Quotes about Existence

The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.

Whatever is beyond this narrow rational consciousness we mistake for our only consciousness.

No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance. The existence of the chance makes the difference… between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a life of which the keynote is hope.

Our normal waking consciousness . . . is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus and at a touch they are all there in all their completeness . . . No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.

How comes the world to be here at all instead of the nonentity which might be imagined in its place? ... from nothing to being there is no logical bridge.

Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the subject's range of life. It gives him a new sphere of power. When the outward battle is lost, and the outward world disowns him, it redeems and vivifies an interiour world which otherwise would be an empty waste.

The existence of the devil is so clearly taught in the Bible that to doubt it is to doubt the Bible itself.

Without faith it is impossible to please God, for the one who draws near to Him must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him.

The same fact that Boccaccio offers in support of religion might be adduced in behalf of a republic: It exists in spite of its ministers."

Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all.

When it's time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.

My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.