Existence Quotes - Page 20

• I believe in the transformative power of cinema. It is only through this shared dream-experience that we can transcend the oppressive minutiae of daily existence and find some spiritual connection in the deeper reality of our mutual desire.

  Daniel Clowes

  Dream, Spiritual, Believe

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• We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Emptiness, Existentialism, Praying

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• Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Dream, Lying, Moving

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, David Luke (1998). “Faust”, p.48, Oxford University Press, USA

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• At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence.

  Jon Krakauer

  Cutting, Long, Parent

  Jon Krakauer (2011). “Into the Wild”, p.22, Pan Macmillan

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• The first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence.

  Jack London

  Struggle, Decay, Pieces

  Jack London (2009). “The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories”, p.21, Oxford Paperbacks

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• When a man sleeps, he is steeped and lost in a limp toneless happiness: awake he is restless, tortured by his body and the illusion of existence. Why have men spent the centuries seeking to overcome the awakened body? Put it to sleep, that is a better way. Let it serve only to turn the sleeping soul over, to change the blood-stream and thus make possible a deeper and more refined sleep.

  Flann O'Brien

  Sleep, Men, Blood

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• Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person.

  Haruki Murakami

  Running, Hands, Feelings

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Mar 02, 2017

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• I can worship Nature, and that fulfills my need for miracles and beauty. Art gives a spiritual depth to existence -- I can find worlds bigger and deeper than my own in music, paintings, and books. And from my friends and family I receive the highest benediction, emotional contact, and personal affirmation. I can bow before the works of Man, from buildings to babies, and that fulfills my need for wonder. I can believe in the sanctity of Life, and that becomes the Revealed Word, to live my life as I believe it should be, not as I'm told to by self-appointed guides.

  Neil Peart

  Spiritual, Baby, Art

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• There must be only three supreme values which govern a person's life: Reason, Purpose, and Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge--Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve--Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man's virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride.

  Ayn Rand

  Honesty, Integrity, Self Esteem

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• Chili, spice of red Thursday, which is the day of reckoning. Day which invites us to pick up the sack of our existence and shake it inside out. Day of suicide, day of murder.

  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  Suicide, Thursday, Spices

  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (1997). “The Mistress of Spices”, Doubleday

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• It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities.

  H. L. Mencken

  Children, Men, Political

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.371, Knopf

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• There is small merit in mocking goodness, tweaking charity; it is much more comic to deprive people of their petty little existence for no reason at all, for a lark.

  Jacques Rigaut

  People, Larks, Charity

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• The accouterments of life were so rich and varied, so elaborated, that almost no place at all was left for life itself. Each and every accessory was so costly and beautiful that it had an existence above and beyond the purpose it was meant to serve – confusing the observer and absorbing attention.

  Thomas Mann

  Beautiful, Confusing, Accessories

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• The party in Alobar’s head, which agitation and anxiety were throwing, now was crashed by a notion: existence can be rearranged.

  Tom Robbins

  Party, Anxiety, Agitation

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.49, Bantam

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• Ascend beyond the sickly atmosphere to a higher plane, and purify yourself by drinking as if it were ambrosia the fire that fills and fuels Emptiness. Free from the futile strivings and the cares which dim existence to a realm of mist, happy is he who wings an upward way on mighty pinions to the fields of light; whose thoughts like larks spontaneously rise into the morning sky; whose flight, unchecked, outreaches life and readily comprehends the language of flowers and of all mute things.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Morning, Drinking, Flower

  Charles Baudelaire, Richard Howard (1983). “Les Fleurs Du Mal”, p.14, David R. Godine Publisher

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• By not asking too much, you can believe in almost anything..like..a starry night in the mountains, or even the existence of fate.

  Aimee Friedman

  Believe, Fate, Night

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• Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future lessens . . . . Superabundant existence wells in my heart.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Heart, Childhood, Looks

  Rainer Maria Rilke, Lou Andreas-Salomé (2008). “Rilke and Andreas-Salomé: A Love Story in Letters”, p.303, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Every universe, our own included, begins in conversation. Every golem in the history of the world, from Rabbi Hanina's delectable goat to the river-clay Frankenstein of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, was summoned into existence through language, through murmuring, recital, and kabbalistic chitchat -- was, literally, talked into life.

  Michael Chabon

  Rivers, World, Goats

  Michael Chabon (2012). “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content): A Novel”, p.119, Random House

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• Virginia Woolf wrote, "Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword." On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where all is correct. But on the other side of that sword, if you're crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, "all is confusion." Nothing follows a regular course. Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will be more perilous.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Crazy, Lying, Fall

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.95, A&C Black

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• Colin did not laugh. Instead he thought, Tampons have strings? Why? Of all the major human mysteries - God, the nature of the universe, etc. - he knew the least about tampons. To Colin, tampons were a little bit like grizzly bears: he was aware of their existence, but he'd never seen on in the wild, and didn't really care to.

  John Green

  Laughing, Etc, Bears

  John Green (2008). “An Abundance of Katherines”, p.59, Penguin

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• The actual life of a thought lasts only until it reaches the point of speech...As soon as our thinking has found words it ceases to be sincere...When it begins to exist in others it ceases to live in us, just as the child severs itself from its mother when it enters into its own existence.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Mother, Children, Thinking

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “101 Facts of life”, p.77, Publishdrive

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• 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!

  Epictetus

  Party, Moving, Heaven

  Epictetus (2017). “The Philosophy of Epictetus: Golden Sayings and Fragments”, p.11, Courier Dover Publications

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• America is the greatest, freest and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.

  Dinesh D'Souza

  Country, 4th Of July, Unique

  Dinesh D'Souza (2012). “What's So Great About America”, p.140, Regnery Publishing

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• Saying this, he turned his head toward the window as if he were trying to solve the problems of human existence by concentrating on the beauty of the universe.

  Khalil Gibran

  Trying, Problem, Window

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• To my way of thinking, there is every bit as much evidence for the existence of UFOs as there is for the existence of God. Probably far more. At least in the case of UFOs there have been countless taped and filmed and, by the way, unexplained sightings from all over the world, along with documented radar evidence seen by experienced military and civilian radar operators.>>.

  George Carlin

  Military, Thinking, World

  George Carlin (2004). “When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?”, Hyperion

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