Existence Quotes

I will say nothing against the course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I do not wish to lose my temper because very shortly I will lose my head. Nevertheless, upon leaving this spark of earthly existence, I have this to say: I shall see you all very soon ... very soon. ~ Charlie Chaplin

Girls and women, in their new, particular unfolding, will only in passing imitate men's behavior and misbehavior and follow in male professions. Once the uncertainty of such transitions is over it will emerge that women have only passed through the spectrum and the variety of those (often laughable) disguises in order to purify their truest natures from the distorting influences of the other sex. Women, in whom life abides and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully and more trustingly, are bound to have ripened more thoroughly, become more human human beings, than a man, who is all too light and has not been pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of a bodily fruit and who, in his arrogance and impatience, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity which inhabits woman, brought to term in pain and humiliation, will, once she has shrugged off the conventions of mere femininity through the transformations of her outward status, come clearly to light, and men, who today do not yet feel it approaching, will be taken by surprise and struck down by it. One day (there are already reliable signs which speak for it and which begin to spread their light, especially in the northern countries), one day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer just signify the opposite of the male but something in their own right, something which does not make one think of any supplement or limit but only of life and existence: the female human being.

This ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Ergo, while the Argument from Design appears to be a nice, neat answer to account for the presence of a multifarious Universe, the truth is that it backfires on itself, shifting the need for an explanation back and back and back…and back…without end, without resolution. This is called an infinite regress, and its presence in the logic of the argument fails to prove the existence of God; if anything, it reveals that the idea of a designer is patently ridiculous, even more so than a godless Cosmos. The argument therefore answers nothing; it merely moves the mystery of origins to an even higher level, demanding that the Creator have his own Creator. ~ Michael Vito Tosto

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

To me, the capacity to earn money has never been a measurement of success. It is my belief that people must develop a philosophy early in life which permits them to have as much pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction now as is possible without injuring themselves or others. Money can help to do this, but it is not and must not become the sole aim of a person's existence. We all know what happened to King Midas. ~ Rudy Vallee

You are claiming that the Soviet authorities began and influenced the existence of the Democratic Party [in Iran]. That is the basis of all your statements. The simplest way to discredit your absurd claim si to tell you about Iran, of which you are apparently ignorant. The people of Iran are oppressed, poverty-stricken, and miserable with hunger and disease. Their death rate is among the highest in the world, and their infant mortality rate threatens Iran with complete extinction. They are ruled without choice by feudalistic landowners, ruthless Khans, and venal industrialists. The peasants are slaves and the workers are paid a few pennies for a twelve hour day--not enough to keep their families in food. I can quote you all the figures you like to support these statements, quote them if necessary from British sources. I can also quote you the figures of wealth which is taken out of Iran yearly by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, of which the British Governemtn is the largest shareholder. 200 million pounds sterling have been taken out of Iran by your Oil company: a hundred times the total amount of Iran's national income and ten thousand times the total national income of the working people of Iran. By such natural resources as oil, Iran is by nature one of the wealthiest countries on earth. That wealth goes to Britain, while Iran remains poverty-ridden and without economic stability at all. It has no wage policies, no real trade unions, few hospitals, no sanitation and drainag ~ James Aldridge

Given everything we know about the universe it would seem utterly impossible for any sane person to believe that the ultimate truth about the universe and human existence is the story of Israeli, German or Russian nationalism – or indeed of nationalism in general. A story that ignores almost the whole of time, the whole of space, the Big Bang, quantum physics and the evolution of life is at most just a tiny part of the truth. Yet people somehow manage not to see beyond it.
Indeed, billions of people throughout history have believed that for their lives to have meaning, they don't even need to be absorbed into a nation or a great ideological movement. It is enough if they just 'leave something behind', thereby ensuring that their personal story continues beyond their death. The 'something' I leave behind is ideally my soul or my personal essence. If I am reborn in a new body after the death of my present body, then death is not the end. It is merely the space between two chapters, and the plot

"that began in one chapter will carry on into the next. Many people have at least a vague faith in such a theory, even if they do not base it on any specific theology. They don't need an elaborate dogma – they just need the reassuring feeling that their story continues beyond the horizon of death. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

If I could change the structure of existence I would do it. I could see a better way to live for everybody. ~ Woody Allen

There's nothing in all the world I want but you - and your precious love - All the material things are nothing. I'd just hate to live a sordid, colorless existence - because you'd soon love me less - and less - and I'd do anything - anything - to keep your heart for my own - ~ Lauren Blakely

To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence. ~ Aristotle.

