Benjamin Franklin Quotes

We can imagine our bodies being destroyed, our brains ceasing to function, our bones turning to dust, but it is harder - some would say impossible - to imagine the end of our very existence.

I know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundation of something I do not know. In spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying all existence and a continuity in my mode of being.

You are not a human being. You are not your body, you are not your mind, and you are not your soul. These are things that You have. The You that has these things - indeed, that has given your Self these things - is far bigger than any of them, and even all of them put together.

Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.

In my definition of consciousness, consciousness is the same thing as life. What wisdom traditions also call spirit.

I've always thought that we are what we remember, and the less we remember, the less we are.

At times I think and at times I am.

Our nature is the mind. And the mind is our nature.

From ancient times, the core idea of the soul is the soul is the capacity to integrate different functions into a single being or into a single person. The soul is what holds us all together: what connects our will and our minds and our bodies and connects us to God.

I don't like to think of myself as just a person. I don't think I am. I think I existed before, and I think I'll exist again after I die here, so I don't exactly know what I am. I don't think there is ever going to be an answer. I just know that I'm not like you.

I am Walter, a body, but more important than the body is my spirit.

I--this thought which is called I--is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax.

If there was such a thing as re-incarnation, Floyd would come back as himself

I consist of a little body and a soul.

It would be especially comforting to believe that I have the answer to the question, What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that's that-the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness, persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my laptop?

The self is known to every one but not clearly. You always exist.

Odd how clear it suddenly became, once a person had died, that the body was the very least of him.

In the phrase ' human being,' the word 'being' is much more important than the word 'human.'

How can you be that which you possess? You cannot be the horse and rider at the same time. Herein lies the secret of mortality and immortality.

This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul, or myself. By which words I do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived; for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived.

I probably just want to leave a trace of myself behind in this world.

I desire therefore I exist.

But the point is, now, at this moment, or any moment, we're only cross-sections of our real selves. What we really are is the whole stretch of ourselves, all our time, and when we come to the end of this life, all those selves, all our time, will be us - the real you, the real me. And then perhaps we'll find ourselves in another time, which is only another kind of dream.

I believe that nothing that is real can pass away.

Important thing is not the me that's lying here, but the me that's sitting on the edge of the bed looking back at me, and the me that's downstairs cooking supper, or out in the garage under the car, or in the library reading. All the new parts, they count. I'm not really dying today. No person ever died that had a family.