#existence

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#chains-of-events #commonplaces-of-existence #cross-purposes #fiction #on-fiction

I kept running around it in large or small circles, always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my Belovedness. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved". Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence. ↗

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

#self-rejection #life

Endless moons, an opaque universe, thunder, tornadoes, the quaking earth. Rare moments of peace; forehead up against my knees, arms around my head, I though, I listened, I longed not to exist. but life was there, a transparent pearl, a star revolving slowly on its own axis. ↗

— Shan Sa

#existence #life #nature #life

Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that the mere fact of our existence should keep us all in a state of contented dazzlement. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#life #probability #statistically #truth #life

When you look more generally at life on Earth, you find that it is all the same kind of life. There are not many different kinds; there's only one kind. It uses about fifty fundamental biological building blocks, organic molecules. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#building-blocks #earth #existence #life #molecules

Here, her hand in mine was the one reality that severed us from the cold click-clack of Hell. I rubbed her hand and she sighed; wasn’t that meaning? Wasn’t that something we could cling to? I could be with this other. I could form no other relation, but maybe her hand in mine was enough, both sufficient and necessary. In Hell there was no sense of place, because all places were the same. Uniform monotony. A place without place. A place without context. But, here, now, I could rub her hand and she would sigh. She was a difference. Perhaps each person was the only difference in all these halls of unchanging ranks of books, kiosks, clocks, and carpet, and that, and that, at least, we had to hold to. ↗

— Steven L. Peck

#existence #hell #love #meaning #love

You are the reality. The sense of of worship, love, devotion and loyalty. You are the purpose of life and existence. That is why I am still alive. ↗

— M.F. Moonzajer

#devotion #existence #love #loyalty #purpose

As a child I first became aware that my existence had a purpose when I realized men lusted after me. And that's why I will lust forever after men. Before I even began to worry about homework or any of those school things, I began having secret liaisons with men. And it is men who give me the proof I need now to feel I'm alive. ↗

— Natsuo Kirino

#lust #men

Destiny is the music of the improbable. Were it otherwise, almost anyone could exist. ↗

— Kenneth Patchen

#existence #improbable #music #music

There is only one hopeful suggestion that I can give you: By the essence and nature of existence, contradictions cannot exist. If you find it inconceivable that an inventor of genius should be abandoned among ruins, and that a philosopher should wish to work as a cook in a diner--check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#existence #philosophy #nature