The Sinai covenant itself, then, is a law-covenant. The land is given to Israel, but for the purpose of fulfilling its covenantal vocation. Remaining in the land is there fore conditional on Israel's personal performance of the stipulations that people swore at Sinai ... The ultimate promise of a worldwide family of Abraham
sinners justified and glorified in a renewed creation
is unconditional in its basis, while the continuing existence of the national theocracy as a type of that everlasting covenant depended on Israel's obedience ... The Decalogue and Joshua 24 fit this suzerainty pattern, but as Mendenhall observe, "it can readily be seen that the covenant with Abraham (and Noah) is of completely different form." P.15 ~ Michael S. Horton

Through the radical undoing and debilitation of repeated pain we are reacquainted with the essentialities of place and time and existence itself; in deep pain we have energy only for what we can do wholeheartedly and then, only within a narrow range of motion, metaphorically or physically, from tying our shoelace to holding the essential core conversations that are reciprocal and reinforcing within the close-in circle of those we love. Pain teaches us a fine economy, in movement, in the heart's affections, in what we ask of ourselves and eventually in what we ask in others. ~ David Whyte

As for myself, what has died for me has died, so to speak, into my own heart: when I looked for him, the person who vanished has collected himself strangely and so surprisingly in me, and it was so moving to feel he was now only there that my enthusiasm for serving his new existence, for deepening and glorifying it, took the upper hand almost at the very moment when pain would otherwise have invaded and devastated the whole landscape of my spirit. When I remember how I - often with the utmost difficulty in understanding and accepting each other - loved my father! Often, in childhood, my mind became confused and my heart grew numb at the mere thought that someday he might no longer be; my existence seemed to me so wholly conditioned through him (my existence, which from the start was pointed in such a different direction!) that his departure was to my innermost self synonymous with my own destruction …, but so deeply is death rooted in the essence of love that (if only we are cognizant of death without letting ourselves be misled by the uglinesses and suspicions that have been attached to it) it nowhere contradicts love: where, after all, can it drive out someone whom we have carried unsayably in our heart except into this very heart, where would the "idea" of this loved being exist, and his unceasing influence (: for how could that cease which even while he lived with us was more and more independent of his tangible presence) … where would this always secret influence be more ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

There are mainly four types of living beings: vegetables, parasites, animals and humans. Vegetables go through life without any conscience of what it means to be alive, and all they can do is react to what happens around them and unto them. Parasites take advantage of others beings to survive but cannot survive on their own. In fact, they rather kill their host than to improve themselves independently. Animals are driven by basic instincts, like sex and pleasure for food. Animals can have attachments but that is as far as they go in what concerns love. Now human, they are capable of all that, plus the ability to love on will, to change, help others change, and create any reality they want to experience. However, almost everyone I encounter, is either pretending to be a plant, a parasite or an animal, not a human. Few people know what it means to be human, and that's how the waste their own existence. This said, we wouldn't need to answer questions about life purpose when the purpose is understood in being what one was born to be. ~ Robin Sacredfire

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity. ~ Richard Dawkins

What is there possibly left for us to be afraid of, after we have dealt face to face with death and not embraced it? Once I accept the existence of dying as a life process, who can ever have power over me again? ~ Audre Lorde

If I could offer only one key to understanding this divine dialogue, it would be to remember that it takes place in the depths of consciousness and that Krishna is not some external being, human or superhuman, but the spark of divinity that lies at the core of the human personality. This is not literary or philosophical conjecture; Krishna says as much to Arjuna over and over: "I am the Self in the heart of every creature, Arjuna, and the beginning, middle, and end of their existence" (10:20). ~ Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

Each being in the universe yearns for the free energy necessary for survival and development. Each existence resists extinction. The consequent history of violence in the universe is as inevitable as the gravitational pull between the Earth and the Sun. ~ Brian Swimme

No person who denies the existence of a supreme being shall hold any office under this Constitution. ~ Michael Newdow

