Quotes About Existence

Every new born being indeed comes fresh and blithe into the new existence, and enjoys it as a free gift: but there is, and can be, nothing freely given. It's fresh existence is paid for by the old age and death of a worn out existence which has perished, but which contained the indestructible seed out of which the new existence has arisen: they are one being.

The more science learns, the clearer it is that although we are here, we shouldn't be. Once we begin considering the details of it all, the towering odds against our existence begin to become a bit unsettling. When we come to see the superlatively extreme precariousness of our existence, and begin to understand how by any accounting, we ought not to exist, what are we to think or feel? Our existence seems to be not merely a virtually impossible miracle but the most outrageous miracle conceivable, one that makes previously amazing miracles seem like almost nothing.

Some years ago I wrote a book called The House on Eccles Street. To write this book I had to think my way into the existence of Marion Bloom...Marion Bloom was a figment of James Joyce's imagination. If I can think my way into the existence of a being who has never existed, then I can think my way into the existence of a bat or a chimpanzee or an oyster, any being with whom I share the substrate of life.

How could it occur to anyone to demonstrate that God exists unless one has already allowed Himself to ignore Him? A king's existence is demonstrated by way of subjection and submissiveness. Do you want to try and demonstrate that the king exists? Will you do so by offering a string of proofs, a series of arguments? No. If you are serious, you will demonstrate the king's existence by your submission, by the way you live. And so it is with demonstrating God's existence. It is accomplished not by proofs but by worship. Any other way is but a thinker's pious bungling.

I do not deny God, because that word conveys to me no idea, and I cannot deny that which presents to me no distinct affirmation, and of which the would-be affirmer has no conception. I cannot war with a nonentity. If, however, God is affirmed to represent an existence which is distinct from the existence of which I am a mode, and which it is alleged is not the noumenon of which the word I represents only a speciality of phenomena, then I deny God, and affirm that it is impossible God can be.

Prior to Valentinus, those who follow Valentinus had no existence. Nor did those from Marcion exist before Marcion. Nor, in short, did any of those malignant-minded people, whom I have listed above, have any existence previous to the initiators and inventors of their perversity.

Atheist’s denial of God’s existence needs just as much substantiation as does the theist’s claim; the atheist must give plausible reasons for rejecting God’s existence.

On my view there is no net benefit to coming into existence and thus coming into existence is never worth its costs.

It is a human circumstance that when we are born we have not yet come into existence. We are lured into our special human existence by a mothering presence that gratifies our innate urges to be suckled, held, rocked, caressed. But that same gratifying presence puts limits on desire and rations satisfaction. In this sense the mother is also the first lawgiver.

Hysterical optimism will prevail until the world again admits the existence of tragedy, and it cannot admit the existence of tragedy until it again distinguishes between good and evil. . . Hysterical optimism as a sin against knowledge.

If you are a man of prayer, existence appears as God, as personal. If you are a man of meditation, existence is impersonal, just a wholeness, a divineness. For the man of prayer there is God; for the man of awareness there is godliness but no God.

Heaven and hell are not geographical; they are not something outside you, they are something that belongs to your interiority. If you are awake, then you are in a totally different universe; it is as if in your awakening the whole existence becomes awakened. It takes a new color, a new flavor, a new fragrance. When you are asleep, the whole existence sleeps with you. It all depends on you.

The whole universe is one. There is only one Self in the universe, only One Existence, and that One Existence, when it passes through the forms of time, space, causation, is called by different names, buddhi, fine matter, gross matter, all mental and physical forms. Everything in the universe is that One, appearing in various forms. When a little part of it comes, as it were, into this network of time, space and causation, it takes forms. Take off the network, and it is all one.

A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and reward, can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones

Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence.

I've been studying sexism for many years, and it's much easier to document the existence of sexism than it is to document the existence of interventions that reduce it. It's really hard to find ways to change the way people see people in different groups. It should be our goal, and we're working for that, but it's hard.

Human existence is girt round with mystery: the narrow region of our experience is a small island in the midst of a boundless sea. To add to the mystery, the domain of our earthly existence is not only an island of infinite space, but also in infinite time. The past and the future are alike shrouded from us: we neither know the origin of anything which is, nor its final destination.

Just as man's physical existence was liberated when he grasped that 'nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed', so his consciousness will be liberated when grasps that nature, to be apprehended, must be obeyed - that the rules of cognition must be derived from the nature of existence and the nature, the identity, of his cognitive faculty.

Time is only an idea. There is only the Reality. Whatever you think it is, it looks like that. If you call it time, it is time. If you call it existence, it is existence, and so on. After calling it time, you divide it into days and nights, months, years, hours, minutes, etc. Time is immaterial for the Path of Knowledge.

Those with power are frequently least aware of -- or least willing to acknowledge -- its existence [and] those with less power are often most aware of its existence.

We see ourselves in other people’s eyes. It’s the nature of the human race; we are a species of reflection, hungry for it in every facet of our existence. Maybe that’s why vampires seem so monstrous to us—they cast no reflection. Parents, if they’re good ones, reflect the wonder of our existence and the success we can become. Friends, well chosen, show us pretty pictures of ourselves, and encourage us to grow into them. The Beast shows us the very worst in ourselves and makes us know it’s true .

