Existence Quotes - Page 25

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• Not all is certainty in our world, Karigan. If it were there'd be no opportunity for faith; and then it would be a very dull existence.

  Kristen Britain

  Opportunity, Our World, Would Be

  Kristen Britain (2007). “The High King's Tomb: Book Three of Green Rider”, p.467, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.

  Donna Tartt

  Essentials, Way, Subtle

  Donna Tartt (2011). “The Secret History”, p.8, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The party in Alobar’s head, which agitation and anxiety were throwing, now was crashed by a notion: existence can be rearranged.

  Tom Robbins

  Party, Anxiety, Agitation

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.49, Bantam

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Each one of us was harmed by being brought into existence. That harm is not negligible, because the quality of even the best lives is very bad—and considerably worse than most people recognize it to be. Although it is obviously too late to prevent our own existence, it is not too late to prevent the existence of future possible people.

  David Benatar

  People, Quality, Too Late

  David Benatar (2008). “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence”, p.7, Oxford University Press

  47 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fact of God is necessary for the fact of man. Think God away and man has no ground of existence.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Thinking, Men, Facts

  Aiden Wilson Tozer (1965). “The Knowledge of the Holy”, p.32, Fig

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the christian view, the ultimate evidence for the existence of God is Jesus Christ. If there is a God, we characters in his play have to hope that he put some information about himself in the play. But Christians believe he did more than give us information. He wrote himself into the play as the main character in history, when Jesus was born in a manger and rose from the dead.

  Timothy Keller

  Christian, Jesus, Believe

  Timothy Keller (2008). “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism”, p.135, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Self-actualization is what educated existence is all about. For members of the educated class, life is one long graduate school. When they die, God meets them at the gates of heaven, totes up how many fields of self-expression they have mastered, and then hands them a divine diploma and lets them in.

  David Brooks

  School, Self, Expression

  David Brooks (2011). “The Paradise Suite: Bobos in Paradise and On Paradise Drive”, p.18, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I decided that my existence would be one of books and silence.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Book, Silence, Would Be

  4 Copy quote

• All interpretation or observation of reality is necessarily fiction. In this case, the problem is that man is a moral animal abandoned in an amoral universe and condemned to a finite existence with no other purpose than to perpetuate the natural cycle of the species. It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality, at least for a human being. We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Dream, Men, Animal

  4 Copy quote

• Existence is violent, I exist, therefore I'm violent. . . in that way.

  Huey Newton

  Way, Violent

  22 Copy quote

• At one and the same time, therefore, society is everything and society is nothing. Society is the most powerful concoction in the world and society has no existence whatsoever

  Virginia Woolf

  Powerful, World, Most Powerful

  Virginia Woolf (1995). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.95, Wordsworth Editions

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• He turned his dark eyes on the girl whom he had dreamed of so often over the previous months. Beside him, at that very moment of existence, at the heart of torrential downpour, she was exquisitely real, and she, too, seemed content to go on sitting there forever.

  Anna Godbersen

  Girl, Real, Heart

  4 Copy quote

• I see evil when I look in my shaving mirror. It is, philosophically, present everywhere in the universe in order, apparently, to highlight the existence of good. I think there is more to this theory, but I tend to burst out laughing at this point.

  Terry Pratchett

  Thinking, Mirrors, Order

  4 Copy quote

• I am not your justification for existence.

  Margaret Atwood

  Justification

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.122, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's not that I don't suffer, it's that I know the unimportance of suffering. I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one's soul and as a permanent scar across one's view of existence.

  Ayn Rand

  Letting Go, Pain, Views

  Ayn Rand (2005). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.907, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.

  David Mitchell

  Suicide, Selfish, Careers

  4 Copy quote

• Must you know that yours will be the “better” picture before you pick up the brush and paint? Can it not simply be another picture? Another expression of beauty? Must a rose be “better” than an iris in order to justify it’s existence? I tell you this: you are all flowers in the Garden of the Gods.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Flower, Garden, Expression

  Neale Donald Walsch (2002). “Friendship with God: An Uncommon Dialogue”, p.212, Penguin

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing makes time pass or shortens the way like a thought that absorbs in itself all the faculties of the one who is thinking. External existence is then like a sleep of which this thought is the dream. Under its influence, time has no more measure, space has no more distance.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Dream, Distance, Sleep

  Alexandre Dumas (2006). “The Three Musketeers: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.234, Penguin

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• I told myself: 'I am surrounded by unknown things.' I imagined man without ears, suspecting the existence of sound as we suspect so many hidden mysteries, man noting acoustic phenomena whose nature and provenance he cannot determine. And I grew afraid of everything around me – afraid of the air, afraid of the night. From the moment we can know almost nothing, and from the moment that everything is limitless, what remains? Does emptiness actually not exist? What does exist in this apparent emptiness?

  Guy de Maupassant

  Night, Men, Air

  7 Copy quote

• Of course the world of work begins to become - threatens to become - our only world, to the exclusion of all else. The demands of the working world grow ever more total, grasping ever more completely the whole of human existence.

  Josef Pieper

  World, Demand, Exclusion

  Josef Pieper (1998). “Leisure, the Basis of Culture”, St Augustine PressInc

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• And who ever said the world was fair, little lady? Maybe death is fair, but certainly not life. We must accept the unfairness as proof of the sublime flux of existence, the capricious music of the universe- and go on about our tasks

  Tom Robbins

  Sublime, Tasks, Goes On

  9 Copy quote

• He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.

  Jack London

  Doe, Achieve, Summit

  Jack London, JACK LONDON (2015). “White Fang (Arcadia Classics)”, p.69, Jack London

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• God has no needs. Human love, as Plato teaches us, is the child of Poverty – of want or lack; it is caused by a real or supposed goal in its beloved which the lover needs and desires. But God's love, far from being caused by goodness in the object, causes all the goodness which the object has, loving it first into existence, and then into real, though derivative, lovability. God is Goodness. He can give good, but cannot need or get it. In that sense , His love is, as it were, bottomlessly selfless by very definition; it has everything to give, and nothing to receive.

  C. S. Lewis

  Plato, Children, Real

  9 Copy quote

• Self-realization and self-fulfilment are the sine qua non for human existence.

  Arthur Miller

  Self, Realization, Humans

  13 Copy quote