Universities are the cathedrals of the modern age. They shouldn't have to justify their existence by utilitarian criteria. ~ David Lodge

Contrary to any claim of a systematically "neutral" effect of taxation on production, the consequence of any such shortening of roundabout methods of production is a lower output produced. The price that invariably must be paid for taxation, and for every increase in taxation, is a coercively lowered productivity that in turn reduces the standard of living in terms of valuable assets provided for future consumption. Every act of taxation necessarily exerts a push away from more highly capitalized, more productive production processes in the direction of a hand-to-mouth-existence. ~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe

The first truth about mortals is that none of us wants to die, but all of us are going to. It's in the name – mortals – the dying ones. If you don't understand that bit, you won't understand the rest of it. Here you are, some 5-hundred years old and you haven't yet figured out something that a 3 year old human is starting to understand. You see, as soon as we can even think, our brains are wrapping themselves around that One Truth, that one offensive, undeniable, irrevocable Truth. The rest of our existence grows up in the shadow of a dead leaning tree, which will at one point in the not unimaginable future fall and crush all that has grown up beneath it…



…Rescue them for what? Why from dying! Does that mean they won't die? No, it just means they won't die today. At best, we're talking about delaying the inevitable death sentence laid on our friends. Now how does this particular truth strike you, Mister Immortal…?



…And why? Why not merely stand now and fall sooner rather than later? Because there is something precious and sacred about rearguard action. It's an active retreat that's been repeated valiantly and ceaselessly from the beginning of mortal time. It just seems wrong to give up. It seems invalid and invalorous. More importantly, it's indecent to simply lie down and be overrun…



…Instead we rage against it and sing our defiance through bloodied teeth. Somehow, in our pointless battle, we find moment ~ J. Robert King

The best defenses against the terrors of existence are the homely comforts of love, work, and family life, which connect us to a world that is independent of our wishes yet responsive to our needs. It is through love and work, as Freud noted in a characteristically pungent remark, that we exchange crippling emotional conflict for ordinary unhappiness. Love and work enable each of us to explore a small corner of the world and to come to accept it on its own terms. But our society tends either to devalue small comforts or else to expect too much of them. Our standards of "creative, meaningful work" are too exalted to survive disappointment. Our ideal of "true romance" puts an impossible burden on personal relationships. We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves. ~ Christopher Lasch

Envy, envy eats them alive. If you had money, they'd envy you that. But since you don't, they envy you for having such a good, bright, loving daughter. They envy you for just being a happy man. They envy you for not envying them. One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren't happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others. ~ Dean Koontz

I've never wanted anything more in my life, if i died tomorrow, being with you, like this tonight, will have been the best night of my entire existence. And it's not because of a stupid bucket list; it's because i love you. ~ M. Leighton

The true work of art leads us from that which exists only once and never again, i.e. the individual, to that which exists perpetually and time and time again in innumerable manifestations, the pure form or Idea; but the waxwork figure appears to present the individual itself, that is to say that which exists only once and never again, but without that which lends value to such a fleeting existence, without life. That is why the waxwork evokes a feeling of horror: it produces the effect of a rigid corpse. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

I get down on my knees every mornin' an' give eternal thanks for the existence of girls in a otherwise pointless universe. ~ Garth Ennis

Losing both parents at a young age gave me a sense that you can't really control life - so you'd better live it while it's here. I stopped believing in a storybook existence a long time ago. All you can do is push in a direction and see what comes of it. ~ Jon Hamm

When it first emerged, Twitter was widely derided as a frivolous distraction that was mostly good for telling your friends what you had for breakfast. Now it is being used to organize and share news about the Iranian political protests, to provide customer support for large corporations, to share interesting news items, and a thousand other applications that did not occur to the founders when they dreamed up the service in 2006. This is not just a case of cultural exaptation: people finding a new use for a tool designed to do something else. In Twitter's case, the users have been redesigning the tool itself. The convention of replying to another user with the @ symbol was spontaneously invented by the Twitter user base. Early Twitter users ported over a convention from the IRC messaging platform and began grouping a topic or event by the "hash-tag" as in "#30Rock" or "inauguration." The ability to search a live stream of tweets - which is likely to prove crucial to Twitter's ultimate business model, thanks to its advertising potential - was developed by another start-up altogether. Thanks to these innovations, following a live feed of tweets about an event - political debates or Lost episodes - has become a central part of the Twitter experience. But for the first year of Twitter's existence, that mode of interaction would have been technically impossible using Twitter. It's like inventing a toaster oven and then looking around a year later and discovering that all your custo ~ Steven Johnson

