Existence Quotes
Quotes tagged as "existence"
Showing 1-30 of 2,328

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― The Bell Jar
― The Bell Jar

“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that鈥檚 what everyone else does.”
― The Fault in Our Stars
― The Fault in Our Stars

“It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.”
― One Hundred Years of Solitude
― One Hundred Years of Solitude

“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd!”
― Hamlet
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd!”
― Hamlet

“Of course I鈥檒l hurt you. Of course you鈥檒l hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.”
― ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY - MAN
― ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY - MAN

“It's not my responsibility to be beautiful. I'm not alive for that purpose. My existence is not about how desirable you find me.”
―
―

“It isn't by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world鈥y getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves.”
― Kesey's Garage Sale
― Kesey's Garage Sale

“Finally, she mused that human existence is as brief as the life of autumn grass, so what was there to fear from taking chances with your life?”
― Red Sorghum
― Red Sorghum

“La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas."
("The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.")”
― Paris Spleen
("The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.")”
― Paris Spleen

“Doubt as sin. 鈥� Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature 鈥� is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.”
― Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
― Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.”
― Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
― Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I'm gone which would not have happened if I had not come.”
― Midnight鈥檚 Children
― Midnight鈥檚 Children

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”
―
―

“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
―
―

“There are only two worlds - your world, which is the real world, and other worlds, the fantasy. Worlds like this are worlds of the human imagination: their reality, or lack of reality, is not important. What is important is that they are there. these worlds provide an alternative. Provide an escape. Provide a threat. Provide a dream, and power; provide refuge, and pain. They give your world meaning. They do not exist; and thus they are all that matters. ”
― The Books of Magic
― The Books of Magic

“It is good to be a cynic 鈥� it is better to be a contented cat 鈥� and it is best not to exist at all.”
― Collected Essays 5: Philosophy, Autobiography and Miscellany
― Collected Essays 5: Philosophy, Autobiography and Miscellany

“About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough鈥攁nd even miraculous enough if you insist鈥擨 attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about?
Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others鈥攚hile in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity鈥攕o the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities鈥� but there, there. Enough.”
― Hitch 22: A Memoir
Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others鈥攚hile in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity鈥攕o the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities鈥� but there, there. Enough.”
― Hitch 22: A Memoir

“A Man Said to the Universe
A man said to the universe:
鈥淪ir, I exist!鈥�
鈥淗owever,鈥� replied the universe,
鈥淭he fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
― War Is Kind and Other Poems
A man said to the universe:
鈥淪ir, I exist!鈥�
鈥淗owever,鈥� replied the universe,
鈥淭he fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
― War Is Kind and Other Poems

“Let us proceed under the assumption that the fairy folk do exist, and that I am not a gibbering moron.”
― Artemis Fowl
― Artemis Fowl

“All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.”
― Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words
― Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words

“Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.”
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it's like they didn't fade away at all.”
― Chronicles, Volume One
― Chronicles, Volume One

“It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.”
― The Sea Around Us
― The Sea Around Us

“In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments鈥攚hich, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves.”
― Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
― Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray
― The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with.”
― God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
― God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

“Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.”
― Parerga and Paralipomena
― Parerga and Paralipomena
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