Quotes About Essence

If we reverse the outer shell and the essence--in other words, consider the outer shell the essence and the essence only the shell--our lives might be a whole lot easier to understand.

The essence of government is concern for the widest possible public interest; the essence of the humanities, it seems to me, is private study, thought, and passion. Publicity is a essential to the one as privacy is to the other.

When we look at thing, we must examine its essence and treat its appearance merely as an usher at the threshold, we must, once we cross the threshold, grasp the essence of the thing.

The essence of man is his freedom. Sin is committed in that freedom. Sin can therefore not be attributed to a defect in his essence. It can only be understood as a self-contradiction, made possible by the fact of his freedom but not following necessarily from it.

The concept of substitution lies at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations—there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science.

What is the essence of America? The essence of America is finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom "to" and freedom "from."

The essence of Christianity, as I see it, is love. The essence of Humanism (and I'm also a Humanist) is love. At that level, we're not far apart.

The essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything.

I believe that the true value of life lies in work, diligence and innovation. After all, work is the essence of humanity.

It is characteristic of science that the full explanations are often seized in their essence by the percipient scientist long in advance of any possible proof.

Faith in the biblical sense is substantive, based on the knowledge that the One in whom that faith is placed has proven that He is worthy of that trust. In its essence, faith is a confidence in the person of Jesus Christ and in His power, so that even when His power does not serve my end, my confidence in Him remains because of who He is.

What hurts the soul? To live without tasting the water of its own essence.

Whereas religious prayers sing of peace and harmony, religion has divided human beings through an atrocious history of enmity and bloodshed. Yet, behind the veil of superficiality and hypocrisy, I always believed in the inherent beauty of God that lies at the essence of all true spiritual paths.

In essence, we string theorists have been trying to work out the score of the universe, the harmonies of the universe, the mathematical vibrations that the strings would play. So musical metaphors have been with us in science since the beginning.

The essence of Taoism is really expressed by these few words. Taoism is the way of the child, the way of the fool, the way of someone who doesn't need to be noticed.

In the process of deeply accepting our own inner experience, instead of being identified with a story of a limited self, we realize the compassion and wakefulness that is our essence.

David Cristofanos debut novel captures the essence of the human spirit, and delivers a story that is simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking.

He who gives only what he would as readily throw away, gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self-sacrifice.

Trials and tribulations tend to squeeze the artificiality out of us, leaving the essence of what we really are and clarifying what we really yearn for.

The essence of chastity is not the suppression of lust, but the total orientation of one's life towards a goal. Without such a goal, chastity is bound to become ridiculous. Chastity is the sine qua non of lucidity and concentration.

To deceive gracefully is the very essence of social life. One must start by deceiving oneself, and make a lifelong practice of deceiving others; if one does it well enough, in time one might even become an artist, the greatest illusionists of all.

To administer is to govern: to govern is to reign. That is the essence of the problem.

Increasingly I felt as if I were entering a struggle that might even be more than life and death. It might be a struggle for my soul, my essence, or whatever part of me might have reference to the eternal. There are worse things than death, I suspected... so far the word demon had never been spoken among the scientists and doctors who were working with me...Alone at night I worried about the legendary cunning of demons ...At the very least I was going stark, raving mad.

The longer I stay clean, the better my beats are getting and the easier it is to zero in on one idea. Because I really want to, often, try to get an idea across. I can really get to the essence of a song better if I'm clean and I'm not waking up with a hangover.

I think it's always important to put your own spin and bring your essence to whatever character you play.

There was a time when you came forth from infinity, your essence that is. You've always existed, and you'll always exist. But there are different states of mind in the universe.

The spiritual life is part of the human essence. It is a defining characteristic of human nature, without which human nature is not fully human.

She represented the distilled essence of the battle between the sexes.

The essence of leadership is building bonds of trust in your organization.

The physical union of a man and a woman, in essence, is a supernatural act, a reminiscence of paradise, the most beautiful of all the hymns of praise dedicated to the Creator by the creature; it is the alpha and the omega of all creation.

The essence of surrender is getting out of God's way so that He can do in us what He also wants to do through us.

Modern physics had shown that the rhythm of creation and destruction is not only manifest in the turn of the seasons and in the birth and death of living creatures, but is also the very essence of inorganic matter. For modern physicists...Shiva's dance is the dance of subatomic matter.

The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its essence.

That whose existence is necessary must necessarily be one essence.

Roots of the weed sucked first life from the genesis of earth and hold the essence of it still. Always the weed returns; the cultured plant retreats before it.

When in doubt, act boldly, as if it were impossible to fail. In essence it is.

The measure of (mental) health is flexibility (not comparison to some 'norm'), the freedom to learn from experience ... to be influenced by reasonable arguments ... and the appeal to the emotions ... and especially the freedom to cease when sated. The essence of illness is the freezing of behavior into unalterable and insatiable patterns.

The essence of good and evil is a certain disposition of the will.

The point is not how long you meditate; the point is whether the practice actually brings you to a certain state of mindfulness and presence, where you are a little open and able to connect with your heart essence. And five minutes of wakeful sitting practice is of far greater value than twenty minutes of dozing!

The essence of nostalgia is an awareness that what has been will never be again.

Caring is the essence of nursing.

To me, the media in New York and LA have always missed the essence of this country.

Film and television are very different. On the TV show, we do seven or eight scenes a day, so time and money are of the essence, and we have zero room for creativity because you've got to do each scene in only five takes. Whereas, on a film, you have an entire day to film one scene, so you have so much time to choose how you want to fill in a scene.

The essence of cinema is editing. It's the combination of what can be extraordinary images of people during emotional moments, or images in a general sense, put together in a kind of alchemy.

It's better to avoid than to run; better to run than to de-escalate; better to de-escalate than to fight; better to fight than to die. The very essence of self-defense is a thin list of things that might get you out alive when you are already screwed.

Pursuit and seduction are the essence of sexuality. It's part of the sizzle.

Initiative is the essence of manhood. Noting comes to the man who is passive, except failure.