Who is a bad man and who is a good man? What is the definition? The bad man is one who is inconsiderate of others. The bad man is one who uses others and has no respect for others. The bad man is one who thinks he is the center of the world and everybody is just to be used. Everything exists for him. The bad man is one who thinks that other persons are just means for his gratification.

Keep this definition in mind because you ordinarily think the bad man is the criminal. The bad man may not be the criminal: all bad men are not criminals. All criminals are bad, but all bad men are not criminals. A few of them are judges, a few of them are very respectable people, a few of them are politicians, presidents and prime ministers, a few of them are even parading as saints.

So when we will be talking about this sutra, remember the definition of a bad man - Buddha says a bad man is one who has no consideration for others. He simply thinks about himself only - he thinks he is the center of existence and he feels the whole existence is made for him. He feels authorized to sacrifice everybody for his own self. He may not be bad ordinarily, but if this is the attitude, then he is a bad man.

Who is a good man? Just the opposite of the bad man: one who is considerate of others, who gives as much respect to others as he gives to himself, and who does not pretend in any way that he is the center of the world, and who has come to feel that everybody is the cent ~ Osho

My goofiest-sounding secret is that I also believe in magic. Sometimes I call it God and sometimes I call it light, and I believe in it because every now and then I read a really good book or hear a really good song or have a really good conversation with a friend and they seem to have some kind of shine to them. The list I keep of these moments in the back of my journal is comprised less of times when I was laughing or smiling and more of times when I felt like I could feel the colors in my eyes deepening from the display before me. Times in which I felt I was witnessing an all-encompassing representation of life driven by an understanding that, coincidence or not, our existence is a peculiar thing, and perhaps the greatest way to honor it is to just be human. To be happy AND sad, and everything else. And yeah, living is a pain, and I say I hate everyone and everything, and I don't exude much enthusiasm when sandwiched between fluorescent lighting and vinyl flooring for seven hours straight, and I will probably mumble a bunch about how much I wish I could sleep forever the next time I have to wake up at 6 AM. But make no mistake about it: I really do like living. I really, truly do. ~ Tavi Gevinson

My existence began the day you were created and was realized the day we met. ~ Crystal Woods

Creation is the production of order. What a simple, but, at the same time, comprehensive and pregnant principle is here! Plato could tell his disciples no ultimate truth of more pervading significance. Order is the law of all intelligible existence. ~ John Stuart Blackie

...the only thing that could justify your continuing existence on the planet would be if you started breathing carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen. ~ Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Light and unfeeling. Drifting and expanding through time and space. And then, as I know I am about to pierce the crust of existence, like a flying fish leaping out of the sea, I feel the pull from below. ~ Daniel Keyes

…to apply scientific arguments to the question of God's existence, as if this were somehow a showstopper, is committing a category error ~ Francis S. Collins

I've determined the ideal job for me is one where I can write clever essays about my life and my employer will give me enough money not only to live a comfortable existence, but also to buy many, many new pairs of shoes. ~ Jen Lancaster

For all his learning or sophistication, man still instinctively reaches towards that force beyond. Only arrogance can deny its existence, and the denial falters in the face of evidence on every hand. In every tuft of grass, in every bird, in every opening bud, there it is. ~ Hal Borland

Rousseau's ideas brought about-he moved the political process to the very centre of human existence by making the legislator, who is also a pedagogue, into the new Messiah, capable of solving all human problems by creating New Men. 'Everything,' he wrote, 'is at root dependent on politics.' Virtue is the product of good government. 'Vices belong less to man, than to man badly governed.' The political process, and the new kind of state it brings into being, are the universal remedies for the ills of mankind.49 Politics will do all. Rousseau thus prepared the blueprint for the principal delusions and follies of the twentieth century. ~ Paul Johnson

A great number of the women are victims to falling of the womb and weakness in the spine; but these are necessary results of their laborious existence, and do not belong either to climate or constitution. ~ Fanny Kemble

