Quotes About Existence

Real danger is nothing more than just living. Of course, living is merely the chaos of existence, but more than that it's a crazy mixed-up business of dismantling existence instant by instant to the point where the original chaos is restored, and taking strength from the uncertainty and the fear that chaos brings to re-create existence instant by instant. You won't find another job as dangerous as that. There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it.

Existence itself stands in need of nothing, for it lacks nothing, whereas everything else needs it, because outside of it there is nothing. Nothingness stands in need of existence, as a sick man lacks health and is in need. Health has no need of a sick man. To want nothing, therefore, characterizes the highest perfection, is fullest and purest existence.

Mind dissolves only when you don't choose. And when there is no mind, you are for the first time in your crystal clarity, for the first time in your original freshness. For the first time your real face is encountered. Mind is not there - the divider. Now existence appears as one. Mind has dropped; the barrier between you and existence is no more. Now you can look at existence with no mind. This is how a sage is born. With the mind - the world. With no mind - freedom, MOKSHA, KAIVALYA, NIRVANA. Cessation of the mind is cessation of the world.

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.

Existence cares. When I say God cares I mean that existence cares for you, it is not indifferent. Let this be the foundation of your sannyas and then the temple can be raised very easily. It is easy to raise the temple once the foundation is rightly put. This is the foundation stone: remember that existence loves you, cares about you, is concerned about you; that you are not alienated, that you are not a stranger, that you are part of this great symphony, this orchestra, this celebration that goes on and on and knows no ending.

As the fisherman depends upon the rivers, lakes and seas and the farmer upon the land for his existence, so does mankind in general depend upon the beauty of the world about him for his spiritual and emotional existence.

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.

Who is able to paint the existence of a dog as Picasso paints the existence of a cubic shape?

All essential knowledge relates to existence, or only such knowledge as has an essential relationship to existence is essential knowledge.

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

We lay down a fundamental principle of generalization by abstraction: The existence of analogies between central features of various theories implies the existence of a general theory which underlies the particular theories and unifies them with respect to those central features.

The whole of existence is dancing, except man. The whole of existence is in a very relaxed movement; movement there is, certainly, but it is utterly relaxed. Trees are growing and birds are chirping and rivers are flowing, stars are moving: everything is going in a very relaxed way. No hurry, no haste, no worry, and no waste. Except man. Man has fallen a victim of his mind.

Is it true that existence consists only in the action of energy? Or is it not rather that energy is an output of Existence?

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.

I was a kid who lived to read. It was the primary pleasure of my existence. It's still one of the primary pleasures of my existence. It's where I draw my sustenance.

Why do we need to justify God's existence? He exists. We need to justify our own existence.

The more foreign to me, to my existence, to your core existence, the more foreign the foreign language, it's really moving to me to think, to get to experience my own story crossing those boundaries. To have that experience that I so cherished as a reader. I can't believe this. To me, it's really nice because that would be a thing where I'm like, "There may be lots of Jews in my work. I'm not writing stories for Jews. I'm telling stories about people, and Jews are people, too."

A good man doubles the length of his existence; to have lived so as to look back with pleasure on our past existence is to live twice.

Concerning the Gods, there are those who deny the very existence of the Godhead; others say that it exists, but neither bestirs nor concerns itself not has forethought far anything. A third party attribute to it existence and forethought, but only for great and heavenly matters, not for anything that is on earth. A fourth party admit things on earth as well as in heaven, but only in general, and not with respect to each individual. A fifth, of whom were Ulysses and Socrates, are those that cry: -- I move not without Thy knowledge!

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.

No business in the economy has the easy money that banks get to play with.... The existence of banks with single digit amounts of equity is a completely unhealthy existence -- that is not only a risk for the banks, but for all of us.

Before perception, before a preceiver, existence was - is. This is the consciousness that we refer to as nirvana, God, eternity.

What I can't understand is why you invoke improbability and yet you will not admit that you're shooting yourself in the foot by postulating something just as improbable, magicking into existence the word God.

Esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived, said good old Berkeley; but, according to most philosophers, he was wrong. Yet, obviously, there are things for which the adage holds. Perception, trivially, to begin with. If elements of conscious awareness--pains, tickles, feelings of heat and cold, sensory qualia of colors, sounds, and the like--have any existence, it must consist in their being perceived by a subject.... This shows, of course, that such experiences are epiphenomenal, at least with respect to the physical world.

We become extraordinary when we realize how extraordinary our existence is.

I never was able to believe in the existence of next year except as in a metaphysical notion.

Profound meditation in solitude and silence frequently exalts the mind above its natural tone, fires the imagination, produces the most refined and sublime conceptions. The soul then tastes the purest and most refined delight, and almost loses the idea of existence in the intellectual pleasure it receives. The mind on every motion darts through space into eternity; and raised, in its free enjoyment of its powers by its own enthusiasm, strengthens itself in the habitude of contemplating the noblest subjects, and of adopting the most heroic pursuits.

The most sublime efforts of philosophy can extend no farther than feebly to point out the desire, the hope, or, at most, the probability, of a future state, there is nothing, except a divine revelation, that can ascertain the existence, and describe the condition of the invisible country which is destined to receive the souls of men after their separation from the body.

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of one's self. We must be purposely kind and generous, or we miss the best part of existence. The heart that goes out of itself, gets large and full of joy. This is the great secret of the inner life. We do ourselves the most good doing something for others.

It is paradoxical but nonetheless true that the nearer man comes to his goal to make his life easy and abundant, the more he undermines the foundations of a meaningful existence.

It must be a good thing to die conscious of having performed some real good, and to know that by this work one will live, at least in the memory of some, and will have left a good example to those that come after. A work that is good-it may not be eternal, but the thought expressed in it is, and the work itself will certainly remain in existence for a long, long time; and if afterwards others arise, they can do no better than follow in the footsteps of such predecessors and do their work in the same way.

Life is brief, even at its longest. Whatever you are going to do with your life, get at it. All good will be attacked. All values must be defended. In all areas of the human existence, what we put into this world, we get back from it.

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?

We owe our existence to innovation. Our species exists thanks to four billion years of genetic innovation.

I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul. No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life - our desire to go on living - our dread of coming to an end.

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.

Theology is a non-subject. I'm not saying that professors of theology are non-professors. They do interesting things, like study biblical history, biblical literature. But theology, the study of gods, the study of what gods do, presupposes that gods exist. The only kind of theology that I take account of are those theological arguments that actually argue for the existence of God.

The royal family's existence is a constant reminder of the hollowness of John Major's rhetoric, and idiotic statements by its leading members a constant boost to the republican cause. They're fine opening hospitals. It's when they open their mouths they get into trouble.

As far as I'm concerned, if there is a supreme being then He chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world... which doesn't seem to me to be necessarily blasphemous at all.

[I]n general, my work is less about expanding the possibilities of photography than about re-investing it with a truer perception of things by returning to a simple method, one that photography had from the beginning of its existence.

Those who devote their lives to earning a living are incapable of living a human existence.

At a fundamental level, as human beings, we are all the same; each one of us aspires to happiness and each one of us does not wish to suffer. This is why, whenever I have the opportunity, I try to draw people's attention to what as members of the human family we have in common and the deeply interconnected nature of our existence and welfare.

In order to find out how to reveal our innermost Being, the sages explored the various sheaths of existence, starting from body and progressing through mind and intelligence, and ultimately to the soul. The yogic journey guides us from our periphery, the body, to the center ofour being, the soul. The aim is to integrate the variouslayers so that the inner divinity shines out as through clear glass.

Every man who is any kind of artist has a great deal of female in him. I act and give of myself as a man, but I register and receive with the soul of a woman. The only really good artists are feminine. I can't admit the existence of an artist whose dominant personality is masculine.

Everyone - pantheist, atheist, skeptic, polytheist - has to answer these questions: 'Where did I come from? What is life's meaning? How do I define right from wrong and what happens to me when I die?' Those are the fulcrum points of our existence.

Baseball is a lot like life. It's a day-to-day existence, full of ups and downs. You make the most of your opportunities in baseball as you do in life.

There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future.

Even in our day, science suspects beyond the Polar seas, at the very circle of the Arctic Pole, the existence of a sea which never freezes and a continent which is ever green.