#existence

Under the ominous shadow which the second World War and its attendant circumstances have cast on the world, peace has become as essential to civilized existence as the air we breathe is to life itself. ↗

— Cordell Hull

#attendant #become #breathe #cast #circumstances

The way I see things, the way I see life, I see it as a struggle. And there's a great deal of reward I have gained coming to that understanding - that existence is a struggle. ↗

— Harvey Keitel

#deal #existence #gained #great #great deal

The seminaries must be like the churches' poor relations, prolonging their existence with austerity. ↗

— Abraham Kuyper

#churches #existence #like #must #poor

God is a challenge because there is no proof of his existence and therefore the search must continue. ↗

— Donald Knuth

#challenge #continue #existence #god #his

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

— C. Everett Koop

#been #carnegie #century #existence #foundation

Religion may be defined thus: a belief in, and homage rendered to, existences unseen and causes unknown. ↗

— Frances Wright

#causes #defined #existences #homage #may

On the Bigotry of Culture: : it presented us with culture, with thought as something justified in itself, that is, which requires no justification but is valid by it's own essence, whatever its concrete employment and content maybe. Human life was to put itself at the service of culture because only thus would it become charged with value. From which it would follow that human life, our pure existence was, in itself, a mean and worthless thing. ↗

— José Ortega y Gasset

#dehumanization #existence #life #meaning #philosophy

Despite all their flaws, zoos wake us up. They invite us to step outside our most basic assumptions. Offered for our contemplation, the animals remind us of nature’s impossibly varied schemes for survival, all the strategies that species rely upon for courtship and mating and protecting the young and establishing dominance and hunting for something to eat and avoiding being eaten. On a good day, zoos shake people into recognizing the manifold possibilities of existence, what it’s like to walk across the Earth, or swim in its oceans of fly above its forests—even though most animals on display will never have the chance to do any of those things again, at least not in the wild. ↗

— Thomas French

#existence #nature #survival #wild #wildness

What is this thing called life? I believe That the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life, Only we do not call it so--I speak of the life That oxidizes fats and proteins and carbo- Hydrates to live on, and from that chemical energy Makes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things grow From a chemical reaction? I think they were here already, I think the rocks And the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxies have their various consciousness, all things are conscious; But the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brain Bring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glass To concentrate the heat and make it catch fire: It seems to us martyrs hotter than the blazing hearth From which it came. So we scream and laugh, clamorous animals Born howling to die groaning: the old stones in the dooryard Prefer silence; but those and all things have their own awareness, As the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all, Like the cells of a man's body making one being, They make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God. ↗

— Robinson Jeffers

#god #life #the-universe #life

Затворете се в къщи, свийте се в охлювната си черупка, станете пепеляви, кротки, плахи, и никога нищо ярко и разтърсващо няма да ви се случи. Или почти нищо. Живот без задъханото присъствие на Случая е мъртвило. Самото предусещане, че може да те връхлети нещо непредвидено, че изобретателният Случай диша нейде в тила ти, че те причаква зад оня гребен на планината, зад оня дънер - това придава на дните тръпчивия жизнен сок. Да си нащрек: нещо ти предстои! Това е може би истинското съществуване. В такива мигове на изтръпване пред неизвестното влизаш в контакт с всичко. ↗

— Blaga Dimitrova

#life #life