Quotes about essence (1026 quotes, page 11)

“A complete person, if necessary, knows as to show his essence as an innocent angel or a dangerous devil.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Una persona completa, all'occorrenza, sa mostrare la sua essenza di innocente angelo o pericoloso diavolo.
Source: prevale.net

Personality , Angels

“Perfect happiness can consist in nothing else than the vision of the Divine Essence.”

Thomas Aquinas book Summa Theologica

Source: Summa Theologica (1265–1274), I–II, q. 3, art. 8 co

Happiness , Perfection

“This remarkable feat merely reaffirms what most of us in molecular biology have long known to be the truth: the essence of life is complicated chemistry and nothing more.”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

Source: DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution (2003/2017), Chapter 9, “Reading Genomes: Evolution in Action” (p. 242)

Life , Truth

“The gnostic (arif) attains the station of passionate love of God so that he may experience Godhead or His pure Essence.”

Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki (1173–1235) Indian Sufi

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 264

God , Passion , Love

“Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party — though they are quite numerous — is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters. The essence of political freedom depends not on the fanatics of 'justice', but rather on all the invigorating, beneficial, and detergent effects of dissenters. If 'freedom' becomes 'privilege', the workings of political freedom are broken.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Die russische Revolution. Eine kritische Würdigung (1920) p. 109
This contains probably her most famous statement: Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit der Andersdenkenden, translated as "Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters."
Literally: Freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently.

Dependency , Freedom , Justice

“And, after all, the humane spirit, which is the motive power of all true schemes of reform, is, by its very essence, independent of belief in what is commonly called "success."”

Henry Stephens Salt (1851–1939) British activist

Source: " The Poet of Pessimism https://www.henrysalt.co.uk/library/essay/the-poet-of-pessimism/", Vegetarian Review, August 1896
Context: We work for an ideal, not because we believe the ideal is destined to be triumphant, but because we are impelled so to work, and cannot, without violence to our best instincts, act otherwise. We protest against cruelty and injustice for the same reason, not merely because we feel that the dawn of a better day is at hand, but because such a protest has to be made, and we know intuitively that we must help to make it. Of the event we can have no absolute assurance—it rests for other minds and other hands than our—but we can at least be assured that we have done what was natural and inevitable to us, and that, whether successful or unsuccessful, there was no other course for a thoughtful man to take.

Success , Motivation

“In every ideological or political movement, the two most important components play an important role: the idea and the person. Leading ideas and worldviews in the ideological movement and guiding program decisions in the political - create the "soul", the essence, the inner meaning of the movement. People who recognize, disseminate and implement ideas and programs and for that purpose take an active part in the movement - create its living, active organism.”

Stepan Bandera (1909–1959) Ukrainian anti-communist

Source: "Idea and Man in the Ideological Movement" (1954)

Soul , Personality , Idea , Decision

“Experiencing oneself as Life does is to enjoy oneself [jouir de soi]. Enjoyment does not presuppose any differences similar to those in which the world is born: it is homogeneous phenomenological material, a monolithic affective body whose phenomenality is affectivity as such. The self-revelation of Life is not a formal structure that can be conceived on the basis of “outside oneself” and in terms of its own structures, since these are bypassed, overcome while being maintained in this very bypassing. The self-revelation of life is its enjoyment, the primordial self-enjoyment that defines the essence of Living and thus of God himself. According to Christianity, God is Love. Love is nothing other than the self-revelation of God understood as in its pathetic phenomenological essence, specifically, the self-enjoyment of absolute Life. This is why the Love of God is the infinite love in which he eternally loves himself, and the revelation of God is none other than this Love.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Books on Religion and Christianity, I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
Source: Michel Henry, I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, translated by Susan Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 30

Love , Life , God , World

“Where is a self-revelation of this sort achieved? In Life, as its essence, since Life is nothing other than that which reveals itself – not something that might have an added property of self-revealing, but the very fact of self-revealing, self-revelation as such. Everywhere that something like a self-revelation is produced there is Life. Everywhere there is Life, this self-revelation is produced. If, then, the Revelation of God is a self-revelation that owes nothing to the truth of the world, and if we ask where such a self-revelation is achieved, the answer is unequivocal: in Life and in Life alone. Therefore we are in the presence of the first fundamental equation of Christianity: God is Life – he is the essence of Life, or if one prefers, the essence of Life is God. Saying this we already know what God is, but we do not know it through the effect of some knowledge or learning – we do not know it through thought, against the background of the truth of the world. Rather we know it, and we can know it, only in and through Life itself. We can know the essence of God only in God. But this observation is premature.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Books on Religion and Christianity, I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
Source: Michel Henry, I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, translated by Susan Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 27-28

Knowledge , Life , God , Learning

“You are the excellence of charm: strong and fragile, cheerful and melancholy, innocent and perverse, selfish and altruistic, sociable and asocial, simple and complicated, sensitive and impassive, elegant and trendy, sweet and bitchy, true, concrete… authentic and sincere. You are a condemnation for the one who hosanna you. Your essence is a masterpiece of woman.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Tu sei l'eccellenza del fascino: forte e fragile, allegra e malinconica, innocente e perversa, egoista e altruista, socievole e asociale, semplice e complicata, sensibile e impassibile, elegante e trendy, dolce e stronza, vera, concreta... autentica e sincera. Sei una condanna per chi ti osanna. La tua essenza è un capolavoro di donna.
Source: prevale.net

