Existence Quotes

Why are we so afraid to die? Are we concerned about the reckoning we may have to face on the other side? Or does the thought of our nonexistence terrify us? Perhaps neither. Perhaps what we fear most is no longer being able to do the things we love.

~ Fabrizio Paterlini

It is now how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it (the world) exists at all.....

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

And what does it amount to? said Satan, with his evil chuckle. Nothing at all. You gain nothing; you always come out where you went in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously reperforming this dull nonsense--to what end? No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while in your heart--if you have one--you despise yourselves for it. The first man was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built.

~ Mark Twain

I’ve wanted many things in my life until I met you. Then I wanted nothing … except you. My existence is for you…” he looks at Ocean “… every part of you. Never doubt my love for you. If I’m breathing, I’m loving you. Only you … always you … forever you.

~ Jewel E. Ann

... each of us describes our existence by means of objects which are indifferent to us, which survive us, and which are then thrown back into the common stock from which they are soon gathered again and ascribed other roles in other circumstances.

~ Andrew Motion

I feel therefore I am.

~ Amit Abraham

I am because I feel.

~ Amit Abraham

Life is an activity with which we kill time while we wait for something, someone, or the mere passage of time to kill us.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Forget the soul. No such ghost in the machine. What happens to our mind befalls our body also. The condition of the body is also the state of the mind.

~ Salman Rushdie

Existence simply responds to you: whatsoever you are, existence gives you more of that. If you have many flowers within your being flowering, a million times more flowers will shower on you.

~ Osho

In a lifeworld, where we can be what we are, and not what people expect us to be, we can escape a blank and void existence, which is linked to wrecking ennui. Boredom often slips into revulsion and nausea, for not being able to find an identity and not succeeding in acquiring individuality with the quality of authenticity. (Like a frozen image)

~ Erik Pevernagie

Simulant - something that doesn't exist but pretends to....Dissimulant - an object that exists but pretends not to.

~ Stanisław Lem

A calendar was hung in the kitchen as if to say: Expect more of the same.

~ Gary Lutz

When we do not succeed to be ourselves, we finally realize that is was completely useless to exist...

~ Hugo Pratt

What mattered was that the room over the junk-shop should exist. To know that it was there, inviolate, was almost the same as being in it. The room was a world, a pocket of the past where extinct animals could walk.

~ George Orwell

Sometimes it’s like that in life too. We look into a past that no longer exists, looking as if it’s real. We hold onto things in our life that there’s no reason to hold onto anymore because, unlike the stars, they don’t bring us beauty, they bring us pain.

~ Charlene Carr

His head was pounding and his vision skewed in some way and he was vaguely amazed at being alive and not sure that it was worth it.

~ Cormac Mccarthy

Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?

~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Endurance, I reminded myself, is the true measure of existence.

~ Anthony Marra

Just as the world spun us into existence, it will spin on long after we are gone.

~ Crystal Woods

There is no elegance in this existence, nor grace in our lives. There is nothing poetic about feasting on blood that spills from torn flesh...

~ Narayan Liu

Look! Why want anything more marvellous than what is.

~ Diana Athill

Love is a promise existence makes with us.

~ Vatsal Surti

There was existence in oblivion, there is you in oblivion.

~ Pushpa Rana

There's nothing as useful as the truth, in terms of ruining anyone's day, week, month, year, decade, or life… Unless, of course, you own a remotely operated automatic flamethrower-drone-tower and have some marinated pork-chops on your person, to lure unsuspecting dogs in close proximity to it, but since dogs don’t really have lives - by using this specific method of torture, you can only improve the remaining few seconds of their existence.

~ Will Advise

Why are we here? Is there, really, some intelligent design? Why do we cry for someone who leaves us, if there's some Grand Pearly Gate in the sky? Why worry about how we build our lives if the ultimate ending for all is death, a single breath away?

~ Ellen Hopkins

Everyone is folding boxes. Andrew is folding boxes. If the entire job were to fold boxes people would scream. They would fold, and sometimes scream, existentially, then be dragged into a field and beaten into a paste. Sometimes there would be a killing rampage.

~ Tao Lin

Find a calm lake and wait for the twilight in silence! There, existence will visit you with all its magnificence! The existence of the Existence can best be felt in the presence of dimness and in the absence of crowds and noises!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

This is not to say that joy is a compensation for loss, but that each of them, joy and loss, exists in its own right and must be recognized for what it is. Sorrow is very real, and loss feels very final to us. Life on earth is difficult and grave, and marvelous. Our experience is fragmentary. Its parts don't add up. They don't even belong in the same calculation. Sometimes it is hard to believe they are all parts of one thing. Nothing makes sense until we understand that experience does not accumulate like money, or memory, or like years and frailties. Instead, it is is presented to us by a God who is not under any obligation to the past except in His eternal, freely given constancy.

~ Marilynne Robinson

Accepting the nonexistence of being,when the absence of existence means the negation of being.

~ Marieta Maglas- Eschatological Regression

It is strange to be here. The mystery never leaves you.

~ John O'donohue

This is God's universe and he is the master gardener of all. If we were to eliminate all colors in his garden, then what would be a rainbow with only one color? Or a garden with only one kind of flower? Why would the Creator create a vast assortment of plants, ethnicities, and animals, if only one beast or seed is to dominate all of existence?

~ Suzy Kassem

What shall I take with me?Will I let nothing behind me over the earth?How shall my heart act?Is it that we come in vain to live,to sprout over the earth?Let us leave at least flowers,let us leave at least songs.

~ Nezahualcóyotl

Existence is governed by its own law. Here, the things impermanent by natureare bound to meet their end. Hence, with the passage of time, not only Ravana'sLanka but Krishna's Dwarka also sinks.

~ Deep Trivedi

If existence really does precede essence, there is no explaining things away by reference to a fixed and given human nature, In other words, there is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom. On the other hand, if God does not exist, we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct. So, in the bright realm of values, we have no excuses behind us, no justification before us. We are alone with no excuses.This is the idea I shall try to convey when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet in other respects is free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Hidden away amongst Aschenbach’s writing was a passage directly asserting that nearly all the great things that exist owe their existence to a defiant despite: it is despite grief and anguish, despite poverty, loneliness, bodily weakness, vice and passion and a thousand inhibitions, that they have come into being at all. But this was more than an observation, it was an experience, it was positively the formula of his life and his fame, the key to his work.

~ Thomas Mann

Existence was never originally meant to be that useless, blank, pale, slow-trailing thing it often becomes to many, and is becoming to me among the rest.

~ Charlotte Brontë

Sooner or later everything that exists ceases to exist, and then something comes along to take its place, but not always something better.

~ Dmitry Bakin

When it comes to fighting for your rights don't fold hands but turn them into fists.

~ Amit Abraham

Coming out of the Tunnel....I am bursting with a new found feeling of my own existence.Strong and powerful frequencies.My mind is wandering to wide open fields and long-forgotten lands with limitless possibilities. I am not quite there yet.Holding still in anticipation,don’t want to miss hearing my inner voice – soft and deep.With me are friendly skies on rainy days and my life is getting warmer.

~ Anna Asche