The Goddess is the macrocosmic and microcosmic anima, as put in place by Creator. Her existence became necessary in order to give form to Creator's thoughts and therefore ours as well. ~ Lawren Leo

From the beginning it was never anything but chaos: it was a fluid which rnvcloped me, which I breathed in through the gills. In the substrata, where the moon shone steady and opaque, it was smooth and fecundating; above it was a jangle and a discord. In everything I (plickly saw the opposite, the contradiction, and between the real and the unreal the irony, the paradox. I was my own worst enemy. There was nothing I wished to do which I could just as well not do. Even as a child, when I lacked for nothing, I wanted to die: I wanted to surrender because I saw no sense in struggling. I felt that nothing would be proved, substantiated, added or subtracted by continuing an existence which I had not asked for. Everybody around me was a failure, or if not a failure, ridiculous. Especially the successful ones. The successful ones bored·me to tears. I was sympathetic to a fault, but it was not sympathy that made me so. It was a purely negative quality, a weakness which blossomed at the mere sight of human misery. I never helped anyone expecting that it would do any good; I helped because I was helpless to do otherwise. To want to change the condition of affairs seemed futile to me; nothing would be altered, I was convinced, except by a change of heart, and who could change the hearts of men? ~ Henry Miller

Society exists through a process of transmission quite as much as biological life. This transmission occurs by means of communication of habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the older to the younger. ~ John Dewey

In existence you are body and mind, but in absolute you dissolve.
In existence there is sorrow; in absolute there is bliss.
In existence there is change; in absolute there is reality.
In existence you are known; in absolute you are energy
In existence you are thought, in absolute total awareness.
In existence you are matter, in absolute you are pure Spirit. ~ Gian Kumar

I think of published poets that you could know of...I think [Rainer Maria Rilke] probably has the most great published poems of any poet [...] but Rilke himself was an asshole. If you look at his biography, he was probably misogynist; he was a liar, a cheat; he was a terrible father; he was selfish; he put people down; he had no consideration for anyone [...] yet, he transcends that in his greatest poems. There's that ineffable, spiritual quality - that he himself couldn't reach! But somewhere underneath that reptilian exterior, that asshole exterior of Rainer Maria Rilke, there was some good that came through – like these little sunbursts coming through clouds – that had that moment. And he'd write the Duino Elegies, he'd write the New Poems, and somewhere, that came through.
And that's an amazing thing: you can have a lot of great people who are great individuals, who are loving and caring – and they can't do that. And that's not to say that their lives are meaningless, but they will never be able to affect anyone past the propinquity of their existence. They are never going to be able to affect someone in China; they are never going to be able to affect someone in 2132 the way Rilke can.
And that specialness needs to be acknowledged; that specialness needs to be upheld; it needs to be rewarded, and people need to say, 'Goddamn – that's a good thing! It's a good thing that people make art! ~ Dan Schneider

If a group of atoms in the presence of energy falls into a stable pattern it will tend to stay that way. The earliest form of natural selection was simply a selection of stable forms and a rejection of unstable ones. There is no mystery about this. It had to happen by definition. From this, of course, it does not follow that you can explain the existence of entities as complex as man by exactly the same principles on their own. It is no good taking the right number of atoms and shaking them together with some external energy till they happen to fall into the right pattern, and out drops Adam! ~ Richard Dawkins

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing. ~ Edmund Burke

Maybe there's a machine in Berkeley that will save me, too. Perhaps my problems can be automated out of existence. ~ Philip K. Dick

Too often we sit back and speak platitudes of the nitty-gritty bits of writing; the editing, the story structure, the verbal sparring vs. banter, the character development, the world-building become more important to us than the tune rhythm of the tale. And when you lose the music of the story, all the footwork in the world is not going to make up for the loss of continuity and heart.
We need to take a step back in our souls and conjure the image of what this story is: the notes and beats and things woven into it's fullness. See, that's what is so easy to lose sight of as we write. We forget that, in a way, this story is a full story in itself. We tend to try to build the story piece by piece, line upon line, precept upon precept, but that--as any true writer knows--is not entirely practical. A story does have its own identity. To some extent, the story exists in your mind as a whole. Its own being. To chance sounding sappy: Your story is a full piece of music waiting for you to dance it into existence. Don't make the mistake of leaving out all the music.
It is tempting to want to have everything arranged to perfection so that little editing will be done. But if you are keeping in mind the way your story needs to run--feeling it and dwelling in the beauty of its passion and color and vibe--the footwork will take care of itself. Certainly it will require practice and your technicalities will need a little work--everyone's does. But you will have captured the essenc ~ Rachel Heffington

I prayed to what all things hold in common. I prayed to what makes life. I thought about the elements of the universe, the rocks, the stars, the air, other living things. I tried to get the perspective of what's behind all that. I prayed to the force that brings things into existence. I thought this force encompassed all it created. My God was transcendent, and my God was also immanent. God ran in my veins. God lived and died and lived again in every atom of the universe. ~ Margaret D. McGee

Perhaps that is the real surprise of love; it exists, but one may not attribute causes and effects to it. The existence may appear to be a mere fallacy to the minds of some, and by the time they realise what hit them, they would already be down and dead. ~ Faraaz Kazi

We are the Gods, who create Gods, and then we turn into worshipers seeking comfort and solace from those Gods that we create. And we do all this, in order to have as much soothing existence as possible. ~ Abhijit Naskar

I have never reached certain levels of fame, like Lindsay Lohan did, or even Brittany Murphy. My career has always been this sort of even-keeled, steady existence. I was also raised by poets, and I've been doing poetry as long as I've been acting. ~ Amber Tamblyn

It is fortunate that youth never recognizes its ignorance, for if it did it would not find the courage to get the habit of endurance. It is perhaps an instinct of the blood and flesh which prevents this knowledge and allows the boy to become the man who will live to see the folly of his existence. ~ John Edward Williams

Peace is not simply the absence of conflict, but the existence of justice for all people. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Chronological living is a kind of lie. That's why I don't do it anymore. Existence doesn't have more meaning in one direction than it does in any other. Completing the days of your life in strict calendar order can feel forced. Arbitrary. ~ Charles Yu

Some people react to suffering by denying the very possibility of God's existence ~ Michael Ots

I never thought to ascribe my mother's emotional and physical exhaustion to the lack of a husband and father; rather, I ascribed it to my existence. In other words, I grew up learning the exact opposite of what Eisenhower was taught. I learned that if I didn't exist, the family would be better off. I grew up believing that if I had never been born, things would be easier for the people I loved. (page 35) ~ Donald Miller

Resurrection" does not mean resumption of previous existence but entry into a different kind of existence. ~ Marcus J. Borg

There are moments, and it is only a matter of five or six seconds, when you feel the presence of the eternal harmony ... a terrible thing is the frightful clearness with which it manifests itself and the rapture with which it fills you. If this state were to last more than five seconds, the soul could not endure it and would have to disappear. During these five seconds I live a whole human existence, and for that I would give my whole life and not think that I was paying too dearly ... ~ Oliver Sacks

Your existence is evidence that this generation needs something that your life contains ~ Myles Munroe

In a Jewish theological seminar there was an hours-long discussion about proofs of the existence of God. After some hours, one rabbi got up and said, "God is so great, he does not even need to exist." ~ Victor Frederick Weisskopf

Every human being has a fascinating existence, with a big cast of good and evil characters in each. And almost always, somewhere along the way, magic. ~ Lucinda Riley

Imperial politics represents the conquest of domestic politics and the latter's conversion into a crucial element of inverted totalitarianism. It makes no sense to ask how the democratic citizen could 'participate' substantively in imperial politics; hence it is not surprising that the subject of empire is taboo in electoral debates. No major politician or party has so much as publicly remarked on the existence of an American empire. ~ Chalmers Johnson

Mortality is but a stepping-stone to a more glorious existence in the future. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

Gratitude is the spirit of graceful sacred-existence. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

How does one get rid of fear? Ramana: What is fear? It is only a thought. If there is anything besides the Self there is reason to fear. Who sees things separate from the Self? First the ego arises and sees objects as external. If the ego does not rise, the Self alone exists and there is nothing external. For anything external to oneself implies the existence of the seer within. Seeking it there will eliminate doubt and fear. Not only fear, all other thoughts centred round the ego will disappear along with it. ~ Ramana Maharshi

When one illusion vanishes, another shall appear, and, still leading me forward towards an horizon that retreats as I advance, the happy prospect of futurity shall vanish only with my existence. ~ Maria Edgeworth

Lifetime is a sacred existence. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

That was so-Gryffin always has so much pain. That you can take it away like that - it's almost like magic."

