Hans Urs von Balthasar Quotes

Truth is the summit of being.

We do not say: Being is, time is, but rather: there is Being and there is time.

Metaphysics must be based on what exists, for it has the task of explicating it.

In fact, it is more correct to say that Truth is God, than to say that God is Truth.

Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?

It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

Existence precedes and rules essence.

To think Being itself explicitly requires disregarding Being to the extent that it is only grounded and interpreted in terms of beings and for beings as their ground, as in all metaphysics.

The German language speaks Being, while all the others merely speak of Being.

But God, who is the beginning of all things, is not to be regarded as a composite being, lest perchance there should be found to exist elements prior to the beginning itself, out of which everything is composed, whatever that be which is called composite.

I think, therefore I am.

The greatest mystery of existence is existence itself.

Being is the great explainer.

The Greeks are wrong to recognize coming into being and perishing; for nothing comes into being nor perishes, but is rather compounded or dissolved from things that are. So they would be right to call coming into being composition and perishing dissolution.

Metaphysics,--the science which determines what can and what cannot be known of being and the laws of being.

Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible.

I'm apt to get drunk on words...Ontology: the word about the essence of things; the word about being.

God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him.

All known existence points beyond itself.

In God alone, essence (what He is) and existence (that he is) coincide.

Beyond positive and negative, what is Reality?

Is it true that existence consists only in the action of energy? Or is it not rather that energy is an output of Existence?

Nothingness is the basis of everything.

Ultimate Reality, if such an entity can be postulated, is ineffable.