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Essence Quotes

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Essence Quotes

“Zen, like life, defies exact definition, but its essence is the experience, moment by moment, of our own existence -- a natural, spontaneous encounter, unclouded by the suppositions and expectations that come between us and reality. It is, if you like, a paring down of life until we see it as it really is, free from our illusions; it is merely a divestment of ourselves until we recognize our own true nature.”

Ifs Moments Reality Natural Existence Illusion Expectations Essence Definitions Encounters Spontaneous True Nature Supposition Zen Like

Author:David Fontana

“My definition of God is the ever-present essence of love.”

Essence Definitions

Author:Gabrielle Bernstein

“The essence of man is imperfection. Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success. If we learn to embrace that new definition of failure, then we are free to start moving ahead - and failing forward.”

Ifs Men Moving Pay Failing Achieve Essence Embrace Definitions Imperfection Moving Ahead

Author:Norman Cousins

“By "essence" I understand a universal, of any degree of complexity and definition, which may be given immediately, whether to sense or to thought.... This object of pure sense or pure thought, with no belief superadded, an object inwardly complete and individual, but without external relations or physical status, is what I call an essence.”

May Individual Belief Given Objects Pure Degrees Essence Universal Relation Definitions Complexity

Author:George Santayana

“The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants. The volatile essences which make literature cannot survive the clichés of a long series of story conferences.”

Heart Long Stories Literature Born Decision Loneliness Authority Judgment Perfection Essence Series Definitions Impulse Committees Conferences Arbitrary Sycophants

Book:Raymond Chandler Speaking

Source: Raymond Chandler Speaking

“The will to grow is, in essence, the same phenomenon as love. Genuinely loving people are, by definition, growing people.”

People Grows Growing Essence Definitions Phenomenon

Book:The Road Less Traveled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety

Source: The Road Less Traveled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety

“Simply coming to the perpetrator and delivering the message is Nozick's definition of revenge. And in that sense, Adi is exacting revenge. When people ask, "Does Adi want revenge?" - they mean violent revenge. But in Nozick's formulation, it is revenge. That is the essence of revenge.”

People Want Mean Doe Asks Messages Essence Definitions Revenge Violent Delivering Perpetrators Exacting Revenge

Author:Errol Morris

“The answer is, who you are cannot be defined through thinking or mental labels or definitions, because it's beyond that. It is the very sense of being, or presence, that is there when you become conscious of the present moment. In essence, you and what we call the present moment are, at the deepest level, one.”

Thinking Moments Answers Levels Conscious Essence Who You Are Definitions Defined Labels Present Moment

Author:Eckhart Tolle

“The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.”

Source: The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature

“Science, incidentally, not only ignores the question of indwelling 'essences' by looking instead at measurable relationships, but science also does not agree that knowledge is obtained through Rothbard's Medieval 'investigation by a reason,' i.e., by inventing definitions and then deducing what your definitions implicitly assumed.”

Doe Reason Essence Agree Definitions Libertarian Investigation Medieval Inventing

Author:Robert Anton Wilson