Quotes about existence
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“Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: On Love

Love, Understanding

“Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Lolita

Imagination

“We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. Our best destiny is to imagine, at least, completely, who and what, and that we are. The greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go unimagined.”

N. Scott Momaday (1934) American author

Imagination

“I realize that I was all error and deviation, that I never lived, that I existed only in so far as I filled time with consciousness and thought.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Error, Time

“If no one cares for you at all, do you even really exist?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Variant: If no one in the entire world cared about you, did you really exist at all?
Source: Clockwork Prince

“The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Life, Education

“We are much too much inclined in these days to divide people into permanent categories, forgetting that a category only exists for its special purpose and must be forgotten as soon as that purpose is served.”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer

Source: Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society

People, Forgetting

“Whether or not they exist, we're slaves to the gods.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

A Factless Autobiography, number 21, tr. by Richard Zenith (Penguin Classics edition)
Source: The Book of Disquiet

God

“Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Wise, Way

“We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Variant: We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist and forever will recreate one another.

Suffering

“Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Source: The Man In The Arena: Speeches and Essays by Theodore Roosevelt

“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

As cited in The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (2007), Alan Greenspan, Penguin Press, Chapter 4 (Private Citizen), p. 87 : ISBN 15942 01315
1980s

“Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics, Chapter 26
Context: Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me. It is an uncomfortable doctrine which the true ethics whisper into my ear. You are happy, they say; therefore you are called upon to give much.

Life, Parting

“Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Beauty

“He pulls me around and kisses me. "You're Mac," he says. "And I'm Jericho. And nothing else matters. Never will. You exist in a place that is beyond all rules for me. Do you understand that?"
I do.
Jericho Barrons just told me he loves me.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Love, Understanding, Kiss

“It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their own eyes and ears.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

People, Universe

“Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Americanah

Source: Americanah

“Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Envy

“As long as this exists, this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it, how can I be sad?”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Sadness

“No loss is felt more keenly than the loss of what might have been. No nostalgia hurts as much as nostalgia for things that never existed.”

Rabih Alameddine book An Unnecessary Woman

Source: An Unnecessary Woman

Nostalgia, Loss, Hurt

“Love, the poet said, is woman's whole existence.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Love

“There are moments in life that you wish with all your heart you could take back. Like, just erase from existence. Like, if you could, you'd erase yourself right out of existence too, just to make that moment not exist.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Life, Heart

“Either dragons should exist completely or fail to exist at all, he felt. A dragon only half-existing was worse than the extremes.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Color of Magic

“Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

God

“In nature nothing exists alone.”

Rachel Carson book Silent Spring

Source: Silent Spring

Nature

“The specific character of [women's] oppression cannot be explained away by equating different situations through superficial and childish simplifications[:]

It is true that both the woman and the male worker are condemned to silence by their exploitation. But under the current system, the worker's wife is also condemned to silence by her worker-husband. In other words, in addition to the class exploitation common to both of them, women must confront a particular set of relations that exist between them and men, relations of conflict and violence that use physical differences as their pretext.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

Source: Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

Women, Men, Silence

“Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star.
It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago.
Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

Feeling, Star, Light, Distant

“Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

“To create, I destroyed myself; I made myself external to such a degree within myself that within myself I do not exist except in an external fashion. I am the living setting in which several actors make entrances, putting on several different plays.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Fashion

“Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure: The Basis Of Culture

Way

“One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Art

“Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. … The ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, your purpose, is to bring that power into this world.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

World

“Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Fear, Heart

“I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn't up to me. It was clear that the best thing to do was to adopt a sort of muddled cheerfulness.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen

Source: Kitchen

World, Change

“If any honor existed in war, it was in fighting to protect others from harm”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Source: Eldest

War, Fight

“Ela acreditava em anjo e, porque acreditava, eles existiam" | "She believed in angels, and, because she believed, they existed”

Clarice Lispector book The Hour of the Star

Source: The Hour of the Star

Angels

“In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Hope

“There’s no point in believing in things that exist.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

“Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Source: 1860s, First State of the Union address (1861)
Context: Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation.

“Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Art

“If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now that in the time of the Pharaohs?”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

Men, World, Time, Dependency

“Only Evil and Greater Evil exist and beyond them, in the shadows, lurks True Evil. True Evil, Geralt, is something you can barely imagine, even if you believe nothing can still surprise you. And sometimes True Evil seizes you by the throat and demands that you choose between it and another, slightly lesser, Evil.”

Andrzej Sapkowski book The Last Wish

Source: The Last Wish

Imagination, Evil

“I see evil when I look in my shaving mirror. It is, philosophically, present everywhere in the universe in order, apparently, to highlight the existence of good. I think there is more to this theory, but I tend to burst out laughing at this point.”

Terry Pratchett book Unseen Academicals

Source: Unseen Academicals

Thinking, Universe, Evil

“I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you're everything that exists; the reality of everything.”

