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Existence Quotes

Browse 6829 quotes about Existence.

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Existence Quotes

“Absurd, irreducible; nothing — not even a profound and secret delirium of nature — could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it.”

KnowsWorldWayDoeImportantReasonHandsGrowsSecretExistenceTreeIgnoranceRootsProfoundSeedsCirclesAbsurdExplanationPawsDeliriumSproutsExtremityNauseaRotation
Author:Jean-Paul Sartre
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“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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“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.”

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Author:W. Somerset Maugham
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“In a world where God does not exist, any reasonable person must see that the propensity toward selfishness should be the most venerated of all human traits. From this it stands to reason that any man, knowing the total expanse of his existence to be finite, who does not devote every moment of his life to acts of pure selfishness, must be seen as nothing more than a fool.”

MenWorldLifeShouldHumansPersonsDoeReasonMomentsExistenceKnowingFoolPureSelfishnessReasonableTraitsFinitePropensityExpanse
Author:Derek R. Audette
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“Your life is the one place you have to spend yourself fully--wild, generous, drastic--in an unrationed profligacy of self ... And in that split second when you understand that you finally are about to die-to uncreate the world no time to do it over no more chances--that instant when you realize your conscious existence is truly flaring nova, won't you want to have used up all-all-the splendor that you are?”

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Author:Robin Morgan
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“Before World War II, I was living a very cloistered existence, as most cartoonists do. The work I was pouring out did not come from any real, personal life experience; this was all the residue of the accumulation of Rafael Sabatini, O. Henry, all the short-story writers that I'd been reading.”

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Author:Will Eisner
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“To gauge the understanding and insight that metaphysics provides is to ask whether, in the final analysis, it helps us to cope with our world and harmonize our existence with nature, humanity, and ourselves, and leads to greater freedom and self-realization. Metaphysics is only the beginning. The end is human progress.”

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Author:Rudolph Rummel
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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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“We have learned that beneath the surface of an ordinary everyday normal casual conscious existence there lies a vast dynamic world of impulse and dream, a hinterland of energy which has an independent existence of its own and laws of its own: laws which motivate all our thoughts and our actions.”

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Book:The Dramatic Imagination: Reflections and Speculations on the Art of the Theatre, Reissue
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“One man watches a river flow by. If he does not wish it to flow, to change ceaselessly in accord with its nature, he will suffer great pain. Another man understands that nature of the river is to change constantly, regardless of his likes and dislikes, and therefore he does not suffer. To know existence as this flow, empty of lasting pleasure, void of self, is to find that which is stable and free of suffering, to find true peace in the world.”

IfsKnowsMenWorldDoeSelfPainSufferingWishPleasureExistenceWatchesFlowRiversEmptyLikesLastingOne ManDislikeVoidStableAnother ManAccordTrue PeaceLikes And Dislikes
Author:Ajahn Chah
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“The present mode of life on earth is madness, which is nontheless lethal for being legal. Rational existence is possible, but it calls for a world consciousness and a world design. People who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world citizens are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time.”

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Author:Norman Cousins
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“Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men. As far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.”

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Book:The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“Dogs invite us not only to share their joy but also to live in the moment, where we are neither proceeding from nor moving toward, where the enchantment of the past and future cannot distract us, where a freedom from practical desire and a cessation of our usual ceaseless action allows us to recognize the truth of our existence, the reality of our world and purpose--if we dare.”

IfsWorldMomentsRealityActionPastMovingJoyDesirePurposeExistenceShareDogDarePracticalsOur WorldInvitesUsualLive In The MomentEnchantmentProceeding
Book:The Odd Thomas Series 7-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd
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“[My father] impressed upon me from the first, that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known: that the question, "Who made me?" cannot be answered, because we have no experience or authentic information from which to answer it; and that any answer only throws the difficulty a step further back, since the question immediately presents itself, "Who made God?”

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Book:Autobiography John Stuart Mill: Top Biography
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“The Western approach to reality is mostly through theory, and theory begins by denying reality - to talk about reality, to go around reality, to catch anything that attracts our sense-intellect and abstract it away from reality itself. Thus philosophy begins by saying that the outside world is not a basic fact, that its existence can be doubted and that every proposition in which the reality of the outside world is affirmed is not an evident proposition but one that needs to be divided, dissected and analyzed. It is to stand consciously aside and try to square a circle.”

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Author:Bruce Lee
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“Childhood is the world of miracle or of magic: it is as if creation rose luminously out of the night, all new and fresh and astonishing. Childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing. When the world gives you a feeling of "déjà vu," when you are used to existence, you become an adult.”

IfsWorldInspirationalGivingChildrenMomentsFeelingsUsedNightExistenceMagicChildhoodCreationAdultsMiracleRoseAstonishingMagic Of Childhood
Author:Eugene Ionesco
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“Most of the avoidable suffering in life springs from our attempts to escape the unavoidable suffering inherent in the fragmentary nature of our present existence. We expect immortal satisfactions from mortal conditions, and lasting and perfect happiness in the midst of universal change. To encourage this expectation, to persuade mankind that the ideal is realizable in this world, after a few preliminary changes in external conditions, is the distinguishing mark of all charlatans, whether in thought or action.”

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Book:The Poisoned Crown
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“What misery to live in this world! We are like men whose enemies are at the door, who must not lay aside their arms, even while sleeping or eating, and are always in dread lest the foe should enter the fortress by some breach in the walls. O my Lord and my all! How canst thou wish us to prize such a wretched existence?”

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Book:The Interior Castle, or the Mansions
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