Quotes about existence
page 13
"The Meaning of Confederalism," Green Perspectives, no. 20 (1990).
Source: The Wordy Shipmates
“What is, is, and what might have been could never have existed.”
Source: Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey
Source: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances
Source: What Dreams May Come
“A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol”
“Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.”
Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
“For every man there exists bait he cannot resist swallowing.”
Source: Night Film
“It is impossible to exist without passion”
“I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. It exists when people liberate themselves.”
Statement in Mexico (1958); as quoted in Kaplan AP World History 2005 (2004) edited by the Kaplan staff, p. 240
Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "The Land Ethic", p. 214.
“Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them. (Long translation)”
All men are made one for another: either then teach them better, or bear with them. (trans. Meric Casaubon).
Οἱ ἄνθρωποι γεγόνασιν ἀλλήλων ἕνεκεν· ἢ δίδασκε οὖν ἢ φέρε.
VIII, 59
Variant: Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them.
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII
Source: Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 32, Shadow in the Throes of Death
Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Context: First, about the mind. You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That this is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.
“Serious literature does not exist to make life easy but to complicate it.”
Source: Ideas Have Consequences
"Hip, Hell, and the Navigator" in Western Review No. 23 (Winter 1959); republished in Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988) edited by J. Michael Lennon.
Source: Advertisements for Myself
Give Me Liberty (1936)
Context: The picture of the economic revolution as the final step to freedom was false as soon as I asked myself that question. For, in actual fact, The State, The Government, cannot exist. They are abstract concepts, useful enough in their place, as the theory of minus numbers is useful in mathematics. In actual living experience, however, it is impossible to subtract anything from nothing; when a purse is empty, it is empty, it cannot contain a minus ten dollars. On this same plane of actuality, no State, no Government, exists. What does in fact exist is a man, or a few men, in power over many men.
Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
“Even in the darkest moments, light exists if you have faith to see it.”
“Existence is prior to essence.”
Part 4, chapter 1
Being and Nothingness (1943)
Variant: Existence precedes and rules essence.
“The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist.”
Source: The Society of the Spectacle
“It is possible to be truly mad and to still exist upon scraps of life.”
Source: Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories
“There's a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after we've left it.”
Source: Let the Great World Spin
¿Quién escribe tu nombre con letras de humo entre las estrellas del sur?
Ah déjame recordarte cómo eras entonces, cuando aún no existías.
"Every Day You Play" (Juegas Todos los Días), XIV, p. 35.
Source: Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) (1924)
Source: The Condemned
“You are all that exists on the earth and under the sky that I do love.”
Variant: And I love you," Kieran said. "You are all that exists on the earth and under the sky that I do love.
Source: Lady Midnight
"The Epigrams of Lusin"
Variant: Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.
“Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity.”
Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“Are you alive, do you still exist?”
For a Lost Soldier
“The key to meditation is to exist one hundred percent in the here and now.”
Source: Human Technology: A Toolkit for Authentic Living
Foreword to The Dreaded Comparison: Animal Slavery and Human Slavery (1996) by Marjorie Spiegel, p. 14 http://books.google.com/books?ei=je4zTPjrBcmTnQfXmMCLBA&ct=result&id=8u_tAAAAMAAJ&dq=dreaded+comparison+%22exist+for+their+own%22&q=%22exist+for+their+own%22.
Source: The Tokyo-Montana Express
Source: The Book Thief
“If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence.”
Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Detachment (1947), p. 260
Source: Gravity and Grace
Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Chapter 5, "The Pilgrims"
Source: Tales of the Dying Earth
Source: The Scarlet Letter
Section 32 <!-- also quoted in On Becoming a Leader (1989) by Warren G. Bennis, p. 189 -->
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)
Variant: In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
Context: The central task of education is to implant a will and a facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
As quoted in The Life and Work of Martha Graham (1991) by Agnes de Mille, p. 264, <!-- de Mille precedes the Graham quotation with: "The greatest thing she ever said to me was in 1943 after the opening of Oklahoma!, when I suddenly had unexpected, flamboyant success for a work I thought was only fairly good, after years of neglect for work I thought was fine. I was bewildered and worried that my entire scale of values was untrustworthy. I talked to Martha. I remember the conversation well. It was in a Schrafft's restaurant over a soda. I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that I could be. Martha said to me, very quietly, ... " -->
Context: There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
“(existing's tricky:but to live's a gift)”
Source: Selected Poems
“Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed…” (p. 141).”
Source: Asleep
"Selections from the Allen Notebooks".
Without Feathers (1975)
“I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place.”
Source: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
Source: Sunlight and Shadow: A Retelling of The Magic Flute
“When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?”
Song lyrics, The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991 (1991), Angelina (recorded 1981)