Existence Quotes

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.
Richard Dawkins

Natural, Theory, Principle

Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.
Honore de Balzac

Wanted, Whole, Colors

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.
Charles Dickens

The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.
Thomas Huxley

Power, Struggle, Thinking

An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.
Honore de Balzac

Color, Vocation, Drains

But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.
Lord Byron

Hope, Truth, Nothing

The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
Robert Peel

Time, Give, Attention

Existence precedes and rules essence.
Jean-Paul Sartre

Rules, Essence, Precedes

All species capable of grasping this fact manage better in the struggle for existence than those which rely upon their own strength alone: the wolf, which hunts in a pack, has a greater chance of survival than the lion, which hunts alone.
Christian Lous Lange

Strength, Alone, Struggle

I'm laughing because I know the secret of life. And the secret of life is that I have validated my existence. I know that I am worth more than my house, my bank account, or any physical thing.
Carlos Santana

Life, Secret, Worth

Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence.
Richard Dawkins

Life, Age, Reason

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Success, Regret, Friends

A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

May, Cannot, Question

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
George Santayana

Life, Happiness, Mad

Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror.
David Herbert Lawrence

Death, Down, Another

It is a lonely existence to be a child with a disability which no-one can see or understand, you exasperate your teachers, you disappoint your parents, and worst of all you know that you are not just stupid.
Susan Hampshire

Stupid, Lonely, Parents

Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness.
Henry Miller

Evil, Enough, Makes

Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.
Franz Kafka

Spiritual, Means, Point

Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.
John W. Gardner

Men, Live, Integrity

Baseball is a lot like life. It's a day-to-day existence, full of ups and downs. You make the most of your opportunities in baseball as you do in life.
Ernie Harwell

Life, Baseball, Full

A god who let us prove his existence would be an idol.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God, Prove, Idol

Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.
Anatole France

Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society... It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff.
Stephen Harper

Society, Human, Find

The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.
E. M. Forster

Work, Art, Person

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
Vladimir Nabokov

Two, Light, Sense

A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.
Milan Kundera

Knowledge, Morality, Unknown

The greatest mystery of existence is existence itself.
Deepak Chopra

Greatest, Mystery

The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal.
George Santayana

Art, Keep, Effort

I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence, I know likewise that I shall exist no more when I shall have ceased to feel.
Giacomo Casanova

Knowledge, Feeling, Giving

Join me in my quest for a greater understanding of our existence. Join me in my desire for a greater self. Join me as I seek the humility to love and understand my fellow man.
Bryant H. McGill

Love, Self, Humility

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