Quotes on Existence

Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence.

Author: B. Ambedkar

No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.

Author: Aristotle

Surely one of the most visible lessons taught by the twentieth century has been the existence, not so much of a number of different realities, but of a number of different lenses with which to see the same reality.

Author: Michael Arlen

One cannot legislate problems out of existence. It has been tried.

Author: Norman Augustine

The existence of law is one thing; its merit or demerit is another.

Author: John Austin

That whose existence is necessary must necessarily be one essence.

Author: Avicenna

An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.

Author: Honore Balzac

Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know.

Author: Walter Benjamin

Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.

Author: Henri Bergson

Not suffering another existence is reaching the Way.

Author: Bodhidharma

It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.

Author: Andre Breton

I cannot express it: but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you.

Author: Emily Bronte

The first and by far the most likely pattern is a return to agrarian existence.

Author: Harrison Brown

Medicine, the only profession that labors incessantly to destroy the reason for its existence.

Author: James Bryce

Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it out of existence.

Author: Wilfred Burchett

I pick my favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence.

Author: Robert Burns

I'm not sure how aware of the rest of the world I am. I live a rather sheltered existence.

Author: Julian Clary

After an existence of nearly 20 years of almost innocuous desuetude, these laws are brought forth.

Author: Grover Cleveland

To me, human existence exists on a multiple level, not just on a two-dimensional level, not just having to be identified with what you do and what you say.

Author: Ornette Coleman

A universe that came from nothing in the big bang will disappear into nothing at the big crunch. Its glorious few zillion years of existence not even a memory.

Author: Paul Davies

It's not just for its influence on us, but to know that we can play a part in it, to understand the influence that we have outside our own existence.

Author: Siobhan Davies

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

Author: Charles Dickens

Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence.

Author: Friedrich Engels

What is the value of your existence?

Author: Stephen Evans

The novel doesn't come into existence until certain methods of reproducing fiction come along.

Author: Leslie Fiedler

Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.

Author: Erich Fromm

To be human is to keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence, hollering, 'What's it for?'

Author: Robert Fulghum

Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.

Author: Johann Goethe

Have friends. 'Tis a second existence.

Author: Baltasar Gracian

On embarking to return we could perceive no sign of One Tree Island; and as we swept down towards the sea the leafy top of a tree seen in the clear water under the boat was the only evidence of its existence; though a few hours ago it had formed so prominent an object.

Author: George Grey

The human psyche shows that each individual is an extension of all of existence.

Author: Stanislav Grof

I don't see gender as the most significant fact of human existence.

Author: Jim Harrison

Apple was our benefactor at starting General Magic, but about a year later decided they would rather BE General Magic and tried to make us blink out of existence... which we eventually did, but it took a few years.

Author: Andy Hertzfeld

The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.

Author: Eric Hoffer

A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.

Author: Oliver Holmes

Philosophy, most broadly viewed, is the critical survey of existence from the standpoint of value.

Author: Sidney Hook

The reason why China suffers bitterly from endless wars is because of the existence of feudal lords and kings.

Author: Qin Huangdi

The puma is, with the exception of some monkeys, the most playful animal in existence.

Author: William Hudson

The fabric of existence weaves itself whole.

Author: Charles Ives

Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.

Author: Franz Kafka

It is widely assumed, contrary to fact, that theism necessarily involves the two assumptions which cannot be squared with the existence of so much suffering, and that therefore, per impossibile, they simply have to be squared with the existence of all this suffering, somehow.

Author: Walter Kaufmann

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has been in existence for most of this century.

Author: C. Koop

For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?

Author: Milan Kundera

Rule A: Don't. Rule A1: Rule A doesn't exist. Rule A2: Do not discuss the existence or non-existence of Rules A, A1 or A2.

Author: R. Laing

Playing a fashion designer could be the bane of my existence because I am married to a fashion designer.

Author: Lori Loughlin

When I recall today my early youth, I should take the boy that I then was, with the exception of a few individual features, for a different person, were it not for the existence of the chain of memories.

Author: Ernst Mach

I don't need anyone to rectify my existence. The most profound relationship we will ever have is the one with ourselves.

Author: Shirley MacLaine

We imagine that we want to escape our selfish and commonplace existence, but we cling desperately to our chains.

Author: Anne Macy

Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.

Author: Gustav Mahler

I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today's existence.

Author: Robert Mapplethorpe

Existence is a party. You join after its started and you leave before its finished.

Author: Elsa Maxwell

There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.

Author: Carson McCullers

Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm.

Author: Donella Meadows

For I never have seen, and never shall see, that the cessation of the evidence of existence is necessarily evidence of the cessation of existence.

Author: William Morgan

Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.

Author: Vladimir Nabokov

As the existence of a corps of professors of mathematics is peculiar to our navy, as well as an apparent, perhaps a real, anomaly, some account of it may be of interest.

Author: Simon Newcomb

We have overcome the notion that mathematical truths have an existence independent and apart from our own minds. It is even strange to us that such a notion could ever have existed.

Author: James Newman

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

That is the exploration that awaits you! Not mapping stars and studying nebula, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence.

Author: Leonard Nimoy

Our experiments not only proved the existence of a nervous apparatus in the above-mentioned glands, but also disclosed some facts clearly showing the participation of these nerves in normal activity.

Author: Ivan Pavlov

The particular features of the photographic method of detecting atomic particles enabled us to establish the existence of transient forms of matter which had escaped recognition by other methods.

Author: Cecil Powell

I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence.

Author: Man Ray

If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.

Author: Ronald Reagan

I'm sorry my existence is not very noble or sublime.

Author: Keanu Reeves

I think that every band tries to mature their sound through their existence, you know?

Author: Adam Rich

Myth expresses in terms of the world - that is, of the other world or the second world - the understanding that man has of himself in relation to the foundation and the limit of his existence.

Author: Paul Ricoeur

Existence precedes and rules essence.

Author: Jean-Paul Sartre

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

Author: Arthur Schopenhauer

We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence... on pain of liquidation.

Author: George Shaw

Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future.

Author: Susan Sontag

The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.

Author: Wallace Stevens

There's always been some moron-who usually went by the name of 'producer' - who would have to justify his existence, and interfere.

Author: Frank Tashlin

To advocate a New Order was to seek freedom and respect for peoples without prejudice, and to seek a stable basis for the existence all peoples, equally, and free of threats.

Author: Hideki Tojo

The Anarchists answer that the abolition of the State will leave in existence a defensive association, resting no longer on a compulsory but on a voluntary basis, which will restrain invaders by any means that may prove necessary.

Author: Benjamin Tucker

From wonder into wonder existence opens.

Author: Lao Tzu

When you use words, you're able to keep your mind alive. Writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.

Author: Gao Xingjian

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Author: Oscar Wilde

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, I cannot exist without a spark of thought.

Author: Leo Tolstoy

Life is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the ride.

Author: Oliver Stone

We are all unique pieces of a grand cosmic puzzle, each essential for the picture to be complete.

Author: Grace Lee

In the vast expanse of the universe, we are merely stardust learning to shine.

Author: Luna Starlight

A life without purpose is like a ship without a compass, drifting aimlessly in the vast sea of existence.

Author: Amanda Williams

Love is the only weapon we need in the fight for existence.

Author: Sophia Garcia

Our beliefs shape our existence, but our actions define it.

Author: Maya Summers

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist.

Author: Oscar Wilde

Embrace the chaos of life, for within its unpredictable twists and turns lays the beauty of existence.

Author: Maya Rodriguez

Humor is the spiciest condiment in the feast of existence.

Author: Colton Marchand