Existence Quotes - Page 31

• The individual does actually carry on a double existence: one designed to serve his own purposes and another as a link in a chain, in which he serves against, or at any rate without, any volition of his own.

  Sigmund Freud

  Doe, Purpose, Links

  Sigmund Freud (2008). “General Psychological Theory: Papers on Metapsychology”, p.46, Simon and Schuster

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• To be engaged in some small way in the revival of one of the great cities of the world is to live a meaningful existence by default.

  Chris Rose

  Meaningful, New Orleans, Cities

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• I was created to fulfill a function and I failed in it. I negated my own existence.

  Douglas Adams

  Function, My Own

  Douglas Adams (2010). “The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, p.555, Del Rey

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• Coffee justifies the existence of the word 'aroma'.

  Glen Duncan

  Coffee, Aroma, Justify

  Glen Duncan (2007). “I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story”, p.92, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• And there are always people who find their lives have become so unsupportable they believe the best thing they could do would be to hasten their transition to another plane of existence.' 'They kill themselves, you mean?' said Bod. [...] 'Indeed.' 'Does it work? Are they happier dead?' 'Sometimes. Mostly, no. It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.

  Neil Gaiman

  Believe, Mean, Somewhere Else

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• The really important facts were that spatial relationships had ceased to matter very much and that my mind was perceiving the world in terms of other than spatial categories. At ordinary times the eye concerns itself with such problems as where? — how far? — how situated in relation to what? In the mescaline experience the implied questions to which the eye responds are of another order. Place and distance cease to be of much interest. The mind does its perceiving in terms of intensity of existence, profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern.

  Aldous Huxley

  Distance, Eye, Order

  Aldous Huxley (2002). “Complete Essays: 1939-1956”, Ivan R Dee

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• There's an oatmeal cookie in there. I see no reason for the existence of oatmeal, particularly in cookies.

  Nora Roberts

  Oatmeal, Cookies, Reason

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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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• All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness [...] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find [...] a being which immediately recognises itself, [...] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Reflection, Self, Ideas

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Thomas Baldwin (2004). “Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings”, p.170, Psychology Press

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• This was the truth at the core of my existence: this yawning emptiness, scantily clad in rage. It had been there all along.

  Hillary Jordan

  Yawning, Emptiness, Rage

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• What is existence for but to be laughed at if men in their twenties have already attained the utmost?

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Men, Twenties, Laughed

  Soren Kierkegaard (2013). “The Wisdom of Kierkegaard”, p.71, Simon and Schuster

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• There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.

  Charles Dickens

  Men, Littles, Hats

  1836-7 Pickwick Papers, ch.4.

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• It seems to be very hard for people to live with riddles or to let them live, although one would think that life is so full of riddles as it is that a few more things we cannot answer would make no difference. But perhaps it is just this that is so unendurable, that there are irrational things in our own psyche which upset the conscious mind in its illusory certainties by confronting it with the riddle of its existence.

  Carl Jung

  Thinking, Differences, People

  Carl Gustav Jung, Gerhard Adler (1976). “The Collected Works of C. G. Jung”, Bollingen

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• Existence alone had never been enough for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was only from the force of his desires that he had regarded himself as a man to whom more was permitted than to others.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, Desire, Enough

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (2010). “Crime And Punishment (Vintage Classic Russians Series)”, p.544, Random House

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• Now all my tales are based on the fundemental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.... To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Good Life, Hate, Real

  H. P. Lovecraft (2013). “The Classic Horror Stories”, p.445, OUP Oxford

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• Just being alive is such a gift, but nobody ever told you to be thankful to existence. On the contrary, everyone was grumpy, complaining. Naturally, if everything surrounding your life from the very beginning goes on pointing out to you that you are not what you should be, goes on giving you great ideals that you have to follow and you have to become, your isness is never praised. What is praised is your future - if you can become someone respectable, powerful, rich, intellectual, in some way famous, not just a nobody.

  Rajneesh

  Spiritual, Powerful, Giving

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• We are always getting away from the present moment. Our mental existence, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave.

  H. G. Wells

  Time, Velocity, Uniforms

  H. G. Wells (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of H. G. Wells (Illustrated)”, p.17, Delphi Classics

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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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• How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history - greater than the fall of empires - I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Real, Fall, Thinking

  "On the Heights of Despair". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1934.

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• There's no sense drawing attention to yourself, Li." "Hellooooo. I'm aHorseman of the Apocalypse, and I'm betrothed to the most infamous, most powerful demon in existence. I couldn't draw more attention to myself i I wore Lady Gaga's meat dress to a PETA convention.

  Larissa Ione

  Powerful, Drawing, Meat

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• The ashes of your existence will fertilize the soil for the universe to follow.

  Richard Kadrey

  Soil, Ashes, Universe

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• She was still under the spell of her infatuation. She had tried to forget him, realizing the inutility of remembering. But the thought of him was like an obsession, ever pressing itself upon her. It was not that she dwelt upon details of their acquaintance, or recalled in any special or peculiar way his personality; it was his being, his existence, which dominated her thought, fading sometimes as if it would melt into the mist of the forgotten, reviving again with an intensity which filled her with an incomprehensible longing.

  Kate Chopin

  Personality, Special, Details

  Kate Chopin (2006). “Awakening EasyRead Edition”, p.98, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• My existence was not random, nor was it an accident. God knew who He was creating, and He designed met for a specific work. [Ephesians 2:10]

  Francis Chan

  Creating, Ephesians, Mets

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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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• With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself--one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad.

  Jack London

  Song, Stars, Keys

  Rudyard Kipling, Hugh Lofting, Jack London, Kenneth Grahame, Anna Sewell (2017). “Five Classic Animal Adventures: The Jungle Book, The Story of Doctor Dolittle, The Call of the Wild, The Wind in the Willows, and Black Beauty”, p.257, Open Road Media

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