Virginia Woolf book Night and Day

Source: Night and Day

Star, Reality

“For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

“We must doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, but how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to the senses, such as the existence of God and the soul.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

God, Soul, Sense

“All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness […] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find […] a being which immediately recognises itself, […] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty book Phenomenology of Perception

Source: Phenomenology of Perception

Idea, Time

“Yet, even amidst the hatred and carnage, life is still worth living. It is possible for wonderful encounters and beautiful things to exist.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

Life, Beauty

“The root of the matter is a very simple and old fashioned thing… love or compassion. If you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a guide for action, a reason for courage, an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Love, Feeling, Motivation, Fashion

“We exist as long as somebody remembers us.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón (1964) Spanish writer

“For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously!”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Sec. 283; Variant translation: For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is — to live dangerously.
The Gay Science (1882)
Context: For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!

Secret

“Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its world a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you: build, therefore, your own world.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

World, Housing

“No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Life, Truth, Dreams

“Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist but you have ceased to live.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Source: Following the Equator (1897), Ch. LXII

Parting

“The days will always be brighter because he existed.
The nights will always be darker because he's gone.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: God-Shaped Hole

Night

“There is nothing that exists that has only one side. Even a piece of paper, thin as it is, has two sides.”

Terry Goodkind (1948) American novelist

“Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure…”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42 (1996), p. 443
Attributed from posthumous publications

Thinking, Freedom

“I know there is a God, because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists and therefore I know there is a God.”

Roméo Dallaire (1946) Canadian politician

Shake Hands with the Devil (2003)
Source: Shake Hands With The Devil

God

“He’d always felt he had a right to exist as a wizard in the same way that you couldn’t do proper maths without the number 0, which wasn’t a number at all but, if it went away, would leave a lot of larger numbers looking bloody stupid.”

Terry Pratchett book Interesting Times

Source: Interesting Times

Stupidity, Way

“Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”

Blaise Pascal Pensées

Source: Pensées

Wise, Faith, Truth, Faith

“The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Wise, Life

“… living is merely the chaos of existence…”

Yukio Mishima book The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

Source: The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

“Rumour is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors and windows -- sometimes it does not need people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever touching lips.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

People

“How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?”

Paul Sweeney (1989) Scottish politician

Patience

“Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions.”

André Breton book Manifestoes of Surrealism

Source: Manifestoes of Surrealism

Life, Death, Imagination, Past

“These weren't cheap modern books; these were books bound in leather, and not just leather, but leather from clever cows who had given their lives for literature after a happy existence in the very best pastures.”

Terry Pratchett book I Shall Wear Midnight

Source: I Shall Wear Midnight

Books, Literature, Happiness

“Give me the waters of Lethe that numb the heart, if they exist, I will still not have the power to forget you.”

Ovid (-43–17 BC) Roman poet

Source: The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters

Water, Heart, Forgetting

“We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Love

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Speak, Memory: A Memoir (1951)
Context: The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour).

Sense, Light

“I dream, therefore I exist.”

August Strindberg (1849–1912) Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter

Dreams

“For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed.

The riddle does not exist.

If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Source: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Question

“Harmony exists no less in difference than in likeness, if only the same key-note govern both parts.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Parting

“It is foolish to conjure up woe where none exists.”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

“And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Bertrand Russell's Best: Silhouettes in Satire (1958), "On Religion".
1950s
Context: I observe that a very large portion of the human race does not believe in God and suffers no visible punishment in consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence.

God, Thinking

“Happiness is spiritual, born of truth and love. It is unselfish; therefore it cannot exist alone, but requires all mankind to share it.”

Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) religious leader

Happy, Love, Truth, Happiness

“Look: the trees exist; the houses
we dwell in stand there stalwartly.
Only we
pass by it all, like a rush of air.
And everything conspires to keep quiet
about us,
half out of shame perhaps, half out of
some secret hope.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Duino Elegies

Source: Duino Elegies

Secret, Hope, Tree, Housing

“So next time someone complains that you have made a mistake, tell him that may be a good thing. Because without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking (2010)

Time

“She stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“Where there is love, there is often also hate. They can exist side by side.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Love, Hate

“The President of the Universe holds no real power. His sole purpose is to take attention away from where the power truly exists…”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Universe

“There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

People

“Above all else, it is about leaving a mark that I existed: I was here. I was hungry. I was defeated. I was happy. I was sad. I was in love. I was afraid. I was hopeful. I had an idea and I had a good purpose and that's why I made works of art.”

Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996) American artist

Love, Sadness, Hope, Art

“… no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away… The span of someone's life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence.”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

Life, World, Dead

“The more you think about it, the more amazing the everyday world of human beings becomes: most of it doesn't actually exist at all.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

World, Thinking

“The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder’s lack of rational conviction.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1960s
Source: Introduction to 1961 edition of Sceptical Essays (1961)
Context: The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder’s lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.

Passion

“The monsters of the mind are far worse than those that actually exist.”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

“There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.”

John Fowles book The French Lieutenant's Woman

Source: The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), Ch. 13, p. 99

Freedom, God

“Subatomic particles do not exist but rather show 'tendencies to exist', and atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways, but rather show 'tendencies to occur'.”

Fritjof Capra book The Turning Point

Source: The Turning Point (1982), p. 82.
Source: The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism
Context: At the subatomic level, matter does not exist with certainty at definite places, but rather shows "tendencies to exist," and atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways, but rather show "tendencies to occur."

Way, Time