Quotes on Existence

You are so accustomed to think of yourselves as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies. Once you realize that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether.

Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.

First, meditation should be of a negative nature. Think away everything. Analyse everything that comes in the mind by the sheer action of the will. Next, assert what we really are-existence, knowledge, and bliss-being, knowing, and loving.

Political institutions, no matter how well or badly designed, depend for continued existence upon acting men; their conservation is achieved by the same means that brought them into being. Independent existence marks the work of art as a product of making; utter dependence upon further acts to keep it in existence marks the state as a product of action.

The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light within light...It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within that great general light of existence.

Do ask yourself why you, the individual, exist, and if you can get no other answer try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting before yourself an aim, a goal, a 'to this end', an exalted and noble 'to this end'.

A man who could not see the end of his"provisional existence" was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life.

Each band or level, being a particular manifestation of the spectrum, is what it is only by virtue of the other bands. The color blue is no less beautiful because it exists along side the other colors of a rainbow, and "blueness" itself depends upon the existence of the other colors, for if there were no color but blue, we would never be able to see it.

That which you have received, you should be grateful for it. And the most beautiful phenomenon is that when you are grateful, existence starts pouring more and more over you. It becomes a circle: the more you get, the more you become grateful; the more you become grateful, the more you get... And there is no end to it, it is an infinite process.

The whole play of existence is so beautiful that laughter can be the only response to it. Only laughter can be the real prayer, gratitude.

To be able to rise from the earth; to be able, from a station in outer space, to see the relationship of the planet earth to other planets; to be able to contemplate the billions of factors in precise and beautiful combination that make human existence possible; to be able to dwell on an encounter of the human brain and spirit with the universe

In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.

A distracted existence leads us to no goal

Consider whether fulfillment of the goal you have chosen will constitute success. What is success? If you possess health and wealth, but have trouble with everybody (including yourself), yours is not a successful life. Existence becomes futile if you cannot find happiness. When wealth is lost, you have lost a little; when health is lost, you have lost something of more consequence; but when peace of mind is lost, you have lost the highest treasure.

America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government.

I am in the utmost perplexity, yand have wished a hundred times, that if there is a A God, nature would manifest him without ambiguity, and that if there is not, every imaginary sign of his existence might vanish : in short, let nature speak distinctly, or be totally silent, and I shall know what course to take.

As a people, our monuments never commemorate victories. They commemorate the names of the fallen. We don't need the Arc de Triomphe; we have Masada, Tel-Hai, and the Warsaw Ghetto - where the battle was lost, but the war of Jewish existence was won.

Whatsoever you can be you are. There is no goal. And we are not going anywhere. We are simply celebrating here. Existence is not a journey, it is a celebration. Think of it as a celebration, as a delight, as a joy! Don't turn it into a suffering, don't turn it into a duty, a work. Let it be play.

The general struggle for existence of animate beings is not a struggle for raw materials, these for organisms are air water & soil, all abundantly available, nor for energy which exists in plenty in the sun and any hot body in the form of heat, but rather a struggle for entropy, which becomes available through the transition of energy from the hot sun to the cold earth.

The evergreen! How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the evergreen! When one thinks of it, how astonishing a variety of nature! In some countries we know that the tree that sheds its leaf is the variety, but that does not make it less amazing, that the same soil and the same sun should nurture plants differing in the first rule and law of their existence.

Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper