existence

The instruments of labour, when they assume the form of machinery, acquire a kind of material existence which involves the replacement of human forces by the forces of Nature, and of rule-of-thumb methods by the purposeful application of natural science.

—Marx, Karl Heinrich

Imagination should be integrated with life, not turned into a separate activity, art, that monopolizes one's whole existence.

—Dudek, Louis

   I didn't know Whoöor whatöput the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someoneöor Somethingöand from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.

—Hammarskjo«  ld, Dag HjalmarAgne Carl

   Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass.

—Humboldt, Alexander, Baron von

In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God's existence.

—Newton, Sir Isaac

Alcohol is a very necessaryarticle† It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.

—Shaw, George Bernard

The dead level of provincial existence.

—Eliot, George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans

When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations.When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence.When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

—Kennedy,John F(itzgerald)

Ist es an und fu«  r sich absurd, das Nichtsein fu«  r einUbel zu « halten; da jedes Ubel wie jedes Gut das Dasein zur Voraussetzung hat, ja sogar das Bewusstsein. It is in and by itself absurd to regard non-existence as an evil; for every evil, like every good, presupposes existence, indeed even consciousness.

—Schopenhauer, Arthur

Every moment of one's existence one isgrowing into more or retreating into less.One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.

—Mailer, Norman Kingsley

Youare bornwithtwothings: existenceand opportunity, and these are the raw materials out of which you can make a successful life.

—Templeton, Charles

We must recollect†what it is we have at stake, what it is we have to contend for. It is for our property, it is for our liberty, it is for our independence, nay for our existence as a nation; it is for our character, it is for our very name as Englishmen, it is for everything dear and valuable to man on this side of the grave.

—Pitt,William known as  theYounger

Ce qu'ils ont en commun, c'est simplement le fait qu'ils estiment que l'existence pre¤  ce'  de l'essence, ou, si vous voulez, qu'il faut partir de la subjectivite¤  . What [existentialists] have in common is simply the fact that they believe that existence comes before essenceöor, if you will, that we must begin from the subjective.

—Sartre,Jean-Paul

God knows that the lesson we learn from life is that our very existence in the nature of things is a perpetual harming of somebody elseöif only because every mouthful of food that we eat is a mouthful taken from somebody else.

—Ford, Ford Madox originally Ford Hermann Hueffer

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.

—Nabokov,Vladimir

There will be a quick rash of hairy American filth, but it shouldn't threaten the existence of decent, serious British filth.

—Osborne,John

I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.

—Whitman,Walt(er)

Like so many ageing college people, Pnin had long ceased to notice the existence of students on campus.

—Nabokov,Vladimir

Man is the measure of all things, of the existence of the things that are, and the non-existence of the things that are not.

—Protagoras

As a military man who has given half a century of active service,Isay inall sincerity thatthenucleararmsracehas no military purpose. Wars cannot be fought with nuclear weapons; their existence onlyadds to our perils because of the illusions that they have generated. The world now stands on the brink of the final abyss. Let us all resolve to take all possible practicable steps to ensurethat we donot, through ourownfolly, go over the edge.

—Nicholas, 1st Earl

All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope isgone.

—Austen,Jane

Qu'est-ce que signifie que l'existence pre¤  ce'  de l'essence? Cela signifie que l'homme existe d'abord, se rencontre, surgit dans le monde, et qu'il se de¤  finit apre'  s. What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? Wemeanthat manfirst of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the worldöand defines himself afterwards.

—Sartre,Jean-Paul

one loves only form, and form only comes into existence when the thing is born.

—Olson, Charles

Ein Gott, der sich von uns beweisen lieÞe, w a« re ein G o« tze. A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol.

—Bonhoeffer, Dietrich

   Glaubt es mir!ödas Geheimnis, um die gr o« Þte Fruchtbarkeit und den gr o« Þten Genuss vom Dasein einzuernten, heiÞt: gef a« hrlich leben! For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment isöto live dangerously.

—Nietzsche, FriedrichWilhelm

It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.

—Butler, Samuel

America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms, its humour, its music.How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed, that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.

—Rollins, Sonny (TheodoreWalter)

L'impossibilite¤   o  u' je suis de prouver que Dieu n'est pas me de¤  couvre son existence. The impossibility I find myself in to prove that God does not exist proves to me his existence.

—La Bruye'  re,Jean de

The escalator from the Social Predestination Room† One circuit of the cellar at ground level, one on the first gallery, half on the second, and on the two hundred and sixty-seventh morning, daylight in the Decanting Room. Independent existenceöso called.

—Huxley, Aldous Leonard

Modern journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinianprinciple ofthesurvival ofthevulgarest.

—Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills

The Conservatives, as being by the law of theirexistence the stupidest party.

—Mill,John Stuart

They lead, as a matter of fact, an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats.

—Thurber,James Grover

Let us be moral.Let us contemplate existence.

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

The AIDS epidemic has rolled back a big rotting log and revealed all the squirming life underneath it, since it involves, all at once, the main themes of our existence: sex, death, power, money, love, hate, disease and panic. No American phenomenon has been so compelling since theVietnam War.

—White, Edmund

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact or existence? No.Commit itthen tothe flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

—Humboldt, Alexander, Baron von

I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creationöthe miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.

—Huxley, Aldous Leonard

La Poe¤  sie est l'expression, par le langage humain ramene¤  e a'   son rythme essentiel, du sens myste¤  rieux des aspects de l'existence; elle doue ainsi d'authenticite¤ notre se¤  jour et constitue la seule ta"  che spirituelle. Poetry is an expression, through human language restored to its essential rhythm, of the mysteriousness of existence; it endows our life with authenticity and constitutes our only spiritual task.

—Mallarme¤  , Ste¤  phane

The fact is, that there was considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respirationöa troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered necessary to our easy existence; and for some time he lay gasping on a little flock mattress, rather unequally poised between this world and the next: the balance being decidedly in favour of the latter. Now, if during this brief period,Oliver had been surrounded by careful grandmothers, anxious aunts, experienced nurses, and doctors of profound wisdom, he would most inevitably and indubitably have been killed in no time.

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

Who is able to paint the existence of a dog as Picasso paints the existence of a cubic shape?

—Marc, Franz

What I did that was new was to prove that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular, historical phases in the development of production; that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; and that dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

—Marx, Karl Heinrich

Mr Podsnap settled that whatever he put behind him he put out of existence† 'I don't want to know about it; I don't choose to discuss it; I don't admit it!'

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

It isthrough Art, and through Art only, that we canrealise our perfection; through Art, and through Art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

—Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills

Here the impossible union Of spheres of existence is actual, Here the past and future Are conquered, and reconciled.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)

Scientific discovery consists in the interpretation for our own convenience of a system of existence which has been made with no eye to our convenience at all.

—Wiener, Norbert

The white race is the cancer of human history, it is the white race, and it aloneöits ideologies and inventionsöwhich eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself.

—Sontag, Susan

O marciano encontrou-me na rua e teve miedo de minha impossibilidade humana. Como pode existir, penseu consigo, um ser que no existir po‹  e sem tamanha anula c° a‹  o de existe"  ncia? The Martian met me in the streets and was frightened by my human impossibility. He wondered how such a being could exist who could not exist without unmaking so much existence. 16

—Andrade, Carlos Drummond de

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam