Existence Quotes - Page 30

• God has no needs. Human love, as Plato teaches us, is the child of Poverty – of want or lack; it is caused by a real or supposed goal in its beloved which the lover needs and desires. But God's love, far from being caused by goodness in the object, causes all the goodness which the object has, loving it first into existence, and then into real, though derivative, lovability. God is Goodness. He can give good, but cannot need or get it. In that sense , His love is, as it were, bottomlessly selfless by very definition; it has everything to give, and nothing to receive.

  C. S. Lewis

  Plato, Children, Real

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• I had passed on from life, from the world of struggles and hardship and big fat women with annoying laughs, and entered a glorious new existence of utter peace, and joy, and love. And then some git brought me back to life

  Yahtzee Croshaw

  Struggle, Laughing, Joy

  Yahtzee Croshaw (2008). “Mogworld”, p.14, Dark Horse Comics

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• In every way that counted, I was dead. Inside somewhere maybe I was screaming and weeping and howling like an animal, but that was another person deep inside, another person who had no access to the lips and face and mouth and head, so on the surface I just shrugged and smile and kept moving. If I could have physically passed away, just let it all go, like that, without doing anything, stepped out of life as easily as walking through a door I would have done. But I was going to sleep at night and waking in the morning, disappointed to be there and resigned to existence.

  Neil Gaiman

  Morning, Moving, Sleep

  "Fragile Things". Book by Neil Gaiman, 2006.

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• Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants. We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver-plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on washroom walls. It's all the same impulse. What do we hope from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simply attention, of any kind we can get? At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.

  Margaret Atwood

  Running, Dog, Wall

  Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.95, Anchor

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• a good book can make an almost impossible existence, liveable ( from 'the luck of the word' )

  Charles Bukowski

  Book, Luck, Impossible

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• If things had been different, she would be in Carolyn's place right now. She didn't want that sort of existence, but there was something so attractive about the security of feeling like you had stopped moving toward your life, and actually arrived.

  J. Courtney Sullivan

  Moving, Feelings, Different

  J. Courtney Sullivan (2009). “Commencement”, p.201, Vintage

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• 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.

  Yukio Mishima

  Jobs, Crazy, Real

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• For one quarter, Black Tiger lets me escape from my rotten existence for three glorious hours. Pretty good deal.

  Ernest Cline

  Black, Three, Rotten

  Ernest Cline (2011). “Ready Player One”, p.254, Random House

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• How easy it was to fall in love with every moment of her existence!

  Lauren Kate

  Falling In Love, Moments, Easy

  Lauren Kate (2011). “Passion: Book 3 of the Fallen Series”, p.79, Random House

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• As long as I stared at the clock, at least the world remained in motion. Not a very consequential world, but in motion nonetheless. And as long as I knew the world was still in motion, I knew I existed. Not a very consequential existence, but an existence nonetheless. It struck me as wanting that someone should confirm his own existence only by the hands of an electric wall clock. There had to be a more cognitive means of confirmation. But try as I might, nothing less facile came to mind.

  Haruki Murakami

  Wall, Mean, Hands

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• The existence of a prime mover- nothing can move itself; there must be a first mover. The first mover is called God.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Moving, Firsts, Prime

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• Others of us are lost. We're forever seeking. We torture ourselves with philosophies and ache to see the world. We question everything, even our own existence. We ask a lifetime of questions and are never satisfied with the answers because we don't recognize anyone as an authority to give them. We see life and the world as an enormous puzzle that we might never understand, that our questions might go unanswered until the day we die, almost never occurs to us. And when it does, it fills us with dread.

  Lisa Unger

  Philosophy, Giving, Forever

  Lisa Unger (2010). “Four Thrillers by Lisa Unger: Beautiful Lies, Sliver of Truth, Black Out, Die for You”, p.695, Crown

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• What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?

  Woody Allen

  Funny, Dream, Humorous

  "God". Play by Woody Allen, 1975.

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• Youth is an intoxication without wine, someone says. Life is an intoxication. The only sober man is the melancholiac, who, disenchanted, looks at life, sees it as it really is, and cuts his throat. If this be so, I want to be very drunk. The great thing is to live, to clutch at our existence and race away with it in some great and enthralling pursuit. Above all, I must beware of all ultimate questions- they are too maddeningly unanswerable- let me eschew philosophy and burn Omar.

  W.N.P. Barbellion

  Philosophy, Wine, Cutting

  W. N. P. Barbellion (1919). “The Journal of a Disappointed Man”

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• Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.

  Thornton Wilder

  Live By, Plans, Accidents

  Thornton Wilder (2014). “The Bridge of San Luis Rey: A Novel”, p.8, Harper Collins

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• I love being reminded that existence itself is all about the tangling of souls.

  Carolyn Mackler

  Soul

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• Paganism is that view of life which finds the highest goal of human existence in the healthy and harmonious and joyous development of existing human faculties. Very different is the Christian ideal. Paganism is optimistic with regard to unaided human nature, whereas Christianity is the religion of the broken heart.

  John Gresham Machen

  Christian, Heart, Optimistic

  John Gresham Machen (1923). “Christianity and Liberalism”, p.65, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• For most of my life, I’ve felt that there must be more to our existence than meets the eye. This is who I am, and you can’t expect me to be someone I’m not.

  Steve Jobs

  Eye, Who I Am, Felt

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• To an American the whole purpose of living, the one constant confirmation of continued existence, is to cram as much as sensual pleasure as possible into one's mouth more or less continuously. Gratification, instant and lavish, is a birthright

  Bill Bryson

  Sensual, Purpose, Mouths

  Bill Bryson (2000). “The Complete Notes”, Random House

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• Beautiful women are the torment of my existence.

  Markus Zusak

  Beautiful, Beautiful Women, Torment

  Markus Zusak (2007). “I Am the Messenger”, p.75, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• Or perhaps it is just that desire lies at the heart of human existence. When we turn away from one desire, we must find another to cleave to with all our strength --or else we die.

  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  Lying, Heart, Desire

  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (1999). “Sister of My Heart”, Doubleday Books

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• Kellis-Amberlee is a fact of existence. You live, you die, and then you come back to life, get up, and shamble around trying to eat your former friends and loved ones. That’s the way it is for everyone.

  Mira Grant

  Trying, Way, Facts

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• Your ideal authors ought to pull you from the foundering of your previous existence, not smilingly guide you into a friendly and peaceable harbor.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Friendly, Guides, Harbors

  Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.72, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Just because you didn't speak the facts out loud didn't erase their existence. Silence was just a quieter way to lie.

  Jodi Picoult

  Lying, Silence, Way

  Jodi Picoult (2006). “The Tenth Circle: A Novel”, p.275, Simon and Schuster

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• One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which the did happen.

  Philip Pullman

  Other Worlds, Next, Moments

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