
“I find I cannot exist without Poetry”
Source: Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends
Nausea (1938)
Source: Being and Nothingness
“I find I cannot exist without Poetry”
Source: Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends
“I try to find meaning anywhere I can. It's the only way I know how to validate my existence.”
Source: God-Shaped Hole
"I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist" (2008)
Context: There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.
But it is true that in an interview I gave recently I did describe a sudden, distinct feeling I had one hectic day that everything I was doing was right and things were happening as they should.
It seemed like the memory of a voice and it came wrapped in its own brief little bubble of tranquillity. I'm not used to this.
As a fantasy writer I create fresh gods and philosophies almost with every new book … But since contracting Alzheimer's disease I have spent my long winter walks trying to work out what it is that I really, if anything, believe.
The Anthem of Humanity
The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul (1994)
Context: I have existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.
I soared into limitless space and took wing in the imaginal world, approaching the circle of exalted light; and here I am now, mired in matter.
I listened to the teachings of Confucius, imbibed the wisdom of Brahma, and sat beside Buddha beneath the tree of insight. And now I am here, wrestling with ignorance and unbelief. I was on Sinai when Yahweh shed his effulgence on Moses; at the River Jordan I witnessed the miracles of the Nazarene; and in Medina I heard the words of the Messenger to the Arabs. And here I am now, a captive of confusion.
“I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram.”
Written in a letter from Reading Prison to Lord Alfred Douglas in early 1897
“From all I did and all I said
let no one try to find out who I was.”
Hidden Things http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=161&cat=4
Collected Poems (1992)
“I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments”
Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)
“All that I have lost I find at every step and remember that I have lost it.”
Cuanto he perdido lo hallo a cada paso y me recuerda que lo he perdido.
Voces (1943)