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Existence Quotes

Browse 6829 quotes about Existence.

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Existence Quotes

“How do we define, how do we describe, how do we explain and/or understand ourselves? What sort of creatures do we take ourselves to be? What are we? Who are we? Why are we? How do we come to be what or who we are or take ourselves to be? How do we give an account of ourselves? How do we account for ourselves, our actions, interactions, transactions (praxis), our biologic processes? Our specific human existence?”

GivingHumansActionProcessExistenceCreaturesAccountsWho We AreInteractionOur ActionsHuman ExistenceTransactionsPraxis
Author:R. D. Laing
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“London is like a dream come true. As I ramble through it I am haunted by the curious feeling of something half-forgotten, but still dimly remembered, like a reminiscence of some previous state of existence. It is at once familiar and strange.”

StillsStatesFeelingsDreamExistenceHalfStrangeForgottenLondonFamiliarCuriousRememberedDreams Come True
Book:Preaching in London: A Diary of Anglo-American Friendship
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“The thought of the novelist lies not in the remarks of his characters or even in their introspection but in the plight he has invented for his characters - in the juxtaposition of those characters and in the lifelike ramifications of the ensemble they make: their density, their substantiality, their lived existence actualized in all its nuanced particulars, is in fact his thought metabolized.”

CharacterFactsLyingExistenceNovelistsIntrospectionRemarksEnsemblePlightDensityJuxtapositionRamifications
Author:Philip Roth
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“"There is one basis of science," says Descartes, "one test and rule of truth, namely, that whatever is clearly and distinctly conceived is true." A profound psychological mistake. It is true only of formal logic, wherein the mind never quits the sphere of its first assumptions to pass out into the sphere of real existences; no sooner does the mind pass from the internal order to the external order, than the necessity of verifying the strict correspondence between the two becomes absolute. The Ideal Test must be supplemented by the Real Test, to suit the new conditions of the problem.”

MindFirstsDoeTwoRealProblemOrderExistenceMistakeConditionsIdealsTestsLogicBasesAbsolutesProfoundQuittingPsychologicalSuitsAssumptionInternalsSpheresFormalStrictNever QuitCorrespondence
Author:George Henry Lewes
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“Happy family: The existence and maintenance of [this] is thought to make a politician fit for public office. According to this theory, the public are less concerned by whether or not they are effectively represented than by the need to be assured that the penises and vaginas of public officials are only used in legally sanctioned circumstances.”

NeedsUsedExistenceTheoryPoliticianFitCircumstancesOfficeConcernedOfficialsAssuredMaintenancePublic OfficeHappy FamilyPublic Officials
Book:The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense
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“When a rainbow appears vividly in the sky, you can see its beautiful colors, yet you could not wear as clothing or put it on as an ornament. It arises through the conjunction of various factors, but there is nothing about it that can be grasped. Likewise, thoughts that arise in the mind have no tangible existence or intrinsic solidity. There is no logical reason why thoughts, which have no substance, should have so much power over you, nor is there any reason why you should become their slave.”

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Author:Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
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“Somehow, in many of those near-miss instances, I've managed to fight through and continue. But in all these situations, even when they're apparently going well, I feel I am living on the razor's edge between success and failure, adulation and humiliation - between justifying my existence and revealing my unworthiness to be alive.”

FeelsWellsFightingExistenceSituationAliveMissingEdgesInstanceHumiliationRevealingSuccess And FailureLiving OnRazorsAdulationNear Misses
Author:Scott Stossel
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“It seems that it is impossible to live without discovering the purpose of your life. And the first thing which a person should do is to understand the meaning of life. But the majority of people who consider themselves to be educated are proud that they have reached such great height that they cease to care about the meaning of existence.”

PeopleShouldFirstsPersonsSeemsCarePurposeExistenceImpossibleProudMajorityCeaseEducatedHeightMeaning Of LifeDiscoveringGreat Heights
Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“It is worth repeating that powerful imagination is not false outward vision, but intense inward representation, and a creative energy constantly fed by susceptibility to the veriest minutiæ of experience, which it reproduces and constructs in fresh and fresh wholes; not the habitual confusion of provable fact with the fictions of fancy and transient inclination, but a breadth of ideal association which informs every material object, every incidental fact with far-reaching memories and storied residues of passion, bringing into new light the less obvious relations to human existence.”

