Existential Flux Quotes

Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being.

Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future.

Just as the introduction of the irrational numbers ... is a convenient myth [which] simplifies the laws of arithmetic ... so physical objects are postulated entities which round out and simplify our account of the flux of existence... The conceptional scheme of physical objects is [likewise] a convenient myth, simpler than the literal truth and yet containing that literal truth as a scattered part.

In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his sense a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, his fame doubtful. In short, all that is body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapors.

As I get older, the present and the past shift and become the past and the future... A lot of it is a new awareness of time and life and the wheel of fortune crushing you and lifting you and crushing you and lifting you.

Nothing is permanent. Not even the end of the world.

You have visits, then you have disappearances. You enter, then you exit. You come, you go. It would be so great if you could just get to human enlightenment on a linear path.

And who ever said the world was fair, little lady? Maybe death is fair, but certainly not life. We must accept the unfairness as proof of the sublime flux of existence, the capricious music of the universe- and go on about our tasks

My hold on the past and the future is precarious and my possession of my own time is always postponed until a stage when I may fully understand it, yet this stage can never be reached, since it would be one more moment bounded by the horizon of its future, and requiring in its turn, further developments in order to be understood.

Now that mine is almost over, I can say that the one thing that struck me most about life is the capacity for change. One day you're a person and the next day they tell you you're a dog. At first it's hard to bear, but after a while you learn not to look at it as a loss. There's even a moment when it becomes exhilarating to realize just how little needs to stay the same for you to continue the effort they call, for lack of a better word, being human.

Return from existence to nonexistence. You are seeking the Lord and you belong to him. Nonexistence is a place of income; flee it not. This existence of more and less is a place of expenditure.

The very concept of solid ground is a myth. The galaxy itself is adrift.

I came like Water, and like Wind I go.

I'm not me but living matter fermenting and forming its own shapes in the fruitfulness of every day.

This person, this self, this me, finally, was made somewhere else. Everything had come from somewhere else, and it would all go somewhere else. I was nothing but a pathway for the person known as me.

I'm sort of anti-Aristotelian. I want to get an entire life onstage while conveying a sense of how time feels, how unstoppable it is, and how we don't really know what's going on because as we're trying to weave, it's weaving us.

The present is haunted by the X-present. I call this manifold of present and X-present 'nowness': a shifting, haunted region like evaporating mist; a region can't be tied to a specific timescale.

I can not 'make my mark' for all time - those concepts are mutually exclusive. 'Lasting effect' is a self-contradictory term. Meaning does not exist in the future and neither do I. Nothing will have meaning 'ultimately.' Nothing will even mean tomorrow what it did today. Meaning changes with the context. My meaningfulness is here. It is enough that I am of value to someone today. It is enough that I make a difference now.