Chase shrugged in the dark. "Kindness is a form of magic," he said. "So everyone should be capable of at least a little. Good night. See you in the morning." And he nodded to me and strode off.

Kindness is a form of magic.

Then magic had sprinkled itself across me many times, when I had not noticed its fey sparkle. I had been used to thinking of my life as bleak and full of darkness, but for the first time it occurred to me how often a stranger had stepped forward to offer me comfort and assistance, no matter how briefly. Ian Shelby. Sarah Parmer. Aylre the Safe-Keeper. The man who had stopped Carlon from beating me in the streets. Chase Beerin. They had been kind to me; most had, in different ways, been kind to Gryffin as well. Looked at that way, my life was a weave of brightness laid over a trembling black, a scrap of midnight velvet spangled with many jewels.

I had another thought as I stood there, trying desperately to understand a completely altered view of my existence. Someday I might be the one to offer kindness to someone else in grim and dire circumstances. Someday I might be the one with wealth or knowledge or strength or power that could be used to alleviate another person's distress. Such a thought had literally never crossed my mind before. More than once I had been saved. Someday I might save someone else in re ~ Sharon Shinn

What need had the businessman to scribble or philosophize when he dominated the imagination of his time and the frantic materialism that was his principle of existence had become the haunting central figure in contemporary life? ~ Alfred Kazin

Back in the autumn I had awakened to a growing darkness and cacophony, as if something in the depths were crying out. A whole chorus of voices. Orphaned voices. They seemed to speak for all the unlived parts of me, and they came with a force and dazzle that I couldn't contain. They seemed to explode the boundaries of my existence. I know now that they were the clamor of a new self struggling to be born. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Our emotional valence – positive or negative experiences – affects not only how we narrate childhood events, but also which memories we retain. The interplay between a person encountering environment experiences meshed with self-editing of various aspects of their complex memory system results in a person becoming more than a collection of memories: a person creates their personalized version of a self. A person integrates many experiences into creating their being. Personal encounters with other people as well as moments of personal solitude contemplating ideas and personal existence congeal to form the depiction of a self. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Westcliff looked affronted. "Are you telling me in earnest that you are considering giving up your employment, your ambitions, your future ... in favor of traveling the earth in a vardo?"
"Yes. I'm considering it."
Westcliff's coffee-colored eyes narrowed. "And you think after years of living a productive life in London that you would adjust happily to an existence of aimless wandering?"
"It's the life I was meant for. In your world, I'm nothing but a novelty."
"A damned successful novelty. And you have the opportunity to be a representative for your people - "
"God help me." Cam had begun to laugh helplessly. "If it ever comes to that, I should be shot. ~ Lisa Kleypas

My own [story] is the simplest ... it hardly amounts to more than a convincing proof of my existence - and yet I find it the hardest to begin. ~ Julian Barnes

This is the basis for the joy of love when there is joy; we feel that our existence is justified. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

By spending years and years living entirely for yourself, thinking only about yourself, and having responsibility to no one but yourself, you end up inadvertently extending the introverted existence of a teenager deep into middle age. ~ Danielle Crittenden

The theology of the cross is not a cerebral thing; it profoundly affects our Christian experience and existence, making demands upon our whole lives and turning theology into something which controls not just our thoughts, but the very way in which we experience the world around and taste the blessing and fellowship of God himself. pp.48-49 ~ Carl R. Trueman

that was how plenty of people felt in 634 BC in Rome, as well, when they were convinced that the city was destined to collapse after 120 years of existence. It is how people have felt at countless points in history since then. Try searching Google's library of digitised manuscripts for the phrase 'these uncertain times', and you'll find that it occurs over and over, in hundreds of journals and books, in virtually every decade the database encompasses, reaching back to the seventeenth century. 'As a matter of fact,' Watts insisted, 'our age is no more insecure than any other. Poverty, disease, war, change and death are nothing new. ~ Oliver Burkeman

