#human existence

For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence? ↗

— Milan Kundera

#existence #explores #given #his #historic

The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists' discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#being #being forgotten #cease #dim #discoveries

There are metaphysical problems, problems of human existence, that philosophy has never known how to grasp in all their concreteness and that only the novel can seize. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#grasp #how #human #human existence #known

Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience - by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence. ↗

— Herbert Read

#deeper #existence #experience #human #human existence

My friends never talk to me about my poetry because they're embarrassed that I write it or they're embarrassed by what I write about which are not such extraordinarily terrifying things, but they are the state of human existence. ↗

— Peter Davison

#because #embarrassed #existence #extraordinarily #friends

How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer, but art is very self-referential, whereas religion claims to go beyond the bounds of human existence. ↗

— Yann Martel

#art #background #beyond #bounds #certainly

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#essential #existence #freedom #human #human existence

You don't know what someone's going to walk away from a movie with, but you hope it's something positive, but if nothing, you want them most basically to be entertained and engaged. That's your job. But you also hope to give them something to chew on or maybe some insight into the human existence, you hope a little bit. Not to sound too lofty. ↗

— Melissa Rosenberg

#away #basically #bit #chew #engaged

Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. ↗

— William Blake

#energy #existence #hate #human #human existence

A century ago, petroleum - what we call oil - was just an obscure commodity; today it is almost as vital to human existence as water. ↗

— James Buchan

#almost #call #century #commodity #existence