Quotes About Essence

Once there is a certain degree of Presence, of still and alert attention in human beings' perceptions, they can sense the divine life essence, the one indwelling consciousness or spirit in every creature, every life-form, recognize it as one with their own essence and so love it as themselves. Until this happens, however, most humans see only the outer forms, unaware of the inner essence, just as they are unaware of their own essence and identify only with their own physical and psychological form.

We ordinary people must forge our own beauty. We must set fire to the greyness of our labor with the art of our own lives ... What is the essence of this art of living? Of course, even this art should have beauty as its essence.

Heartbreak is our indication of sincerity: in a love relationship, in a work, in trying to learn a musical instrument, in the attempt to shape a better more generous self. Heartbreak is the beautifully helpless side of love and affection and is just as much an essence and emblem of care as the spiritual athlete's quick but abstract ability to let go... But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way.

And killing time is perhaps the essence of comedy, just as the essence of tragedy is killing eternity.

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.

The whole essence of Zen consists in walking along the razor's edge of Now - to be so utterly, so completely present that no problem, no suffering, nothing that is not who you are in your essence, can survive in you. In the Now, in the absence of time, all your problems dissolve. Suffering needs time; it cannot survive in the Now.

Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself. When you look at it or hold it & let it be without imposing a word of mental label on it, a sense of awe, of wonder, arises within you. Its essence silently communicates itself to you and reflects your own essence back to you.

Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another. I maintain also that substances, whether material or immaterial, cannot be conceived in their bare essence without any activity, activity being of the essence of substance in general.

A great deal has been said about love at first sight; I am perfectly aware of love's retrospective tendency to make a legend of itself, turn its beginnings into myth; so I don't want to assert that it was love; but I have no doubt there was a kind of clairvoyance at work: I immediately felt, sensed, grasped the essence of Lucie's being or, to be more precise, the essence of what she was later to become for me; Lucie had revealed herself to me the way religious truth reveals itself.

Every natural form is latent within us, originates in the soul whose essence is eternity, whose essence we cannot know but which most often intimates itself to us as the power to love and create.

The essence of sin is a shift from God centeredness to a self-centeredness. The essence of salvation is a denial of self, not an affirming of self.

All power is in essence power to deny mortality.

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.

Liberalization and democratization are in essence counter-revolution.

Minimalism is the pursuit of the essence of things, not the appearance.

Merciful heaven, Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt Splits the unwedgeable and gnarled oak Than the soft myrtle; but man, proud man, Dressed in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assured His glassy essence--like an angry ape Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens, would all themselves laugh mortal.

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

It's the essence of a degenerating mind periodically, to lose all sense of continuous self, and therefore any regard for what others think of your lack of continuity.

Women are more powerful than they think. A mother's warmth is the essence of motivation. If we could liquefy the encouragement, care and compassion we deliver to our children it would surely fill an expanse greater than the Pacific.

Choice is the essence of ethics: if there were no choice there would be no ethics, no good, no evil; good and evil have meaning only insofar as man is free to choose.

The ultimate intelligence of all things is your essence. Your mind is the universe. Your body is all things.

The essence of marketing today is to tell a story to people who want to hear it, in a way that resonates with them so they are likely to either respond or connect to you, or tell their friends.

I'll tell you truly: I value my thought and work terribly, but in essence - think about it - this whole world of ours is just a bit of mildew that grew over a tiny planet. And we think we can have something great - thoughts, deeds! They're all grains of sand

The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise.

Let us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotchpotch of impulses, our perpetual miracle - for the soul throws up wonders every second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death; let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life.

The solitary knows the essence of the thought, the scholar in society only its fair face.

When I tried to grasp at either what I love or what I hate, I destroyed the very ability of being able to really penetrate the essence of either. By trying to understand it, I would just crush it.

Your preciousness lies in your essence; it cannot be lost by anything that happens.

The Latina spirit translates to every aspect of our lives, from beauty to work to family. We're loving, we're loud, and we're beautiful in our essence.

Football can stand parity better than any of the other sports, I think. Baseball, basketball and hockey need a defining team, in essence to frame the season. Football? Not so much.

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

This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, to be not nature but nature's essence.

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.

Such simple and steady acts of kindness are the essence of love, the substance of life. All of us need love; all of us want love. Everything else is a consolation prize. What matters is love.

If you serve a mission faithfully and well, you will be a better husband, you will be a better father, you will be a better student, a better worker in your chosen vocation. Love is of the essence of this missionary work. Selflessness is of its very nature. Self-discipline is its requirement. Prayer opens its reservoir of power.

Perception is, in essence, who we are. We are what we perceive. What we perceive defines who we are.

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.

A great actor is independent of the poet, because the supreme essence of feeling does not reside in prose or in verse, but in the accent with which it is delivered.

The main thing in acting is honesty, to feel the humanity and get to the essence of the character. You can't put anything into a character that you haven't got within you.

As animals, we walk the earth. As bearers of divine essence, we are among the stars. As human beings, we are caught in the middle, seeking to reconcile the paradox of how to make our way upon earth while striving for something more permanent and more profound.

Underneath our ordinary lives, underneath all the talking we do, all the moving we do, all the thoughts in our minds, there's a fundamental groundlessness. It's there bubbling along all the time. We experience it as restlessness and edginess. We experience it as fear. It motivates passion, aggression, ignorance, jealousy, and pride, but we never get down to the essence of it.

I feel that the essence of spiritual practice is your attitude toward others. When you have a pure, sincere motivation, then you have right attitude toward others based on kindness, compassion, love and respect.

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

PDCA is the essence of managerial work: making sure the job gets done today and developing better ways to do it tomorrow.

The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.

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

There are thousands ready to die for their religion, but only are few willing to live by its principles. Because of their narrow vision and envy, they have missed the true essence and message of religion which is love and compassion.

The Greek word for philosopher (philosophos) connotes a distinction from sophos. It signifies the lover of wisdom (knowledge) as distinguished from him who considers himself wise in the possession of knowledge. This meaning of the word still endures: the essence of philosophy is not the possession of the truth but the search for truth. ... Philosophy means to be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question.