82+ Best Existence Quotes: Exclusive Selection

Existence is the state or fact of having being especially independently of human consciousness and as contrasted with nonexistence. Profoundly inspirational existence quotes will challenge the way you think, change the way you live and transform your whole life.

If you’re searching for positive philosophy quotes that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of profound critical thinking quotes, amazing Greek philosopher quotes and famous aesthetics quotes.

Famous Existence Quotes

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. Albert Einstein

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am. Sylvia Plath

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell. Aldous Huxley

There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does. John Green

The part of life we really live is small. For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time. Lucius Annaeus Seneca

It’s enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment. Gabriel García Márquez

I was not, I was, I am not, I care not. Epicurus

It’s not my responsibility to be beautiful. I’m not alive for that purpose. My existence is not about how desirable you find me. Warsan Shire

The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails. James Joyce

Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence. Antoine de Saint Exupéry

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life. Aristotle

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

In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. Oscar Wilde

Finally, she mused that human existence is as brief as the life of autumn grass, so what was there to fear from taking chances with your life? Mo Yan

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. Jack London

I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done to me. I am everyone everything whose being in the world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’m gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Salman Rushdie

In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity. Erik Erikson

There are only two worlds your world, which is the real world, and other worlds, the fantasy. Worlds like this are worlds of the human imagination their reality, or lack of reality, is not important. What is important is that they are there. these worlds provide an alternative. Provide an escape. Provide a threat. Provide a dream, and power; provide refuge, and pain. They give your world meaning. They do not exist; and thus they are all that matters. Neil Gaiman

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream. Edgar Allen Poe

Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions. Primo Levi

Law rules throughout existence, a Law which is not intelligent, but Intelligence. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent. Cormac McCarthy

You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness. Terence McKenna

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. Jack London

Space and silence are two aspects of the same thing. The same nothing. They are externalization of inner space and inner silence, which is stillness the infinitely creative womb of all existence. Eckhart Tolle

It is good to be a cynic it is better to be a contented cat and it is best not to exist at all. H.P. Lovecraft

When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. Henry David Thoreau

Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others. Hermann Hesse

I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short time of space. James Joyce

Let us proceed under the assumption that the fairy folk do exist, and that I am not a gibbering moron. Eoin Colfer

The whole existence of man is a ceaseless duel between the forces of life and death. Mahatma Gandhi   

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live moreover, the only one. E. M. Cioran

If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life. Charles Bukowski

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. Albert Einstein

I am not one and simple, but complex and many. Virginia Woolf

I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating. Jean Paul Sartre

Being is the great explainer. Henry David Thoreau

Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence. Milan Kundera

Some things are hurrying into existence, and others are hurrying out of it; and of that which is coming into existence part is already extinguished. Marcus Aurelius

Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it’s like they didn’t fade away at all. Bob Dylan

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. William James

It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself. Rachel Carson

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

Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with. Christopher Hitchens

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. Erich Fromm

In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. Oscar Wilde

The life of inner peace, being harmonious and without stress, is the easiest type of existence. Norman Vincent Peale

In the end, people don’t view their life as merely the average of all its moments which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people’s minute by minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves. Atul Gawande

No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. The perfect enigma remains. Ralph Waldo Emerson

You are afraid to die, and you’re afraid to live. What a way to exist. Neale Donald Walsch

I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day. James Joyce

In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans; in one aspect of You are found all the aspects of existence. Kahlil Gibran Jr.

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him. Friedrich Nietzsche

You said we all want there to be more than this! Well, there’s always more than this. There’s always something you don’t know. Patrick Ness

Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man. Orison Swett Marden

People who say that yesterday was better than today are ultimately devaluing their own existence. Karl Lagerfeld

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception. Aldous Huxley

I am not one and simple, but complex and many. Virginia Woolf

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the why for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any how.Viktor E. Frankl

I don’t want to be little again. But at the same time I do. I want to be me like I was then, and me as I am now, and me like I’ll be in the future. I want to be me and nothing but me. I want to be crazy as the moon, wild as the wind and still as the earth. I want to be every single thing it’s possible to be. I’m growing and I don’t know how to grow. I’m living but I haven’t started living yet. Sometimes I simply disappear from myself. Sometimes it’s like I’m not here in the world at all and I simply don’t exist. Sometimes I can hardly think. My head just drifts, and the visions that come seem so vivid. David Almond

A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence. Sigmund Freud

To be born means being compelled to choose an era, a place, a life. To exist here, now, means to lost the possibility of being countless other potential selves. Yet once being born there is no turning back. And I think that’s exactly why the fantasy worlds of cartoon movies so strongly represent our hopes and yearnings. They illustrate a world of lost possibilities for us. Hayao Miyazaki,

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him. Arthur Schopenhauer

If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life. Charles Bukowski

You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding. Terence McKenna

Love is our most unifying and empowering common spiritual denominator. The more we ignore its potential to bring greater balance and deeper meaning to human existence, the more likely we are to continue to define history as one long inglorious record of man’s inhumanity to man. Aberjhani

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. Jack London

I was not, I was, I am not, I care not. Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo Epicurus

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

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Stephen Crane

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. Carl Jung

If the context is lost and merely bits and pieces remain from a scattered existence, only the connection of anchor points may reinstate a distorted mental balance in an upset life story. Lost the global story. Erik Pevernagie

You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms. Terence McKenna

The stars up there at night are closer than you think. Doug Dillon

Man’s love is of man’s life a part; it is a woman’s whole existence. In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love. Lord Byron

Space and silence are two aspects of the same thing. The same nothing. They are externalization of inner space and inner silence, which is stillness the infinitely creative womb of all existence. Eckhart Tolle

Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece. Vladimir Nabokov

Endless moons, an opaque universe, thunder, tornadoes, the quaking earth. Rare moments of peace; forehead up against my knees, arms around my head, I thought, I listened, I longed not to exist. But life was there, a transparent pearl, a star revolving slowly on its own axis. Shan Sa

Existence must be asserted in the present if one does not want all life to be defined as an escape toward nothingness. Simone De Beauvoir

Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence. Sholem Asch