The master is already merged into existence. Merging into the master you are really merging with existence itself. The master functions only as a door, and a door is an emptiness; you pass through it. The master is the door to the beyond.

Existence is only in the present. Mind is never in the present. In fact, the moment you are in the present, there is no mind in you, there is great silence. The whole sky of your inner being is without thoughts, without clouds. I call this the state of no-mind. Only in this state of no-mind do you meet existence. And that meeting is the ultimate ecstasy. Once you have tasted it, you will never bother about the future.

The misconception which has haunted philosophic literature throughout the centuries is the notion of 'independent existence.' There is no such mode of existence; every entity is to be understood in terms of the way it is interwoven with the rest of the universe.

Therefore, in this world he must prepare himself for the life beyond. That which he needs in the world of the Kingdom must be obtained here. Just as he prepared himself in the world of the matrix by acquiring forces necessary in this sphere of existence, so, likewise, the indispensable forces of the divine existence must be potentially attained in this world.

He had put his hand up in class, a declaration of existence, a claim that he knew something. And that was forbidden to him. They could give a number of reasons for why they had to torment him; he was too fat, too ugly, too disgusting. But the real problem was simply that he existed, and every reminder of his existence was a crime.

It becomes evident that when the Life-power awakens its mysterious activity at the beginning of a cycle of manifestation those vibrations which we recognise as sound come into existence before the more rapid pulsations of electricity and light. Thus modern science confirms the ancient occult teaching that sound is the root of physical existence. 'It is out of Sound that every form comes, and it is in Sound that every form lives.

The physical organism itself then, even as you know it, exists and moves and reacts and influences, and is influenced by, many fields or planes of actuality; and its existence as you know it in your universe is determined by and dependent upon its existence within other fields, of which man is still intellectually ignorant.

I hope to come back to Iran again if it pleases Allah; I hope to be your guest again, and I hope that Allah will bless me to speak at Salat al-Jumu'ah. I pray for our success and the success of all good thinking righteous people who want to see a world come into existence that is better than the world that we inherited.

For paradise we long. For perfection we were made...This longing is the source of the hunger and dissatisfaction that mark our lives...This longing makes our loves and friendships possible, and so very unsatisfactory. The hunger is for...nothing less than perfect communion with the...one in whom all the fragments of our scattered existence come together...we must not stifle this longing. It is a holy dissatisfaction. Such dissatisfaction is not a sickness to be healed, but the seed of a promise to be fulfilled...The only death to fear is the death of settling for something less.

Science is our only hope to be the 'Holy Rope' tying man to the existence.

But let me tell you what happens when regulations go too far, when they seem to exist only for the purpose of justifying the existence of a regulator. It kills the people trying to start a business.

Emotions are lovely. Even if they fall to the negative for a time. The sun will rise again another day. The sadness perhaps never forgotten, but a new day enjoyed in another way. A way that could not have been but for the sadness’s existence.

Calmly spinning, I scan as far away as I can see. The last rays of the day's sun warm my back and my stare locks onto my own shadow. I follow the lines of my body on the stone in front of me, spreading my arms as wings, and bathe in the beauty of existence.

The system of patriarchy is a historic construct; it has a beginning; it will have an end. Its time seems to have nearly run its course—it no longer serves the needs of men or women and in its inextricable linkage to militarism, hierarchy, and racism it threatens the very existence of life on earth. What will come after, what kind of structure will be the foundation for alternate forms of social organization we cannot yet know. We are living in an age of unprecedented transformation. We are in the process of becoming.

Boredom rests upon the nothingness that winds its way through existence; its giddiness, like that which comes from gazing down into an infinite abyss, is infinite.

This is one of the charms of the desert, that removing as it does nearly all the accessories of life, we see the thin thread of necessities on which our human existence is suspended.

The star is the ultimate American verification of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile. His mere existence proves the perfectability of any man or woman. Oh wonderful pliability of human nature, in a society where anyone can become a celebrity! And where any celebrity . . . may become a star!

Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.

A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood... How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts - physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on - remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!

Maybe existence is ultimately a lonely thing.

If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.

You will remember when a bird crashed through the window and fell to the floor. You will remember, those of you who were there, how it jerked its wings before dying, and left a spot of blood on the floor after it was removed. But who among you was first to notice the negative bird it left in the window? Who first saw the shadow that the bird left behind, the shadow that drew blood from any finger that dared to trace it, the shadow that was better proof of the bird's existence than the bird ever was?

Theists give several 'proofs' of the existence of God. These are really just arguments, because if there were convincing proof just one would suffice.

The Perennial Philosophy is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula, tat tvam asi ('That art thou'); the Atman, or immanent eternal Self, is one with Brahman, the Absolute Principle of all existence; and the last end of every human being, is to discover the fact for himself, to find out who he really is.

Upon this subject, the habits of our whole species fall into three great classes--useful labour, useless labour and idleness. Of these the first only is meritorious; and to it all the products of labour rightfully belong; but the two latter, while they exist, are heavy pensioners upon the first, robbing it of a large portion of it's just rights. The only remedy for this is to, as far as possible, drive useless labour and idleness out of existence.

Though we may never be able to comprehend human life, we know certainly that it is a movement, of whatever nature it be. The existence of movement unavoidably implies a body which is being moved and a force which is moving it. Hence, wherever there is life, there is a mass moved by a force. All mass possesses inertia; all force tends to persist

The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.