Merely Existing Quotes

Speaking uses us up, speeds us up. Without prayer, that act of confession for merely existing, one might live forever and not know it. ~ Gregory Maguire

I won't lie to you. This changes things. It may even change you. I know it will change me."
"I guess it's a reminder of the uncertainty in life and the foolishness of merely existing when the world is pleading with you to live. If you take anything from this, please take that. We take life for granted. We have to stop that. We have to start living. ~ Samantha Young

He feels he isn't so much living as he is merely existing, ~ Hanya Yanagihara

Personal happiness is an end game; it is not an immediate necessity. A person whom attains lasting happiness will necessarily endure many hardships. People earn happiness by courageously braving the storms of life, instead of merely existing. A person must steep oneself in the type of experiences that girds one when times on the streets are the meanest. I will garner a comforting sense of self-satisfaction from taking the longer and more difficult road to personal happiness. I can never again work exclusively for money. I shall seek truth wherever it exists, muster the courage to plunge along headfirst without fear, maintain personal dreams when all hope seems lost, and adamantly refuse to be mollified or satisfied with anything less than my very best work. I will dedicate personal efforts to mining my substratum while maintaining a diligent stewardship of a cherished central individuality. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

When Sweetu wasn't being reduced to merely existing as a bride, as a piece of meat to be handled and prodded, to have decorative contraptions stuck into her skull, her interests were otherwise unexpressed. She rarely complained, hardly asked for anything, and maybe that's because Indian girls grow up going to weddings and we watch the procedure and we know our roles: be demure, don't complain, cry but don't scream, get tea for anyone older than you, and calmly meet expectations. ~ Scaachi Koul

On the surface, I was bullied for being effeminate, articulate, overweight, well-read, interested in recreations and matters non-traditional for black boys or even black people--essentially for being myself. To be hounded for merely existing in one's own skin is not unique to blacks, but at least during Jim Crow we could turn to one another. In modern-day terrorism, we turn on one another, with limited options for sanctuary. ~ L. Michael Gipson

The man who is respected merely for being the son of his father loses one of the normal incentives to useful effort. He is likely to develop views of life which attach undue importance to the accident of birth and to think that by merely existing he does enough to command respect. He believes himself rather better than other men and therefore becomes rather worse. All distinctions not based upon intrinsic merit have this bad effect upon character and on this ground, if on no other, deserve to be abolished, ~ Bertrand Russell

On one hand, I knew that we should have headed back to the others. Taking time to get cozy with Glate wasn't the smartest of choices, especially given what had happened last time we tried to take advantage of what little free time we'd had with one another.
But on the other hand? Life was far too short to not give into temptation every now and again. We were all merely existing to die at one point or another. There would be no happily-ever-after for any of us. Life was what you made of it, and even if the world that I had found myself in had been complete and utter shit, I had decided that I would see to it that I lived out my last days happily. ~ Nicole Sobon

My heart goes out to the playing and singing folk, the folk who are forever on the roads. Life is change; and to be seeing new wonders every day - the thrown sea, the silver rush of the meadow, the lights in distant towns - is to be living, and not merely existing. I pity the man who is content to stay always in the place where his mother dropped him; that is, unless his thoughts wander. For one might sit on a midden and dream stars! ~ Joseph Campbell

Did he really want to know? That at any given moment I see everyday life as only _this big_, the space between my finger and thumb. The rest of my mind is occupied with five, a dozen, three dozen other potential lives, each representing some opportunity never taken or currently within reach. Without those worlds of possibility, my life immediately begins to seem boring and drab. I'm thirty-three years old, always broke, and merely _existing_ in what, without having been sealed by formal wedding vows, had become a traditional marriage. I had no blues to lament, not really. My only drama was in my daydreams. They reminded me that any day, at any moment, I could change everything, and while many of those alternate lives featured James at my side--the truth was that some of them did not. ~ Alisa Smith

A life without passion is not living, it's merely existing ~ Leo Buscaglia

When we give up our dreams then we are merely existing and not living. ~ Stephen Richards

Commercialism and the mad desire to make money have blotted out everything else, and as a result we are not living, but merely existing. ~ Joseph Knowles

I'm not much interested in extrapolating science and technology; I merely use extrapolation as a means of putting people into new quandaries which produce colorful pressures and conflicts. ~ Alfred Bester

Emily climbed onto a large boulder, watching the heavens while listening to the waves that were melodically splashing to the granite rocks.

Then, she petrified and curdled: two stars in the sky were moving quickly, changing the angles of the trajectory radically and sharply… disappearing and appearing again. In a few seconds, the third one joined them, doing the same.

