes to make you happy? You kill little kids, then go home and wait until it's time to do it all again? What the hell kind of existence is that?
Brenna Yovanoff
Regarding mutual tolerance: It is negative in one sense, but positive in another. It absolutely forbids us to be forward in pronouncing on the meaninglessness of forms of existence other than our own; and it commands us to tolerate, respect, and indulge those whom we see harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways, however unintelligible these may be to us. Hands off.
William James
Okay," I said, "what's your biggest fear?" As always, he took a second to think about the answer. "Clowns," he said. "Clowns." "Yup." I just looked at him. "What?" he said, glancing over at me. "That is not a real answer," I told him. "Says who?" "Says me. I meant a real fear, like of failure, of death, of regret. Like that. Something that keeps you awake nights, questioning your very existence." He thought for a second. "Clowns.
Sarah Dessen
The problem with our existence is that our experiences contain more hate than love.
Beau Brummell
To deny the possibility, nay, the actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testament, and the thing itself is a Truth to which every nation in the world hath, in its turn, borne testimony, by either example seemingly well attested or by prohibitory laws, which at least suppose the possibility of a commerce with evil spirits.
William Blackstone
There is a sadness at the back of life which some people do not attempt to mitigate. Entirely aware of their own standing in the shadow, and yet alive to every tremor and gleam of existence, there they endure.
Virginia Woolf
In a world in which there is so much to interest, so much to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, everyone who has this moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is capable of an existence which may be called enviable; and unless such a person, through bad laws, or subjection to the will of others, is denied the liberty to use the sources of happiness within his reach, he will not fail to find the enviable existence.
John Stuart Mill
. . . the integral being is attached to nothing and can relate to everyone with an unstructured attitude. Because of this, her very existence benefits all things.
Lao Tzu
