Essence quotes
1.9K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"..people are working harder than ever, but because they lack clarity and vision, they aren’t getting very far. They, in essence, are pushing a rope...with all of their might."
"Oh you, unceasing sun, to me Your particles communicate The luminous essence of God, Are you our God? I do not know. Intoxicated, I say nought, Bewitched by the magic potion. I cannot differentiate Between my drunk and sober state."
"Why am I seeking? I am the same as he. His essence speaks through me. I have been looking for myself"
"The essence of being human is that, in the brief moment we exist on this spinning planet, we can love some persons and some things, in spite of the fact that time and death will ultimately claim us all."
"True literature is more than just a story someone has told. It must provide the reader with the essence of the world on a moral, philosophical and emotional level."
"Criticism is the essence of creation."
"The essence of the free press is the reliable, reasonable and moral nature of freedom."
"The True is the whole. But the whole is nothing other than the essence consummating itself through its development. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, that only in the end is it what it truly is; and that precisely in this consists its nature, viz. to be actual, subject, the spontaneous becoming of itself."
"The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the shadow of cosmic boredom."
"When public virtue is gone, when the national spirit is fled the republic is lost in essence, though it may still exist in form"
"The threat to man does not come in the first instance from the potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already affected man in his essence. The rule of Enframing threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth"
"Overcoming negative tendencies and enhancing positive potential are the very essence of the spiritual path."
"As animals, we walk the earth. As bearers of divine essence, we are among the stars. As human beings, we are caught in the middle, seeking to reconcile the paradox of how to make our way upon earth while striving for something more permanent and more profound."
"To know another human being in their essence, you don’t really need to know anything about them - their past, their history, their story. We confuse knowing about with a deeper knowing that is non-conceptual. Knowing about and knowing are totally different modalities. One is concerned with form, the other with the formless. One operates through thought, the other through stillness."
"Something inside you emerges....an innate, indwelling peace, stillness, aliveness. It is the unconditioned, who you are in your essence. It is what you had been looking for in the love object. It is yourself."
"The essence of management is to make knowledge productive."
"Before you can live anything, in what you are calling physical manifestation - you have to have conjured it in vibrational form. You have to have imagined it before it can become a reality. Everything that you are living here in this physical body, you have imagined the essence of it before you are living it."
"Desire is the very essence of man"
"I tried to stay away from the Euro beats, and not go totally pop. Instead, I wanted to take the Quincy Jones approach. The record pays homage to the Stevie Wonders, the Michael Jacksons, the Sam Cookes. I wanted to put that classic essence of R&B and soul with the new age of music now. There’s a lot of live instruments, and a lot less Auto-Tune. I really wanted to demonstrate my vocal ability, creating the vibe of me singing along with a band."
"There is no longer a single idea explaining everything, but an infinite number of essences giving a meaning to an infinite number of objects. The world comes to a stop, but also lights up."