- But it can't be real! - Emma exclaimed, finding herself reaching her arm upwards. - No… can't be real… just can't…

The girl dropped her glance down, unconsciously hoping that if she didn't see the UFOs, they would stop existing.
She took a long breath, and, making as huge leaps as she could do with her little feet, ran back to the streets of the village. ~ Sahara Sanders

I cannot live in mediocrity, content with merely knowing that there is more of God to experience and explore -and then do nothing about it. Truths that are not experienced are, in effect, more like theories than truths. Whenever God reveals truth to us He is inviting us into a divine encounter. ~ Bill Johnson

Life (as you call it) is an opportunity for you to know experientially what you already know conceptually. You need learn nothing to do this. You need merely remember what you already know, and act on it. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

Probably our atomic weights merely represent a mean value around which the actual atomic weights of the atoms vary within certain narrow limits ... when we say, the atomic weight of, for instance, calcium is 40, we really express the fact that, while the majority of calcium atoms have an actual atomic weight of 40, there are not but a few which are represented by 39 or 41, a less number by 38 or 42, and so on. ~ William Crookes

Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation. ~ Elizabeth Drew

Fairytales by nature only talk about the victors. The survivors. Nobody speaks about what happens to those who failed, except in the abstract: as cautionary tales to guide others onto the path to success. How many brave knights fell to the dragon before he was slayed by the noble prince? How many children burned to a crisp and eaten before the wicked witch received her due? These stories are lost, but the lesson behind them is not: it is not enough to be merely pure and good. ~ Nenia Campbell

War! When I but think of this word, I feel bewildered, as though they were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of a distant, finished, abominable, monstrous, unnatural thing. When they speak to us of cannibals, we smile proudly, as we proclaim our superiority to these savages. Who are the real savages? Those who struggle in order to eat those whom they vanquish, or those who struggle merely to kill? ~ Guy De Maupassant

These people say things like "If a liberal intellectual like you can't speak about the link between specific doctrines and violence without being defamed as a bigot, what hope is there for someone like me, who has to worry about being killed by her own family or village for merely expressing doubts about God?" So yes, I'm aware that one can't speak in Pakistan as I do here. ~ Sam Harris

Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served, which values are to be rated higher and which lower-in short, what men should believe and strive for. ~ Friedrich Hayek

There's no such thing as a single parent. They've become dependent on other people in commercial transactions, such as their employers and child-care providers. A single mother may look like she's doing so much 'on her own,' but she has merely commercialized the things the father would (and should) have done. ~ Jennifer Roback Morse

Noah turned to face his younger sister, arching one brow to a fairly smug height. Lenga lifted a brow back at him, giving him a delicate smattering of applause.
"And I was afraid you would never learn the art of diplomacy," she remarked, her lips twitching with her humor. "It merely took you the entire two and a half centuries of my life. Longer, actually. You had a few centuries' head start."
"Funny how you seem to recall the fact that I am far older than you only when it suits your arguments, my sister," he taunted her, reaching to tug on her hair as he had been doing since her childhood.
"Well, I can say with all honesty that this is the first time I have ever seen you forgo a good argument with Hannah, opting for peace instead. I was beginning to wonder if you were my brother at all. Perhaps some imposter . . ."
"Legna, be careful. You are speaking words of treason," he teased her, tugging her hair once more, making her turn around to swat at his hand.
"I don't know how you convinced the entire Council that you were mature enough to be King, Noah! You are such a child!" She twisted her body so he couldn't grab at her hair again. "And I swear, if you pull my hair once more like some sort of schoolyard bully, I am going to put you to sleep and shave you bald!"
Noah immediately raised his hands in acquiescence, laughing as Legna flushed in exasperation. For all her grace and ladylike ways, Noah's little sister was quite capable of making good on ~ Jacquelyn Frank

If you have nothing to stir you up and rouse you to action, nothing which will test your resolution by its threats and hostilities; if you recline in unshaken comfort, it is not tranquillity; it is merely a flat calm. ~ Seneca.

The whole point of education is that it should give a man abstract and eternal standards, by which he can judge material and fugitive conditions. If the citizen is to be a reformer, he must start with some ideal which he does not obtain merely by gazing reverently at the unreformed institutions. And if any one asks, as so many are asking: 'What is the use of my son learning all about ancient Athens and remote China and medieval guilds and monasteries, and all sorts of dead or distant things, when he is going to be a superior scientific plumber in Pimlico?' the answer is obvious enough. 'The use of it is that he may have some power of comparison, which will not only prevent him from supposing that Pimlico covers the whole planet, but also enable him, while doing full credit to the beauties and virtues of Pimlico, to point out that, here and there, as revealed by alternative experiments, even Pimlico may conceal somewhere a defect. ~ G.K. Chesterton