May my soul bloom in love for all existence. ~ Rudolf Steiner

They say that we are all haunted by a Spiritual Presence, of whose existence we are only fitfully and sometimes never conscious, ~ William T. Stead

He (Rene Descartes) posited the existence of two parallel yet separate domains of reality: res cogitans, the thinking substance of the subjective mind whose essence is thought, and res extensa, or the extended substance of the material world. Mental stuff and material (including brain) stuff are absolutely distinct, he argued. ~ Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Man keeps looking for a truth that fits his reality. Given our reality, the truth doesn't fit. ~ Werner Erhard

When you start with legal holiness, you have eyes only for the cross, and you never see that in Jesus Christ, nothing less than the eternal trinitarian life of Father, Son and Spirit is being lived out inside human existence. You never really get the staggering meaning of the incarnation. ~ C. Baxter Kruger

The conservation of nature, the proper care for the human environment and a general concern for the long-term future of the whole of our planet are absolutely vital if future generations are to have a chance to enjoy their existence on this earth ~ Prince Philip

All this gladness in life, all honest pride in doing my work in the world, all this keen sense of being, I owe to her!" And it doubles the gladness, it makes the pride glow, it sharpens the sense of existence till I hardly know if it is pain or pleasure, to think that I owe it to one - to one whom I love, as I do not believe man ever loved woman before. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings. ~ Gerald Durrell

Among human beings, only the existence of those we love is fully recognized. Belief in the existence of other human beings as such is love. ~ Simone Weil

Now you're going to get it," I said, guessing Al was coming when the ones in the back scattered. "You should have been nice."
With a weird cry, the closest surface demon fell back, but it was too late. A flash of red light exploded overhead, smashing the buildings away as if I were at the center of an atomic explosion. The surface demons scattered like brown leaves, the remnants of their clothes and auras fluttering. It was Al, and he burst into existence in a grand mood, an old-fashioned lantern in his hand and a walking cane at his side.
"Rachel Mariana Morgan!" he shouted enthusiastically, raising the lantern high, and I painfully rose from my crouch, breaking my bubble with a small thought. "I've come to save you, love! ~ Kim Harrison

Khepra was asserted to have generated and caused to come into existence, itself through itself, it united in itself, the male and female principles of life. ~ Isaac Myer

If you have a radio, the next three months is a good time to have it quit working. All you will hear from now until the 4th of November will be: 'We must get our government out of the hands of predatory wealth.' 'The good people of this great country are burdened to death with taxes. Now what I intend to do is ... ' What he intends to do is try and get elected. That's all any of them intend to do. Another one that will hum over the old static every night will be: 'This country has reached a crisis in its national existence.' ~ Will Rogers

If you want a safe compass to guide you through life, and to banish all doubt as to the right way of looking at it, you cannot do better than accustom yourself to regard this world as a penitentiary... •If you accustom yourself to this view of life you will regulate your expectations accordingly, and cease to look upon all its disagreeable incidents, great and small, its sufferings, its worries, its misery, as anything unusual or irregular; nay, you will find that everything is as it should be, in a world where each of us pays the penalty of existence in his own peculiar way. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

I don't hate you. I am merely annoyed at your existence." -Levana, Winter ~ Marissa Meyer

Don't overwork! Enjoy the sacred existence. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The mere existence of an additional child or children in the family could signify Less. Less time alone with parents. Less attention for hurts and disappointments. Less approval for accomplishments ... No wonder children struggle so fiercely to be first or best. No wonder they mobilize all their energy to have more or most. Or better still, all. ~ Adele Faber

For the Divine to function through you, it is important to make every breath, every pulsation in the body, and your very existence an offering. ~ Jaggi Vasudev

Just as everybody has the vote including women, I think children should, because as a child is conscious of itself then it has to me an existence and has a stake in what happens. ~ Gertrude Stein

Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass. ~ David Hume

The autonomous individual, striving to realize himself and prove his worth, has created all that is great in literature, art, music, science and technology. The autonomous individual, also, when he can neither realize himself nor justify his existence by his own efforts, is a breeding call of frustration, and the seed of the convulsions which shake our world to its foundations. ~ Eric Hoffer