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Existence Quotes

Browse 6829 quotes about Existence.

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Existence Quotes

“You may think you don't have talents, but that is a false assumption, for we all have talents and gifts, every one of us. The bounds of creativity extend far beyond the limits of a canvas or a sheet of paper and do not require a brush, a pen, or the keys of a piano. Creation means bringing into existence something that did not exist before-colorful gardens, harmonious homes, family memories, flowing laughter.”

ThinkingMayMeanHomeMemoriesExistenceCreativityTalentCreationKeysLimitsPaperLaughterGardenBoundsPianoAssumptionPensCanvasBrushesSheetsHarmoniousColorfulFalse AssumptionsFamily Memories
Author:Dieter F. Uchtdorf
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“When some incident has shattered the career you’ve mapped out for yourself, a folly, a crime or a misfortune, you mustn’t think you’re down and out. It may be a stroke of luck, and when you look back years later you may say to yourself that you wouldn’t for anything in the world exchange the new life disaster has forced upon you for the dull, humdrum existence you would have led if circumstances hadn’t intervened.”

IfsThinkingWorldYearsLooksMayExistenceCareersCrimeCircumstancesDown AndLuckDisasterDullFollyMisfortunesStrokesNew LifeIncidentsShatteredHumdrum
Author:W. Somerset Maugham
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“The idea that a good God would send people to a burning hell is utterly damnable to me. I don't want to have anything to do with such a God. But while I cannot conceive of such a God, I do recognize the existence of a great universal power - a power which we cannot even begin to comprehend and might as well not attempt to. It may be a conscious mind, or it may not. I don't know. As a scientist I should like to know, but as a man, I am not so vitally concerned.”

PeopleKnowsMenWantShouldMindWellsMayIdeasMightFearExistenceHellAtheismConsciousConcernedScientistUniversalRageBurningGood GodConscious Mind
Author:Luther Burbank
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“...it may be that there is no God, that the existence of all that is beautiful and in any sense good is but the accidental and ineffective byproduct of blindly swirling atoms, that we are alone in a world that cares nothing for us or for the values that we create and sustain - that we and they are here for a moment only, and gone, and that eventually there will be left no trace of us in the universe. A man may well believe that this dredful thing is true. But only the fool will say in his heart that he is glad that it is true.”

ThinkingMenWorldBelieveWellsHeartMayMomentsCareBeautifulValuesUniverseLeftExistenceGoneFoolGladAtomsThere Is No God
Author:Sterling M. McMurrin
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“Indeed, one of the most frightening consequences of the Holocaust may well be that rather than serving as a warning to preserve humanity at all cost, it has provided a license to privilege physical survival over moral existence.”

WellsMayHumanityExistenceMoralCostSurvivalConsequencePrivilegePreservesServingWarningHolocaustFrighteningLicense
Book:Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity
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“The woman who fights against her father still has the possibility of leading an instinctive, feminine existence, because she rejects only what is alien to her. But when she fights against the mother she may, at the risk of injury to her instincts, attain to greater consciousness, because in repudiating the mother she repudiates all that is obscure, instinctive, ambiguous, and unconscious in her own nature.”

MayStillsMotherFightingFatherExistenceConsciousnessGreaterRiskPossibilityInstinctAliensUnconsciousInjuryRejectsFeminineObscureAmbiguousMemories Dreams Reflections
Book:The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
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“The student who would build his knowledge on solid foundations, and proceed by just degrees to the pinnacles of truth, is directed by the great philosopher of France to begin by doubting of his own existence. In like manner, whoever would complete any arduous and intricate enterprise, should, as soon as his imagination can cool after the first blaze of hope, place before his own eyes every possible embarrassment that may retard or defeat him. He should first question the probability of success, and then endeavour to remove the objections that he has raised.”

ShouldFirstsMayEyeImaginationExistenceDoubtStudentsTruth IsDegreesFoundationRaisedDefeatPhilosopherFranceEnterpriseRemoveProbabilityEmbarrassmentObjectionsEndeavourIntricatePinnacleRetardSolid FoundationGreat Philosophers
Book:The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
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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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“Man is naturally self-centered and he is inclined to regard expediency as the supreme standard for what is right and wrong. However, we must not convert an inclination into an axiom that just as man's perceptions cannot operate outside time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside expediency; that man can never transcend his own self. The most fatal trap into which thinking may fall is the equation of existence and expediency.”

ThinkingMenMaySelfMotivationFallSpaceExistencePerceptionStandardsRegardSupremeTrapsEquationsTime And SpaceInclinationSelf CenteredAxiomsExpediency
Author:Abraham Joshua Heschel
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“It seems significant that according to quantum physics the indestructibility of energy on one hand which expresses its timeless existence and the appearance of energy in space and time on the other hand correspond to two contradictory (complementary) aspects of reality. In fact, both are always present, but in individual cases the one or the other may be more pronounced.”

MayTwoFactsHandsRealitySeemsIndividualEnergySpaceExistenceCasesAspectAppearancePhysicsSignificantQuantumTimelessTime And SpaceContradictoryQuantum PhysicsComplementary
Book:Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters, 1932-1958
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“The investor has the benefit of the stock market's daily and changing appraisal of his holdings, 'for whatever that appraisal may be worth', and, second, that the investor is able to increase or decrease his investment at the market's daily figure - 'if he chooses'. Thus the existence of a quoted market gives the investor certain options which he does not have if his security is unquoted. But it does not impose the current quotation on an investor who prefers to take his idea of value from some other source.”

