#existence

In the battle of existence, Talent is the punch; Tact is the clever footwork. ↗

— Wilson Mizner

#clever #existence #footwork #punch #tact

When I was a kid and the carnival would come to the shopping centre, I'd go down and talk to all the people running the rides. I like that whole lifestyle, moving from town to town in a nomadic existence. ↗

— Randy Quaid

#centre #come #down #existence #go

I know that some endeavor to throw the mantle of romance over the subject and treat woman like some ideal existence, not liable to the ills of life. Let those deal in fancy who have nothing better to deal in; we have to do with sober, sad realities, with stubborn facts. ↗

— Ernestine Rose

#deal #endeavor #existence #facts #fancy

I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men. ↗

— Jean-Paul Sartre

#believe #camp #concentration #disproved #existence

Mariac tells us about the books he's read, the painters he's liked, the plays he's seen. He finds himself by looking in the works of others. He defines his own faith by a passionate anger against Gide the Luciferian. Reading his 'memories' is like meeting a man on a train who says, 'Don't look at me; that's misleading. If you want to know what I'm like, wait until we're in a tunnel, and then study my reflection in the window.' You wait, and look, and catch a face against a shifting background of sooty walls, cables, and sudden brickwork. The transparent shape flickers and jumps, always a few feet away. You become accustomed to its existence, you move with its movements; and though you know its presence is conditional, you feel it to be permanent. Then there is a wail from ahead, a roar and a burst of light; the face is gone for ever. ↗

— Julian Barnes

#condition #existence #life #misleading #passion

Because there is nothing here than invites us to cherish unhappy lovers. Nothing is more vain than to die for love. What we ought to do is live. ↗

— Albert Camus

#existence #love #death

Is there not a God, or some being, by whatever name I may designate him, who causes these thoughts to arise in my mind? But why suppose such a being, for it may be I myself am capable of producing them? Am I, then, at least not something? But I before denied that I possessed senses or a body; I hesitate, however, for what follows from that? Am I so dependent on the body and the senses that without these I cannot exist? But I had the persuasion that there was absolutely nothing in the world, that there was no sky and no earth, neither minds nor bodies; was I not, therefore, at the same time, persuaded that I did not exist? Far from it; I assuredly existed, since I was persuaded. But there is I know not what being, who is possessed at once of the highest power and the deepest cunning, who is constantly employing all his ingenuity in deceiving me. Doubtless, then, I exist, since I am deceived; and, let him deceive me as he may, he can never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I shall be conscious that I am something. ↗

— René Descartes

#metaphysics #philosophy #the-matrix #design

Each of us has been designed for one of two immortal functions, as either a storyteller or as a cross-legged listener to tales of wonder, love, and daring. When we cease to tell or listen, then we no longer exist as a people. ↗

— Bryce Courtenay

#listening #storytelling #design

It isn't by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world…by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves. ↗

— Ken Kesey

#existence #world

...art must must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out towards it; that art must give man hope and faith. And the more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal that stands in opposition - otherwise life becomes impossible! Art symbolises the meaning of our existence. ↗

— Andrei Tarkovsky

#existence #faith #hope #art