Strong , Sincerity , Selfishness

“[A]llegiance is the very essence of nationhood, there is no meaning in nationhood without allegiance. Nationhood means that a man stands to one nation, to one loyalty, against all others—that is what it is about.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Source: Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1981/jan/28/british-nationallity-bill#S5CV0997P0_19810128_HOC_282 in the House of Commons (28 January 1981) on the British Nationality Bill

Loyalty

“Perhaps indeed Jehovah is not dead,
But mere retir’d, withdrawn or otherwise
Contracted hath, as Zohar subtle saith,
His Essence Infinite; and, Epicurean, waits
The outcome vast with vast indifference.”

James Blish book The Day After Judgment

Source: The Day After Judgment (1971), Chapter 13 (p. 161)

Waiting , Dead , Indifference

“Night is the consciousness of one's essence.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

La notte è la coscienza della propria essenza.

Night

“Nothing can exist without ceasing to exist as the present exists only once in a lifetime.
The essence of life is the eternity of change experienced, perceived and affected by and from the consciousness of matter transpiring from the energy of life’s creations directed towards its true love(desires)”

Boukabyegga

Change , Love , Life

“Genuine expressions as essence of the great art itself cannot be taught or imitated. Nor can they in any way be forced.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

A Testament (1957)

Art , Way

“Your existence emanates an intense light that illuminates everything around me. Your smile: contagious and spontaneous, gives me harmony and vitality. Your essence is a work of art.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: La tua esistenza emana una luce intensa che illumina tutto ciò che mi circonda. Il tuo sorriso: contagioso e spontaneo, mi dona armonia e vitalità. La tua essenza è un'opera d'arte.
Source: prevale.net

Light , Smile , Art

“But first a hush of peace, a soundless calm descends;
The struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends
Mute music sooths my breast — unuttered harmony
That I could never dream till earth was lost to me.

Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals;
My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels —
Its wings are almost free, its home, its harbour found;
Measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound —

O, dreadful is the check — intense the agony
When the ear begins to hear and the eye begins to see;
When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again,
The soul to feel the flesh and the flesh to feel the chain.

Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less;
The more that anguish racks the earlier it will bless;
And robed in fires of Hell, or bright with heavenly shine
If it but herald Death, the vision is divine —”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

The Prisoner (October 1845)

Home , Soul , Hell , Thinking

“What sweet nectars and scents would emerge once the depths of your essence are revealed.”

A.E. Samaan

Source: SHADES OF VANITY: Shades and Shadows of Eroticism

“True beauty is the essence of your person: the set of inclinations of temperament, character, personality, nature, instinct, mood, sweetness, reason and soul.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: La vera bellezza è l'essenza della tua persona: l'insieme delle inclinazioni di temperamento, carattere, personalità, natura, istinto, umore, dolcezza, ragione ed animo.
Source: prevale.net

Soul , Personality , Beauty , Nature

“The sincerity of love that is willing to sacrifice is the essence of noble love. Love that does not think of itself. Love that is willing to do anything for the happiness of the person it loves.”

Titon Rahmawan

Personality , Happiness , Thinking , Sincerity

“Often we want to stop thinking, even for a moment. To forget all the difficulties and burdens of life, the sorrows and sufferings. It is much easier to just say, not to worry about anything. But this is the essence of our human consciousness, man's greatest enemy is himself.”

Titon Rahmawan

Suffering , Forgetting , Thinking , Life

“What is this nonsense? We're not here at the moment. At least, we don't expect to be. Trying to get out of what people think of themselves. All this futility. The earth we walk on is slowly burning.

Is that the kind of statement you want to write? You shout? Will it end up in vain? The rebellion of desire. There is no sanctity or half-truth.

All that nonsense is fake. The hatred that people cultivate from their own disbelief. A conflict of the soul, an inner struggle, or whatever you want to call it. Where will they go? After years and centuries of waiting. Will we find our way or will we forever be lost?

For too long we have slept in the illusion of this madness. This rage. Things we don't believe to be true. Everyone looking for their own truth. Ignorant and indifferent to each other.

Do we feel lucky with our ignorance? With all our naivety? Accepting everything without being able to fight back? Have we been blinded by pseudo-reality, which does not touch our very essence?

What kind of truth are we still debating? What authenticity are we still looking for? Those of you who feel poor, who are still confined by suffering. Arise, live, lift your own burdens! If you have not been able to lighten the burden of others.”

Titon Rahmawan

Madness , Indifference , People , Truth

“In a negative period it is fundamental never to lose hope of being able to overcome difficulties, starting to work on oneself for bring back vital light to the depths of one's essence.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: In un periodo negativo è fondamentale non perdere mai la speranza di poter superare le difficoltà, iniziando a lavorare su sé stessi per riportare luce vitale nel profondo della propria essenza.
Source: prevale.net

Light , Hope