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Existence Quotes

Browse 6829 quotes about Existence.

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Existence Quotes

“There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence ... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of ... disappointment.”

WorldPersonsLongSeemsPurposeOrderExistenceStepsExpressionErrorsNotionBoundsDisappointmentInsightGreat ThingsContradictionPersistMaintainingElderlyEvery StepCountenanceWorld And Life
Author:Arthur Schopenhauer
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“I think Nature, if she interests herself much about her children, must often feel that, like the miserable Frankenstein, with her experimenting among the elements of humanity, she has brought beings into existence who have no business here; who can do none of her work, and endure none of her favours; whose life is only suffering; and whose action is one long protest against the ill foresight which flung them into consciousness.”

IfsThinkingFeelsChildrenLongActionLife IsSufferingHumanityInterestCan DoExistenceConsciousnessElementsEndureIllMiserableProtestFavourForesight
Book:The Nemesis of Faith
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“Just as man as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find the real justification for his existence, and his own spiritual and moral autonomy, anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors.”

MenLongRealRunningSpiritualIndividualSocialCommunityExistenceMoralPrinciplesInfluenceCapableFactorsTiesJustificationLong RunsAutonomyMemories Dreams ReflectionsOverpoweringSocial Being
Book:The Undiscovered Self
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“I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind my wayward heart creates its own misery Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it.”

IfsMindHeartChildrenLongMadeI CanIdeasWholeFormSufferingExistenceSilenceStrangeWeaknessTiredMiseryResolutionToysDefectsCompoundsEndeavour
Author:Mary Wollstonecraft
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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 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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“The first step in the direction of a world rule of law is the recognition that peace no longer is an unobtainable ideal but a necessary condition of continued human existence. But to take even this step we must return to a calm and responsible frame of mind in which we can face the long patient tasks ahead.”

WorldMindFirstsHumansLongFacesLawExistenceStepsConditionsReturnIdealsTasksResponsiblePatientCalmRecognitionFirst StepsRule Of LawHuman ExistenceFrame Of Mind
Author:Margaret Mead
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“When these guitar mags bring up that stuff up and say such and such came up with this and that which is pushing the boundaries, I just say, "let's step back for a minute and admit something: nothing has happened for the last 100 years." And it's okay. It's not a bad thing ... We're all working with "tools" that have been in existence for the last 100 years and there hadn't been a new "tool" for a long long time.”

YearsLongHas BeensLastsStuffExistenceStepsHappenedMinutesLong TimeToolsOkayGuitarBoundariesPushingBad ThingsMags
Author:Joe Satriani
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“Paradoxically, capital has unleashed myriad objects upon us, in their manifold horror and sparkling splendor. Two hundred years of idealism, two hundred years of seeing humans at the center of existence, and now the objects take revenge, terrifyingly huge, ancient, long-lived, threateningly minute, invading every cell in our body.”

YearsHumansLongTwoBodyExistenceSeeingMinutesObjectsHugeHorrorHundredAncientRevengeCellsIdealismSplendorSparklingUnleashedManifoldInvading
Author:Timothy Morton
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“Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable.”

LongDoeMatterFactsRunningAgePastLostForceExistenceClassPromiseSucceedDemandFunctionStructureObjectivesFraudArtificialStableLong RunsPersistRulingTotalitarianismDisbeliefClingingSchizophreniaAlterationsObjective Truth
Author:George Orwell
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“I had left home (like all Jewish girls) in order to eat pork and take birth control pills. When I first shared an intimate evening with my husband, I was swept away by the passion (so dormant inside myself) of a long and tortured existence. The physical cravings I had tried so hard to deny, finally and ultimately sated ... But enough about the pork.”

FirstsLongHardEnoughHomeOrderGirlPassionLeftExistenceBirthHusbandDenyEveningIntimateMy HusbandCravingPillsBirth ControlPorkDormantSwept AwaySatedBirth Control Pills
Author:Roseanne Barr
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“Against the long years when family bonds make up all that is happiest in life, there must always be reckoned those moments of agitation and revolution, during which the bosom of a family is the most unrestful and disturbing place in existence.”

YearsLongMomentsExistenceFamilyRevolutionDisturbingBosomsAgitationFamily Bond
Book:Delphi Works of Margaret Oliphant with Complete Stories of the Seen and Unseen
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“So long as space remains, So long sentient beings' suffering remain, I will remain, In order to help, in order to serve... I am nothing but a servant to provide to others. So if you provide some happiness, some comfort to others, then your life becomes meaningful. If your life creates problems or suffering to others, then there's no meaning to your existence.”

IfsLongHelpingProblemSufferingOrderSpaceExistenceComfortRemainsMeaningfulServantTortureSentient Beings
Author:Dalai Lama
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“We belong to that order of mammals, the primates, distinguished by its propensity for repeated single litters, intense parental care, long life-spans, late sexual maturity, and a complex and extensive social existence... Our protracted biological and psychological helplessness, which extends well into the third year of life, intensifies the bond between infant and parents, making possible a sense of generational continuity. In contrast to other primates these bonds are not obliterated after sexual maturity.”

YearsWellsLongCareOrderSocialParentExistenceLateThirdsComplexesIntensePsychologicalMaturityContrastInfantLong LifeDistinguishedContinuityHelplessnessParentalBondingPropensityMammalsPrimatesLife SpanYears Of Life
Book:Adolescence: The Farewell to Childhood
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“For as soon as the procreative faculty is thwarted and the number of births diminished, the natural struggle for existence which allows only healthy and strong individuals to survive is replaced by a sheer craze to 'save' feeble and even diseased creatures at any cost. And thus the seeds are sown for a human progeny which will become more and more miserable from one generation to another, as long as Nature's will is scorned.”

HumansLongIndividualStrongNaturalNumbersExistenceStruggleGenerationsBirthHealthyCostCreaturesSeedsMiserableFacultySheerReplacedDiseasedScornedProgenyCrazeStruggle For ExistenceStrong Individuals
Book:Mein Kampf: My Struggle: (Vol. I & Vol. II) - (Complete & Illustrated Edition)
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“I had gone into the hospital with the stupid notion that its primary object was the care and comfort of the sick and wounded. It was long after that I learned that a vast majority of all benevolent institutions are gotten up to gratify the aesthetic tastes of the public; exhibit the wealth and generosity of the founders, and furnish places for officers. The beneficiaries of the institutions are simply an apology for their existence, and having furnished that apology, the less said about them the better.”

LongSaidCareWealthExistenceGoneStupidObjectsComfortTasteSickInstitutionsMajorityNotionPrimariesGenerosityHospitalsOfficersAestheticApologyFoundersWoundedPhilanthropyExhibitsBenevolentBeneficiaries
Author:Jane Swisshelm
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“Entranced by promises of a material paradise of limitless luxury, humanity has too long ignored the mismatch between the imperatives of our existence as living beings on a finite planet and the imperatives of the institutions of money that chart our path to the future. Created to build colonial empires in service to kings, global corporations are ill suited to the task of building just, sustainable, and compassionate civil societies that nurture sufficiency, partnership, and respect for the whole of life.”

LongWholeHumanityExistencePathBuildingPlanetsMaterialsKingsPromiseTasksInstitutionsEnvironmentalIllLuxuryCorporationsParadiseEmpiresCompassionateSustainabilityPartnershipNurtureIgnoredFiniteLimitlessImperativesCivil SocietySufficiencyMismatch
Author:David Korten
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“Poems give us permission to be unsure, in ways we must be if we are ever to learn anything not already known. If you look with open eyes at your actual life, it's always going to be the kind of long division problem that doesn't work out perfectly evenly. Poems let you accept the multiplicity and complexity of the actual, they let us navigate the unnavigable, insoluble parts of our individual fates and shared existence.”

IfsWayGivingLooksKindLongProblemEyeIndividualExistenceKnownAcceptingFateWork OutComplexityDivisionPermissionNavigateMultiplicityUnsureOpen EyesActual Life
Author:Jane Hirshfield
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“Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.”

IfsMenPersonsLongGovernmentEyePastFacesRaceExistenceImagineResourcesCatGreenIntellectAwfulSatanGiantsWealthyOne ManTallYellowDeniedImagine ThatDrsEasternCunningPerilSkullsBrowsMagneticPast And PresentFeline
Book:Fu Manchu
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“For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other.”

PeopleWayLongEndsRunningRaceExistenceGrowingIncludingLong RunsTrapsOrganismsRatsTubesApprehensionFarceRat RaceLiving Organisms
Author:Alan Watts
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“I know, I feel, that with the introduction of tobacco England woke up from a long sleep. Suddenly a new zest had been given to life. The glory of existence became a thing to speak of. Men who had hitherto only concerned themselves with the narrow things of home put a pipe into their mouths and became philosophers.”

KnowsMenFeelsLongHomeSpeakGivenSleepExistenceGloryMouthsConcernedEnglandPhilosopherIntroductionPipeTobaccoZestLong Sleep
Book:My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke (Annotated Edition)
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“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being. Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart ... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.”

HumansLooksHeartLongSoulDreamLightPurposeNightExistenceVisionDarknessClearDoorsEgoConsciousMereIntimateCosmicSoleHuman ExistenceKindlesMemories Dreams ReflectionsPrimeval
Author:Carl Jung
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“I wonder how long this word will last, governed exclusively by the merciless, inhuman and immoral criteria of global economy. Seeing the shadow of distant islands, I imagined one still inhabited by a tribe of poets set aside for when, after the middle age of materialism, humanity will have to start to put other values into his existence.”

LongStillsAgeLastsValuesHumanityExistenceWonderEconomySeeingMiddlePoetShadowIslandsMaterialismTribesImmoralMiddle AgesCriteriaInhumanGlobal Economy
Author:Tiziano Terzani
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“What makes the existence and the evolution of society possible is precisely the fact that peaceful cooperation under the social division of labor in the long run best serves the selfish concerns of all individuals. The eminence of the market society is that its whole functioning and operation is the consummation of this principle.”

LongWholeFactsRunningIndividualSocialExistencePrinciplesEvolutionConcernLaborSelfishPeacefulOperationsDivisionCooperationLong RunsEminenceDivision Of LaborSocial Division
Author:Ludwig von Mises
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“In order to make a success of old age, one must begin it earlier, and not try to postpone it as long as possible. In the middle of life we must stop to think, to organize our existence with an eye to a still distant future, instead of allowing ourselves to be entirely sucked into the professional and social whirl. It is then that it is important to give place little by little to less external activities, less technical and more cultural, which will survive the moment of retirement.”

ThinkingGivingTryingLittlesLongStillsImportantMomentsEyeAgeOrderSocialExistenceMiddleActivityOld AgeRetirementAllowingOrganize
Book:Learn to Grow Old
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