Existence Quotes
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Each of us has some unique capability waiting for realization. Every person is valuable in his own existence, for himself alone... each of us can bring to fruition these innate, God-given abilities.
George H. Bender
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There is something very peculiar about this form of atheism: It tries to constantly remind us of God while maintaining He does not exist! How can you hate something that is not there? Why would you persistently prove to people the non-existence of a being really not there?
Gerard Verschuuren
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Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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One man watches a river flow by. If he does not wish it to flow, to change ceaselessly in accord with its nature, he will suffer great pain. Another man understands that nature of the river is to change constantly, regardless of his likes and dislikes, and therefore he does not suffer. To know existence as this flow, empty of lasting pleasure, void of self, is to find that which is stable and free of suffering, to find true peace in the world.
Ajahn Chah
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Existence will not stop until it gets to beauty.
Anne Carson
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For it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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You are the untold story. You are the impassioned truth wanting to scream its existence, to be forever trapped by a strong hand clapped firmly over the mouth of my soul.
Henry Rollins
Black Flag
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Is there a mechanism of death, that so mutilates existence no one, gets over it not even the dead?
Galway Kinnell
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I am less desirous to explain phenomena than to establish their existence.
Adolphe Quetelet
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University, as institutions, pre-date the information economy by many centuries and are not for-profit cultural entities, whose reason of existence (purportedly) is to discover truth, codify it through techniques of scholarship, and then teach it. Universities are meant to pass the torch of civilization not just download data into student skulls.
Bruce Sterling
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Man is not a mind that thinks, but a being who knows other beings as true, who loves them as good and who enjoys them as beautiful. For all that which is, down to the humblest form of existence, exhibits the inseparable privileges of being, which are truth, goodness, and beauty.
Etienne Gilson
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For there is hardly a state or nation in existence which has not once had the misfortune, even if it was in the right a thousand times over, to be defeated by a stronger opponent or a stronger coalition.
Adolf Hitler
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This is the bud of being, the dim dawn,
The twilight of our day, the vestibule;
Life's theatre as yet is shut, and death,
Strong death, alone can heave the massy bar,
This gross impediment of clay remove,
And make us embryos of existence free.
Edward Joseph Young
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Unrest is the mark of existence.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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For a man who finds life tolerable only by staying on the surface of himself, it is natural to be satisfied with offering no more than his surface to others. There are few demands to be met, and no commitment is required. Marriage, on the other hand, closes the door. Your existence is confined to a narrow space in which you are constantly forced to reveal yourself – and therefore, constantly obliged to look into yourself, to examine your own depths.
Paul Auster
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Scientifically speaking, the existence of God is an untenable hypothesis. It's not well-defined, it's completely unnecessary to fit the data, and it adds unhelpful layers of complexity without any corresponding increase in understanding.
Sean M. Carroll
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Calmly spinning, I scan as far away as I can see. The last rays of the day's sun warm my back and my stare locks onto my own shadow. I follow the lines of my body on the stone in front of me, spreading my arms as wings, and bathe in the beauty of existence.
Dean Potter
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Some pain is simply the normal grief of human existence. That is pain that I try to make room for.
Marianne Williamson
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The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Somehow, in many of those near-miss instances, I've managed to fight through and continue. But in all these situations, even when they're apparently going well, I feel I am living on the razor's edge between success and failure, adulation and humiliation - between justifying my existence and revealing my unworthiness to be alive.
Scott Stossel
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Existence begins in every instant.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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The importance of right view can be gauged from the fact that our perspectives on the crucial issues of reality and value have a bearing that goes beyond mere theoretical convictions. They govern our attitudes, our actions, our whole orientation to existence. Our views might not be clearly formulated in our mind; we might have only a hazy conceptual grasp of our beliefs. But whether formulated or not, expressed or maintained in silence, these views have a far-reaching influence. They structure our perceptions, order our values, crystallize into the ideational framework through which we interpret to ourselves the meaning of our being in the world.
Bhikkhu Bodhi
