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Existence quotes

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“Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist but you have ceased to live.” Mark Twain, Following the Equator

“It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream—a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought—a vagrant...” Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don’t want to think any more, I am because I think that I don’t want to be, I think that I... because... ugh!” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence? or at any rate not...” Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism

“A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing, after thousands and thousands of years of non-existence: he lives for a little while; and then, again, comes an equally long period when he must exist no more. The heart rebels...” Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism

“Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone.” Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“My thought is me: that’s why I can’t stop. I exist because I think... and I can’t stop myself from thinking. At this very moment—it’s frightful—if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you’ll have no sense of self anymore, no memory, no... anything. There’s no chance at all of recovery. You’ll just — exist. As an empty...” J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.” Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“But the images, forewarned, immediately leaped up and filled my closed eyes with existences: existence is a fullness which man can never abandon.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of from a distance: it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast—or else there is nothing more at all.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat;” René Descartes, Discourse on the Method

“it is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.” Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we’re still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants.” Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.” Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

“My definition of living is to have excitement always; that’s the difference between living and existing.” Arnold Schwarzenegger, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

“I am not a collection of members which we call the human body: I am not a subtle air distributed through these members, I am not a wind, a fire, a vapour, a breath, nor anything at all which I can imagine or conceive; because I have assumed that...” René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

“It is for this reason that we find that co-existence, which could neither be in time alone, for time has no contiguity, nor in space alone, for space has no before, after, or now, is first established through matter.” Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation

“I believe you can speak things into existence.” JAY-Z, Decoded

“We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?” Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it’s like they didn’t fade away at all.” Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One

“The true nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, and all that was not present did not exist.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Or what is existence for but to be laughed at if men in their twenties have already attained the utmost?” Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

“He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.” Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?” H. G. Wells, The Time Machine

“I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?” Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“History is as light as individual human life, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.” Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present.” Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“She wanted to exist only as a conscious flower, prolonging and preserving itself.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“Every individual concerned with justifying his existence experiences his existence as an indefinite need to transcend himself.” Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.” Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“She would consider each day a miracle — which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences.” Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

“His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain—why he did not instantly...” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself” Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.” Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Related topics

soul memory speech life time thought present living heart justification moment death love knowledge understanding dream self weakness reason nature

Related authors

Margaret Atwood (1)
Jean-Paul Sartre (6)
Arthur Schopenhauer (3)
René Descartes (2)
Mark Twain (2)
Milan Kundera (2)
Leo Tolstoy (1)
Paulo Coelho (1)
Oscar Wilde (1)
H. G. Wells (1)
Baruch Spinoza (1)
Haruki Murakami (1)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1)
Bob Dylan (1)
J. K. Rowling (1)
Kurt Vonnegut (1)
JAY-Z (1)
Joseph Conrad (1)
Søren Kierkegaard (1)
Samuel Beckett (1)

Related sources

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (2)
The World as Will and Representation (1)
Nausea (6)
Studies in Pessimism (2)
Discourse on the Method (1)
War and Peace (1)
The Soul of Man under Socialism (1)
Following the Equator (1)
The Beautiful and Damned (1)
Norwegian Wood (1)
The Mysterious Stranger (1)
Slaughterhouse-Five (1)
Fear and Trembling (1)
The Blind Assassin (1)
Chronicles, Volume One (1)
Waiting for Godot (1)
Veronika Decides to Die (1)
Heart of Darkness (1)
Decoded (1)
Siddhartha (1)