Quotes About Essence

These various forms appear different in shape and size, yet they are of a single essence. . . . The Sixth Patriarch called it "essence of Mind". . . Here the Third Patriarch calls it "timeless Self-essence." Bankei called it "unborn Buddha-mind." They all refer to the same thing: Buddha-nature, true self. This essence is not born and can never die. It exists eternally. Some call it energy; others call it spirit. But what is it? No one knows. Any concept we have of what it is can only be an analogy. . . .

We have to distinguish between a man as he is in essence, and as he is in ego or personality. In essence, every person is perfect, fearless, and in a loving unity with the entire cosmos; there is no conflict within the person between head, heart, and stomach or between the person and others. Then something happens: the ego begins to develop, karma accumulates, there is a transition from objectivity to subjectivity; man falls from essence into personality.

There's such a grace and understanding in the female persona when women have really come into their own. Part of that is to have children, and to be caring for those children, and not only in the care for them, but also in the nurturing and raising of them, they have to pass on their souls and their intelligence. And all those things can't be taught. It's something that, that in the essence of a woman, the essence of a mother, a mother knows!

You came here with something to do. You are part of a universal consciousness, and there are no accidents in it. In your true essence - not the false self, not the ego part of you, but in the true essence of who you are - you are infinite and you have something very profound to accomplish while you're here. Otherwise you wouldn't be here.

Nonfiction speaks to the head. Fiction speaks to the heart. Poetry speaks to the soul. It's the essence of beauty. The essence of pain. It pleases the eye and the ear.

Learn to get in touch with the innermost essence of your being. This true essence is beyond the ego. It is fearless; it is free; it is immune to criticism; it does not fear any challenge. It is beneath no one, superior to no one, and full of magic, mystery, and enchantment.

You can't build a future if you do not know who you are. You can't become who you are meant to be if you can't tell the truth about who you are, what you have, and everything about your life. The truth is the absolute essence to your success, while lies are the absolute essence to your failures.

That which exists through itself is called The Eternal. The Eternal has neither name nor shape. It is the one essence, the one primal spirit. Essence and life cannot be seen. They are contained in the light of heaven. The light of heaven cannot be seen. It is contained in the two eyes.

We are in a war of a peculiar nature. It is not with an ordinary community, which is hostile or friendly as passion or as interest may veer about: not with a state which makes war through wantonness, and abandons it through lassitude. We are at war with a system, which by its essence, is inimical to all other governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by its essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country.

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

Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone upon alone.... Freedom is of the essence, because you should be able to stop and go on and follow this way or that as the freak takes you.... There should be no cackle of voices at your elbow to jar on the meditative silence of the morning.

The essence of faith is fewness of words and abundance of deeds.

Brazil obviously connotes something in my mind to do with desire, sexuality and freedom. In fantasy, in mythology, Rio is the iconography of the imagination. In essence, we're all sex tourists. I've never been to Rio and I've never been to a psychoanalytic convention, but in a sense, Rio is symbolic of desire, some sort of ultimate ecstasy.

I look for the essence of a story and a human angle that I think audiences can relate to. I also look at how the dialogues flow in the film as a whole and between the characters, and most importantly I always consider what I can bring to the character from a creative point of view.

I am glad that Angela Merkel is the German Chancellor, as she tries to combine a sense of responsibility with morality and values. Because this is the essence of Europe.

The essence of life, I concluded, did not lie in the material. It penetrated, but was not bound to, the physical world of science.

I'm totally crazy, I know that. I don't say that to be a smartass, but I know that that's the very essence of what makes my work good. And I know my work is good. Not everybody likes it, that's fine. I don't do it for everybody. Or anybody. I do it because I can't not do it.

A Shakespeare could have arisen only on English soil. In the same way, your great dramatists and poets express the nature and essence of the Norwegian people, but they also express that which is universally valid for all mankind.

There is ecstasy in paying attention. You can get into a kind of Wordsworthian openness to the world, where you see in everything the essence of holiness.

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

The pain comes from knowing that we have never been safe, and therefore will never be safe again. It comes from knowing we can never be so ignorant again. It comes from knowing we can never be children again. Losing innocence. Remembering heaven. That was the essence of hell.

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.

The essence nature of the Brahmin is an urge to know the truth...the true Brahmin pursues truth at all costs and will not permit considerations of comfort or convenience to stand in his way. His most outstanding characteristic is his objectivity, his ability to rise above the dust of the arena, to resist the hypnotising effects of words and the blind passion of cults, political or religious.

The essence of the miracle of forgiveness is that it brings peace to the previously anxious, restless, frustrated, perhaps tormented soul.

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.

Music is moral law. It is the essence of order and leads to all that is good, true and beautiful.

When you adapt a book, you really have to cut it to the essence.

The essence in obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as an instrument for carrying out another person's wishes and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions.

Mere numbers cannot bring out ... the intimate essence of the experiment. This conviction comes naturally when one watches a subject at work. ... What things can happen! What reflections, what remarks, what feelings, or, on the other hand, what blind automatism, what absence of ideas! ... The experimenter judges what may be going on in [the subject's] mind, and certainly feels difficulty in expressing all the oscillations of a thought in a simple, brutal number, which can have only a deceptive precision. How, in fact, could it sum up what would need several pages of description!

Philosophy is at its most engaged when it is impure. What is being recovered from the Ancient Greek model is not some lost idea of philosophy's pure essence, but the idea that philosophy is mixed up with everything else.

The universe is one of continual creation, so therefore we too are continually creating. The form of our creativity is not as important the loving essence within a given form, because that love is the foundation of our creative expression itself, eternal and indestructible.

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

My life is not possible to tell. I change every day, change my patterns, my concepts, my interpretations. I am a series of moods and sensations. I play a thousand roles. I weep when I find others play them for me. My real self is unknown. My work is merely an essence of this vast and deep adventure.

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

Silence... is the essence of the music itself, the vital ingredient that makes it possible for the music to exist at all.

Nobody told all the new e-mail writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they are writing with ease and enjoyment doesn't mean they are writing well.

Integrity is the essence of everything successful.

I think that fear of embarrassment is the essence of the human challenge.

If you're playing someone who has lived, there's the risk of imitation, or whether you focus on the essence of who that character was as opposed to physical mannerisms. So, you have to figure out what it is ultimately that this particular adaptation of the story, whether it's fiction or not, is trying to say.

You can get the true essence of New Yorkers by just hanging out in Central Park

Radio has always been pictures of the mind; for me, the essence of radio has always been voices that talk to me and don't patronise me.

The essence of American racism is disrespect.

God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him.

I think that where I've gotten frustrated during the course of my presidency has never been because I was getting pushed too hard by activists to see the justness of a cause or the essence of an issue.

Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?

The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.

The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.

Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?