Existence Quotes - Page 27

• Love gives life to the lifeless. Love lights a flame in the heart that is cold. Love brings hope to the hopeless and gladdens the hearts of the sorrowful. In the world of existence there is indeed no greater power than the power of love

  Abdu'l-Bahá

  Heart, Light, Flames

  89 Copy quote

• The past was gone and the future had yet to unfold, and he knew he should focus his life on the present. Yet his day-to-day existence suddenly struck him as endless and unbearable.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Past, Focus, Gone

  "The Choice". Book by Nicholas Sparks, 2007.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mexico admits you through an arched stone orifice into the tree-filled courtyard of its heart, where a dog pisses against a wall and a waiter hustles through a curtain of jasmine to bring a bowl of tortilla soup, steaming with cilantro and lime. Cats stalk lizards among the clay pots around the fountain, doves settle into the flowering vines and coo their prayers, thankful for the existence of lizards. The potted plants silently exhale, outgrowing their clay pots. Like Mexico's children they stand pinched and patient in last year's too-small shoes.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Dog, Prayer, Children

  10 Copy quote

• That the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion that I draw is that the only quality which all human being without exception possess is uniqueness: any characteristic, on the other hand, which one individual can be recognized as having in common with another, like red hair or the English language, implies the existence of other individual qualities which this classification excludes.

  W. H. Auden

  Hair, Self, Hands

  9 Copy quote

• Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.

  Federico Fellini

  Life Is, Miserable, Organized

  21 Copy quote

• It seemed cruelly unfair to me, even then, how fast your life can change before you have an opportunity to rethink your choices. We should get second chances on the big stuff. We should come equipped with erasers attached to the tops of our heads. Like pencils. We should be able to flip over and scribble away mistakes, at least once or twice during the duration of our existence, especially in matters of life and death.

  Tiffanie DeBartolo

  Mistake, Opportunity, Second Chance

  Tiffanie DeBartolo (2002). “God Shaped Hole: A Novel”, p.101, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• You have to be grateful to existence that it has chosen you to be a passage for a few beautiful children. But you are not to interfere in their growth, in their potential. You are not to impose yourself upon them. They are not going to live in the same times, they are not going to face the same problems. They will be part of another world. Don´t prepare them for this world, this society, this time, because then you will be creating troubles for them. They will find themselves unfit, unqualified.

  Rajneesh

  Beautiful, Children, Grateful

  12 Copy quote

• All I’ve ever done is dream. That, and only that, has been the meaning of my existence. The only thing I’ve ever really cared about is my inner life. My greatest griefs faded to nothing the moment I opened the window onto my inner self and lost myself in watching. I never tried to be anything other than a dreamer. I never paid any attention to people who told me to go out and live. I belonged always to whatever was far from me and to whatever I could never be. Anything that was not mine, however base, always seemed to be full of poetry. The only thing I ever loved was pure nothingness.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Grief, Self

  Fernando Pessoa (2010). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.194, Profile Books

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• [in the true mad north] of introspection, where 'falcons of the inner eye' dive and die, glimpsing in their dying fall, all life's memory of existence.

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  Memories, Fall, Eye

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1958). “A Coney Island of the Mind”, p.25, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• i'm beginning to feel like this. caught the incredible sunshine just in the nick of time today on my walk. the wall of rain approaching from the west desert was pretty spectacular, too. along with being gorgeous, it was sooo muddy. which made driving home in no shoes so very fun :) if only i could post photos here! a picture is worth a thousand words, yes? If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up.

  Richard Avedon

  Photography, Wall, Fun

  4 Copy quote

• We are all afforded our physical existence so we can learn about ourselves.

  Garth Stein

  6 Copy quote

• This world… belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak.

  Ken Kesey

  Strong, Cuckoos, World

  Ken Kesey (2016). “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”, p.33, Hamilton Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of them fall off, but others cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink. 'Ladies and Gentlemen,' they yell, 'we are floating in space!' But none of the people down there care.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Fall, Space, People

  "Sophie's World". Book by Jostein Gaarder, thequietus.com. 2010.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is a mistake to talk about the artist looking for his subject. In fact, the subject grows within him like a fruit and begins to demand expression. It is like childbirth. The poet has nothing to be proud of. He is not master of the situation, but a servant. Creative work is his only possible form of existence, and his every work is like a deed he has no power to annul. For him to be aware that the sequence of such deeds is due and ripe, that it lies in the very nature of things, he has to have faith in the idea; for only faith interlocks the system of images for which read system of life.

  Andrei Tarkovsky

  Mistake, Lying, Artist

  55 Copy quote

• The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.

  William James

  Lonely, Civilization, Agony

  William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.158, Booklassic

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do ask yourself why you, the individual, exist, and if you can get no other answer try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting before yourself an aim, a goal, a 'to this end', an exalted and noble 'to this end'.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Goal, Trying, Noble

  "Nietzsche: Untimely Meditations".

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.

  David Foster Wallace

  Support, Important, Vivid

  "'Plain Old Untrendy Troubles and Emotions'". www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2008.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Jealousy can’t sour someone to this extreme, can it? (Aiden) It can and it does. Believe me. I’ve seen a lot worse than this in my billion or so years of existence – the first murder man committed was one brother against the other for no other reason than that one petty emotion. Jealousy turns to hatred which then turns to poison. It infects and it destroys until it eats someone alive. (Deimos)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Brother, Believe, Men

  4 Copy quote

• ...we ask: Why suicide? We search for reasons, causes, and so on.... We follow the course of the life he has now so suddenly terminated as far back as we can. For days we are preoccupied with the question: Why suicide? We recollect details. And yet we must say that everything in the suicide's life- for now we know that all his life he was a suicide, led a suicide's existence- is part of the cause, the reason, for his suicide.

  Thomas Bernhard

  Suicide, Details, Causes

  8 Copy quote

• Her existence alone was excuse enough to justify the creation of the entire world.

  Stephenie Meyer

  World, Excuse, Creation

  4 Copy quote

• Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no real existence in our world. They were like seeds in the beak of a bird, waiting to fall to earth, or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being.

  John Connolly

  Song, Real, Lying

  "The John Connolly Reader's Companion: A Collection of Excerpts".

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is part of our nature to survive. Faith is an instinctive response to aspects of existence that we cannot explain by any other means - be it the moral void we perceive in the universe, the certainty of death, the mystery of the origin of things, the meaning of our own lives or the absence of meaning.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Mean, Certainty Of Death, Void

  5 Copy quote

• There are so many moments to remember and sometimes I think that maybe we're not really people at all. Maybe moments are what we are.... Sometimes I just survive. But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.

  Markus Zusak

  Thinking, People, Rooftops

  41 Copy quote

• Stories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.

  Yann Martel

  Animal, Together, Stories

  Yann Martel (2010). “Beatrice and Virgil”, p.7, Canongate Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Bound to seek recognition of its own existence in categories, terms, and names that are not of its own making, the subject seeks the sign of its own existence outside itself, in a discourse that is at once dominant and indifferent. Social categories signify subordination and existence at once. In other words, within subjection the price of existence is subordination.

  Judith Butler

  Names, Recognition, Social

  Judith Butler (1997). “The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection”, p.20, Stanford University Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source