Existential Meaning Quotes

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

Obviously you live life for yourself and have your choice to believe what you want to believe in, but I know that the Bible can be used to appreciate life.

I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.

If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.

'Emptiness' means empty of a separate self. It is full of everything, full of life. The word emptiness should not scare us. It is a wonderful word. To be empty does not mean non-existent. Emptiness is the ground of everything. Thanks to emptiness, everything is possible.

In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

We exist in order to actualize the deepest desires of our hearts.

What is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of any creature? To know the answer to this question means to be religious. You ask: Does it make any sense, then, to pose this question? I answer: The man who regards his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life.

What is a god? A god is a personification of a motivating power of a value system that functions in human life and in the universe.

To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love.

Philosophy... is the creative perception by the spirit of the meaning of human existence.

All men know the utility of useful things; but they do not know the utility of futility.

What a man wants with religion in these breadless times, surpasses my comprehension.

Every single human soul has more meaning and value than the whole of history.

I don't know anything about god except that it's not me. So, somewhere between that acceptance and doing my homework and being competitive and having ambition and loving my job and observing and reflecting my society, that's where I find the purpose. Because man needs purpose.

It's what I was born for, isn't it? If I don't go, why am I alive?

Well, while I'm here I'll do the work — and what's the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow.

Those who have a why to live for can bear almost any how. The necessary premise is that a person is somehow more than his or her "characteristics," all the emotions, strivings, tastes, and constructions which it pleases us to call "My Life." We have grounds to hope that a Life is something more than a cloud of particles, mere facticity. Go through what is comprehensible and you conclude that only the incomprehensible gives any light.

Purpose is a man-made fiction. Nobody on their deathbed gets a plaque that says "he focused on only one thing for his entire life!" Those are counterfeit thoughts in a counterfeit society.

I think human beings must have faith or must look for faith, otherwise our life is empty, empty. To live and not to know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why there are stars in the sky. You must know why you are alive, or else everything is nonsense, just blowing in the wind.

You need a purpose to express yourself, but that expression is its own purpose.

I'm hoping what all sentient beings hope ... that somehow I'm part of something larger than myself, in which I play a role, an actual role that is somehow intended and meaningful.

People must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have a purpose larger than themselves. We are obligated by the deepest drives of the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here.

Your soul suffers if you live superficially.