People wanted security. They couldn't bear the idea of death being a black nothing, couldn't bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn't imagine themselves not existing. ~ John Green

Don't let us take doubts with exaggerated seriousness nor let them grow out of proportion, or become black-and-white or fanatical about them. What we need to learn is how slowly to change our culturally conditioned and passionate involvement with doubt into a free, humorous, and compassionate one. This means giving doubts time, and giving ourselves time to find answers to our questions that are not merely intellectual or "philosophical," but living and real and genuine and workable. Doubts cannot resolve themselves immediately; but if we are patient a space can be created within us, in which doubts can be carefully and objectively examined, unraveled, dissolved, and healed. What we lack, especially in this culture, is the right undistracted and richly spacious environment of the mind, which can only be created through sustained meditation practice, and in which insights can be given the change slowly to mature and ripen. 129-130 ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Like most people my age, I merely existed. ~ Mark Millar

The passion for philosophy, like that for religion, involves a
certain danger. Although it aims to correct our behaviour
and wipe out our vices, it may - through not being handled
properly - end up merely encouraging us to carry on in
directions that we're already naturally inclined to follow. ~ David Hume

I believed suddenly not merely in evil as a necessary antagonist in movies and books - bad guys and boogeymen - not merely in evil as the consequence of parental rejection or parental indulgence or social injustice, but in Evil as a presence alive in the world. ~ Dean Koontz

Individuals who were submerged in reality, merely feeling their needs, emerge from reality and perceive the causes of their needs. ~ Paulo Freire

Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no 'Nigerians' in the same sense as there are 'English,' 'Welsh,' or 'French.' The word 'Nigerian' is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not. ~ Obafemi Awolowo

It is difficult to see how Gandhi's methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. Without a free press and the right of assembly, it is impossible not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary. Is there a Gandhi in Russia at this moment? And if there is, what is he accomplishing? ~ George Orwell

Without deductive logic science would be entirely useless. It is merely a barren game to ascend from the particular to the general, unless afterwards we can reverse the process and descend from the general to the particular, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Society, by insisting on conventions, has merely insisted on certain convenient signs by which we may know that a man is considering, in daily life, the comfort of other people. ~ Katharine Fullerton Gerould

...When he puts a thing on a pedestal and calls it beautiful, he demands the same delight from others. He judges not merely for himself, but for all men, and then speaks of beauty as if it were the property of things. ~ Immanuel Kant

These contradictions, of course, lead to explosions, crises, in which momentary suspension of all labour and annihilation of a great part of the capital violently lead it back to the point where it is enabled [to go on] fully employing its productive powers without committing suicide. Yet, these regularly recurring catastrophes lead to their repetition on a higher scale, and finally to its violent overthrow. There are moments in the developed movement of capital which delay this movement other than by crises; such as e.g. the constant devaluation of a part of the existing capital: the transformation of a great part of capital into fixed capital which does not serve as agency of direct production; unproductive waste of a great portion of capital etc. ~ Karl Marx

The body of Christ needs to mature until we can distinguish a true prophetic word from merely the word of a prophet. Many modern Christians are afraid to reject anything spoken by one who claims to be a prophet or prophetess. ~ Iverna Tompkins

He could see now that asking the dead about his father was nearly useless, so burdened were they with their own losses and regrets and distractions. He had no right to press them. It was not enough merely to let them speak. If anything, he should try to bring them comfort, to shorten their suffering. Anything else was selfish, thoughtless, at best redundant. He was also finding it too easy to take on their pain, perhaps because he was more like them than he wanted to admit. Or rather, he had let himself become like them, a wanderer, someone lost in a world he had hewn from his own pain. ~ Ari Berk

The physical image presentation aims at the subject. The presentation of the image itself as the presentation of the appearing image-representant is an entirely different experience. Here, too, it is possible that the consciousness of imaging can slip away entirely, in which case an ordinary perceptual presentation would result. Preventing this consciousness of imaging from arising from the start in a purely intuitive manner is the effect produced by images simulating the look of reality, images of the sort found in the wax museum, and the like. Although in such cases we have a conceptual knowledge of the fact that the appearances are merely image appearances, in the intuitive experience itself the re-presentative moment, which is otherwise intimately mingled with the appearances, is absent. But this moment is decisive for intuitive image presentation. We have genuine perceptual presentations in those cases, accompanied by the thought that their objects are mere images. The appearance itself, however, presents itself as the appearance of a present object and not as an image. Indeed, in naïvely contemplating it, the appearance forces us to make the intuitive perceptual judgment. In doing this, it deceives us. In truth, there is perhaps another (nonappearing) object, standing to the appearing object in the relation of original to image. We know all of this, and yet the illusion continues to exist, since the appearance possesses the characteristic of normal perceptual presentati ~ Edmund Husserl

Life is also meaningful without being married', she had once told her mother, and marrying merely for the sake of it was, in her view, 'one of the greatest mistakes a woman can make ~ Helen Rappaport

Upstairs when someone for any reason is unable to state his particular reasons for existing, or stake a position, say, on the United States vs. Vietnam youthful enthusiasm vs. boredom scathing denunciation vs. racist exploitation the dollar-for-dollar precipitous decline of all sympathy and mercy . . . someone else gives up seeking the difference between things that could've been and weren't and things that didn't have to be but were. ~ Philip Schultz

For example, two people might be cooking the same meal and using exactly the same ingredients, but one is pouring Love into what he does and the other is merely trying to fill his belly. The result will be completely different, even though Love is not something that can be seen or weighed. The person making the Offering is always rewarded. The more he shares out his affection, the more his affection grows. ~ Paulo Coelho

And for an insane moment she thought, this is no different from normality, just women existing and surviving, this is what happens to women who don't fit into a world created by men. ~ Alice Thompson

What?" Richard demanded. John merely shook his head and smiled. "She rides very well." "What?" Richard turned to see his horse's rump now far in the distance. "Damn that woman! ~ Lynn Kurland

Yes. You do understand, you do. I knew you would. It was that analogy you made to the Quran that got me thinking in the first place. Metaphors: knowledge existing in several states simultaneously and without contradiction. The stag and the doe and the trap. Instead of working with linear strings of ones and zeroes, the computer could work with bundles that were one and zero and every point in between, all at once. If, if, if you could teach it to overcome its binary nature."
"That sounds very complicated indeed."
"It should be impossible, but it isn't." Alif began typing furiously. "All modern computers are pedants. To them the world is divided into black and white, off and on, right and wrong. But I will teach yours to recognize multiple origin points, interrelated geneses, systems of multivalent cause and effect. ~ G. Willow Wilson

Salvation is far more than merely the forgiveness of sins. It includes the whole sweep of God's purpose to redeem and restore humankind, and indeed all creation. What we claim for the Bible is that it unfolds God's total plan. ~ John R.W. Stott

Write something therefore in a simple style, merely to pass the time, for your own use, and not for publication. Less labour is needed when one does not look beyond the present." Then ~ Seneca.

In the Gaia theory air, water, and soil are major components of one central organism, planet Earth. What we typically think of as life - the plants and animals that inhabit the earth - has evolved merely to regulate the chemistry of the biosphere. Humans are insignificant participants, far less important to the life cycle than termites. Even the imbalance that we have created by adding massive quantities of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere may be brought back to acceptable levels by other organisms functioning in their capacity to correct excesses. ~ David Easton

We know that communication must be hampered, and its form largely determined, by the unconscious but inevitable influence of a transmitting mechanism, whether that be of a merely mechanical or of a physiological character. ~ Oliver Joseph Lodge

To answer the purpose of the adversaries of the Constitution, they ought to prove, not merely that particular provisions in it are not the best, which might have been imagined; but that the plan upon the whole is bad and pernicious. ~ Alexander Hamilton

To this I replied, "I still think that my body is not merely a sensory appearance, for surely it came from my parents, who were its cause and condition."
He said, "If you think that your body came from your father and mother, then what are the beginning and end of these parents? What are their source, their location, their final destination? Tell me!"
I answered, "I think that they exist, but I am not aware of what they are. It seems to me that a physical body without parents is not possible."
He retorted, "Consider this. Who are the parents of the body in a dream, in the bardo, and in the hell realms?" With that, I arrived at the decision that this body has never existed, being simply a sensory experience. ~ Dudjom Lingpa

Begin claimed that Sadat's visit to Jerusalem was merely a grand gesture, and that what Sadat really wanted was a Palestinian state and ~ Lawrence Wright

I felt that it was not a historical work, but that, under the guise of physical warfare, it described the duel that perpetually went on in the hearts of mankind, and that physical warfare was brought in merely to make the description of the internal duel more alluring. This preliminary intuition became more confirmed on a closer study of religion and the Gita. A study of the Mahabharata gave it added confirmation. I do not regard the Mahabharata as a historical work in the accepted sense. The Adiparva contains powerful evidence in support of my opinion. By ascribing to the chief actors superhuman or subhuman origins, the great Vyasa made short work the history of kings and their peoples. The persons therein described may be historical, but the author of the Mahabharata has used them merely to drive home his religious theme. ~ Mahatma Gandhi