HumansFactsLightPassionEnergyImaginationMemoriesPowerfulExistenceFictionVisionCreativeObjectsMaterialsIdealsRelationObviousIntenseConfusionFancyReachingFedsAssociationInwardRepresentationConstructsInclinationHuman ExistenceHabitualTransientBreadthCreative EnergySusceptibility
Author:George Eliot
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“The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence; it enlarges the imagined range for self to move in: but in after years it can only continue to be joy on the same terms as other long-lived love--that is, by much suppression of self, and power of living in the experience of another.”

YearsFirstsLongSelfMovingJoyMotherTermLove IsAnimalExistenceDelightRangeSensibilityExpansionAbsorbingSuppressionMother's Love
Book:Felix Holt: The Radical
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“The breakdown of Plato's philosophy is made apparent in the fact that he could not trust to gradual improvements in education to bring about a better society which should then improve education, and so on indefinitely. Correct education could not come into existence until an ideal state existed, and after that education would be devoted simply to its conservation. For the existence of this state he was obliged to trust to some happy accident by which philosophic wisdom should happen to coincide with possession of ruling power in the state.”

ShouldMadeStatesPhilosophyFactsHappensWould BeExistenceIdealsPossessionAccidentsImprovementDevotedConservationPlatoRulingObligedBreakdownPhilosophicPlato SHappy Accidents
Author:John Dewey
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“The narcissistic, the domineering, the possessive woman can succeed in being a "loving" mother as long as the child is small. Only the really loving woman, the woman who is happier in giving than in taking, who is firmly rooted in her own existence, can be a loving mother when the child is in the process of separation.”

GivingChildrenLongMotherProcessExistenceSucceedSeparationRootedNarcissisticPossessiveLoving Mother
Book:The Art of Loving: The Centennial Edition
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“Locke had illegitimately selected those parts of man he needed for his social contract and suppressed all the rest, a theoretically unsatisfactory procedure and a practically costly one. The bourgeois is the measure of the price paid, he who most of all cannot afford to look to his real self, who denies the existence of the thinly boarded-over basement in him, who is most made over for the purposes of a society that does not even promise him perfection or salvation but merely buys him off.”

MenLooksDoeMadeRealSelfPurposeSocialExistenceNeededPromisePerfectionPaidSalvationDenyContractsProceduresBourgeoisSelectedBasementsReal SelfSocial Contract
Book:Closing of the American Mind
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“Never for a moment do we lay aside our mistrust of the ideals established by society, and of the convictions which are kept by it in circulation. We always know that society is full of folly and will deceive us in the matter of humanity. ... humanity meaning consideration for the existence and the happiness of individual human beings.”

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Author:Albert Schweitzer
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“Everything that has ever lived, plant or animal, dates its beginning from the same primordial twitch. At some point in an unimaginably distant past, some little bag of chemicals fidgeted to life. It absorbed some nutrients, gently pulsed, had a brief existence. This much may have happened many times before. But this ancestral packet did something additional and extraordinary. It cleaved itself and produced an heir. A tiny bundle of genetic material passed from one living entity to another, and has never stopped moving since. It was the moment of creation for us all.”

MayLittlesMomentsPastMovingAnimalExistenceHappenedCreationMaterialsPlantExtraordinaryTinyBagsChemicalsEntityHeirsBundlesNutrients
Book:A Short History of Nearly Everything
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“But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind it, lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through.”

WorldLooksTwoEndsMomentsEarthLyingSpaceExistenceWonderBirthIllusionUniversalFundamentalsBlindPaintAppearanceVainEndeavorHidingMinorsCanvasTime And SpaceDwellingCelestialWovenIllusorySpunWarp
Book:Carlyle Reader
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“In civilized life, where the happiness, and indeed almost the existence, of man depends so much upon the opinion of his fellow-men, he is constantly acting a studied part. The bold and peculiar traits of native character are refined away or softened down by the levelling influence of what is termed good-breeding, and he practises so many petty deceptions and affects so many generous sentiments for the purposes of popularity that it is difficult to distinguish his real from his artificial character.”

MenRealCharacterPurposeDifficultActingExistenceOpinionInfluenceDependsFellowsDeceptionGenerousNativeCivilizedSentimentsPeculiarArtificialTraitsPopularityPettyFellow ManRefinedBreedingPractiseGood Breeding
Book:The Complete Short Stories of Washington Irving: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall, Tales of a Traveler, The Alhambra, Woolfert’s Roost & The Crayon Papers Collections (Illustrated): The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, Old Christmas, The Voyage, Roscoe, The Widow’s Retinue, An Old Soldier, Mountjoy, Don Juan, Woolfert’s Roost, Tales of The Alhambra and many more
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