Existence Quotes - Page 21

• The threads of circumstance that lead to tomorrow are so tenuous that all the fussing and worrying about decisions is futile compared to the pure randomness of existence.

  Nick Bantock

  Worry, Decision, Tomorrow

  Nick Bantock (2000). “The artful dodger: images & reflections”, Chronicle Books Llc

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• Anybody who has had a great treasure has always led a precarious existence.

  John Wyndham

  Treasure, Precarious

  John Wyndham (1951). “The Day of the Triffids”, Fawcett

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• Assessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling in the dark with an unknown opponent.

  Brian Greene

  Wrestling, Dark, Would Be

  Brian Greene (2007). “The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality”, p.5, Vintage

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• The way of peace is a soul journey. . . . If you can live from the level of your soul, you are doing something very special. The important thing is how much consciousness you add to the whole of human existence, for that is how eternity expresses itself, like a lamp shining through the window of eternity.

  Deepak Chopra

  Spiritual, Journey, Shining

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• I believe in the transformative power of cinema. It is only through this shared dream-experience that we can transcend the oppressive minutiae of daily existence and find some spiritual connection in the deeper reality of our mutual desire.

  Daniel Clowes

  Dream, Spiritual, Believe

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• Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.

  Carl Jung

  Letting Go, Ego, Midlife

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• The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.

  Milan Kundera

  Character, Meditation, Novel

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• These weren't cheap modern books; these were books bound in leather, and not just leather, but leather from clever cows who had given their lives for literature after a happy existence in the very best pastures.

  Terry Pratchett

  Clever, Book, Literature

  "I Shall Wear Midnight". Book by Terry Pratchett, 2010.

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• We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Emptiness, Existentialism, Praying

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• Courageous convictions will drag the dream into existence.

  Neil Peart

  Dream, Courageous, Conviction

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• Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Dream, Lying, Moving

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, David Luke (1998). “Faust”, p.48, Oxford University Press, USA

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• At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence.

  Jon Krakauer

  Cutting, Long, Parent

  Jon Krakauer (2011). “Into the Wild”, p.22, Pan Macmillan

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• The first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence.

  Jack London

  Struggle, Decay, Pieces

  Jack London (2009). “The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories”, p.21, Oxford Paperbacks

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• When a man sleeps, he is steeped and lost in a limp toneless happiness: awake he is restless, tortured by his body and the illusion of existence. Why have men spent the centuries seeking to overcome the awakened body? Put it to sleep, that is a better way. Let it serve only to turn the sleeping soul over, to change the blood-stream and thus make possible a deeper and more refined sleep.

  Flann O'Brien

  Sleep, Men, Blood

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• Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person.

  Haruki Murakami

  Running, Hands, Feelings

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Mar 02, 2017

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• I can worship Nature, and that fulfills my need for miracles and beauty. Art gives a spiritual depth to existence -- I can find worlds bigger and deeper than my own in music, paintings, and books. And from my friends and family I receive the highest benediction, emotional contact, and personal affirmation. I can bow before the works of Man, from buildings to babies, and that fulfills my need for wonder. I can believe in the sanctity of Life, and that becomes the Revealed Word, to live my life as I believe it should be, not as I'm told to by self-appointed guides.

  Neil Peart

  Spiritual, Baby, Art

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• There must be only three supreme values which govern a person's life: Reason, Purpose, and Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge--Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve--Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man's virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride.

  Ayn Rand

  Honesty, Integrity, Self Esteem

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• Chili, spice of red Thursday, which is the day of reckoning. Day which invites us to pick up the sack of our existence and shake it inside out. Day of suicide, day of murder.

  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  Suicide, Thursday, Spices

  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (1997). “The Mistress of Spices”, Doubleday

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• We must doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, but how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to the senses, such as the existence of God and the soul.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Soul, Doubt, Certainty

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• It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities.

  H. L. Mencken

  Children, Men, Political

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.371, Knopf

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• There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Expansion, Justification

  Simone de Beauvoir (1953). “The second sex”, Vintage

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• There is small merit in mocking goodness, tweaking charity; it is much more comic to deprive people of their petty little existence for no reason at all, for a lark.

  Jacques Rigaut

  People, Larks, Charity

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• The accouterments of life were so rich and varied, so elaborated, that almost no place at all was left for life itself. Each and every accessory was so costly and beautiful that it had an existence above and beyond the purpose it was meant to serve – confusing the observer and absorbing attention.

  Thomas Mann

  Beautiful, Confusing, Accessories

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• How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Philosophy, Doe, Ephemeral

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2004). “On the Suffering of the World”, p.87, Penguin UK

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• To apologize for your personal absolutes, for what Sandy Pinter calls your “Core Attachments,” means apologizing for your very existence.

  Walter Kirn

  Mean, Attachment, Apologizing

  Walter Kirn (2002). “Up in the Air: A Novel”, p.43, Anchor

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