Existence Quotes - page 100
Barbara Bush has her finger on the pulse of America. I'm so glad she's back and more compassionate than ever, ... That's right, of course people just sat around New Orleans, boring, uninspired, soulless New Orleans, and dreamed of someday relocating to the Astrodome. 'Oh, dear lord, if only I could leave my unhappy existence and head on up to wonderful Houston and live with my friends side by side in a spacious football stadium, my life would be so much richer and complete.'
Sandra Bernhard
The women of my island were not supposed to love the water. Water was the wild, untamed kingdom of our men. And though water was the element in which our tiny island lived and moved and had its being, the women resisted its power over their lives as a wife might pretend to ignore the existence of her husband's mistress. For the men of the island, except for the preacher and the occasional male teacher, the Bay was an all-consuming passion. It ruled their waking hours, sapped their bodily strength, and from time to tragic time claimed their mortal flesh.
Katherine Paterson
What's really important is to have systemic changes. By that I mean, for example, putting into law that people have a right to access official information. Once freedom of information becomes part of the bureaucracy, the bureaucrats who are freedom of information officials have a vested interest in making sure that that law is there and that it actually works, because it kind of justifies their existence. One thing is to institutionalize rights to know.
Heather Brooke
It must be said that an authentic work of art needs no philosophical justification. In principle, if Philosophical Treatises could explain a work of art then there would be no justification for the existence of that work art. Put it differently, a work of art precisely enters into the scene when philosophy and other experimental sciences are inept of representing or elucidating an artistic vision.
Guity Novin
They [the Beatles] came backstage after one of my lectures, and they said to me: 'Even from an early age we have been seeking a highly spiritual existence. We tried drugs and that didn't work.' They are such practical and intelligent young boys that it took them only two days to find that Transcendental Meditation is the answer.
:Quoted from, Beatles Anthology, by The Beatles, Chronicle Books, 2000, page 261.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme mode, although the gloom, "the blues” which people go through occasionally and associate with the general hassle of everyday existence are of such prevalence that they do give many individuals a hint of the illness in its catastrophic form.
William Styron
I think we're a kind of desperation. We're sort of a maddening luxury. The basic and essential human is the woman, and all that we're doing is trying to brighten up the place. That's why all the birds who belong to our sex have prettier feathers -- because males have got to try and justify their existence.
Orson Welles
The Communist ... chooses some feature of an order where there is a potential resentment, or he may choose some feature about which people are simply soft-headed-that is to say, confused or uncertain. It may be the existence of rich men; it may be the right to acquire and use property privately; it may be the idea of discipline and regard in education; it may be some system of preferential advancement which produces envy in the less successful. His most common maneuver ... is to vilify this as founded upon "prejudice.” The burden of his argument usually is that since these do not have perfectly rationalized bases, they have no right to exist.
Richard Weaver
Life is not governed by chance; it is not random. Your very existence has been willed by God, blessed and given a purpose! Life is not just a succession of events or experiences. It is a search for the true, the good and the beautiful. It is to this end that we make our choices; it is for this that we exercise our freedom; it is in this - in truth, in goodness, and in beauty - that we find happiness and joy.
Pope Benedict XVI
The renunciation of marriage and family is thus to be understood in terms of this vision: I renounce what, humanly speaking, is not only the most normal but also the most important thing. I forgo bringing forth further life on the tree of life, and I live in the faith that my land is really God - and so I make it easier for others, also, to believe that there is a kingdom of heaven. I bear witness to Jesus Christ, to the Gospel, not only with words, but also with this specific mode of existence, and I place my life in this form at his disposal.
Pope Benedict XVI