IfsGivingMayDoeIdeasAbleCertainValuesExistenceSecurityFiguresSourceBenefitsIncreaseInvestmentCurrentsInvestorsQuotationsDecreaseAppraisal
Author:Benjamin Graham
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“Even the clearest localization of pain in one area may, in fact, be originating from a distant area .... The reference of pain implies the existence of convergence of inputs within the spinal cord. This leads to the necessary involvement in central neural circuits in the simplest of peripheral disorders. It also leads to the possibility that the basic disorder is entirely central.”

MayFactsPainExistencePossibilityAreasTherapyInjuryDisorderSimplestInvolvementInputCircuitsCordsConvergenceSpinal Cord
Author:Patrick David Wall
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“There is another method of obtaining money... It does not presuppose the existence of accumulated results of previous development, and hence may be considered as the only one which is available in strict logic. This method of obtaining money is the creation of purchasing power by banks. The form it takes is immaterial.”

MayDoeFormPoliticsResultsExistenceEconomyCreationDevelopmentLogicMethodAvailableLiberalismStrictObtainingPurchasingPurchasing Power
Author:Joseph A. Schumpeter
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“I have, for my own projected works and ideas, only the silliest and dewiest of hopes; no matter what, I am romantic enough or sentimental enough to wish to contribute something to life's fabric, to the world's beauty.... [S]imply to live does not justify existence, for life is a mere gesture on the surface of the earth, and death a return to that from which we had never been wholly separated; but oh to leave a trace, no matter how faint, of that brief gesture! For someone, some day, may find it beautiful!”

WorldMayDoeIdeasMatterEnoughEarthBeautifulLife IsWishMy OwnExistenceReturnNo Matter WhatMereSurfaceJustifyGesturesFabricSentimental
Author:Frank O'Hara
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“When we see the many grave-stones which have fallen in, which have been defaced by the footsteps of the congregation, which lie buried under the ruins of the churches, that have themselves crumbled together over them; we may fancy the life after death to be as a second life, into which man enters in the figure, or the picture or the inscription, and lives longer there than when he was really alive. But this figure also, this second existence, dies out too, sooner or later. Time will not allow himself to be cheated of his rights with the monuments of men or with themselves.”

MenMayHas BeensTogetherLyingDiesChurchExistenceAliveRightsFiguresHe ManStonesGravesRuinsFallenFancyBuriedSooner Or LaterLong LifeMonumentAfter DeathFootstepsCheatedCongregationLife After DeathInscriptions
Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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“The disappointed man turns his thoughts toward a state of existence where his wiser desires may be fixed with the certainty of faith; the successful man feels that the objects which he has ardently pursued fail to satisfy the cravings of an immortal spirit; the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness, that he may save his soul alive.”

MenFeelsMaySoulStatesSpiritDesireTurnsExistenceSuccessfulAliveFailingObjectsEternityCertaintyFixedWickedImmortalDisappointedWiserWickednessCravingPursuedSuccessful ManWicked Man
Book:On Sir Francis Burdett's motion for parliamentary reform.-On the conduct of the war.-On the cry of the Whigs for peace, 1810.-Army and navy reforms, 1810.-On the economical reformers, 1811.-On the state of the poor.-The principle of Mr. Malthus's essay on population.-The manufacturing system, 1812.-On the state of the poor.-On the accounts of England by foreign travellers and the state of public opinion, 1816.-On the state of public opinion and the political reformers, 1816.-v.2 A letter to Will
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“Man feels and ponders death as though it were the end, when in fact death is merely the continuation of life. It is another life. You may not believe in the existence of the soul, yet you must acknowledge that your body will live on as green grass, as a cloud. For you are, after all, water and dust.”

MenFeelsBelieveMaySoulEndsFactsBodyWaterExistenceGreenCloudsYour BodyDustGrassAcknowledgePonderingContinuationAnother LifeGreen GrassContinuation Of Life
Book:Ghetto Diary
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“He alone is worthy of the appellation who either does great things, or teaches how they may be done, or describes them with a suitable majesty when they have been done; but those only are great things which tend to render life more happy, which increase the innocent enjoyments and comforts of existence, or which pave the way to a state of future bliss more permanent and more pure.”

WayMayDoeHas BeensStatesDoneExistenceTeachGreatnessComfortPureIncreaseWorthyInnocentGreat ThingsPermanentBlissEnjoymentMajestySuitable
Book:The Prose Works of John Milton: With a Biographical Introduction
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“Of course, even the general designation 'religious' includes various basic ideas or convictions, for example, the indestructibility of the soul, the eternity of its existence, the existence of a higher being, etc. But all these ideas, regardless of how convincing they may be for the individual, are submitted to the critical examination of this individual and hence to a fluctuating affirmation or negation until emotional divination or knowledge assumes the binding force of apodictic faith.”

MayIdeasSoulCoursesIndividualForceReligiousExistenceExampleEmotionalHigherEternityAssumingVariousConvictionCriticalEtcAffirmationConvincingExaminationBindingNegationDesignation
Author:Adolf Hitler
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“In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments-which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves.”

PeopleHumansMayEndsWholeMomentsStoriesHappensPainLife IsPurposeCausesDifficultHuman BeingsSleepPleasureLevelsViewsExistenceMinutesMissingAspectEmptyFundamentalsAverageDeterminedMeaningfulSignificantThings HappenPlusHappy LifeDevotedMeasurementHuman ExistenceArcsPain And PleasureDifficult LifeSignificant Moments
Book:Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End
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“If I may so express it, I was steeped in Dora. I was not merely over head and ears in love with her, but I was saturated through and through. Enough love might have been wrung out of me, metaphorically speaking, to drown anybody in; and yet there would have remained enough within me, and all over me, to pervade my entire existence.”

IfsLoveMayHas BeensEnoughMightExistenceEarsMight Have BeenSaturatedEnough Love
Book:David Copperfield
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