Essence quotes

Essence

1.9K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

1.9K quotes

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Browse quotes that often appear alongside essence — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.

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Essence quotes (page 28 of 97)

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Jack Kerouac Novelist, Poet
Essence

"In our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever...listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, It is all one vast awakened thing. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It's a dream already ended."

Ideas Dream Essence
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Hannah Arendt Philosopher, Political Theorist
Essence

"We are wont to see friendship solely as a phenomenon of intimacy in which the friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands...Thus it is hard for us to understand the political relevance of friendship...But for the Greeks the essence of friendship consisted in discourse...The converse (in contrast to the intimate talk in which individuals speak about themselves), permeated though it may be by pleasure in the friend’s presence, is concerned with the common world."

Heart Political Essence
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Hannah Arendt Philosopher, Political Theorist
Essence

"The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them. And one can debate long and profitably on the rule of Nobody, which is what the political form known as bureau-cracy truly is….we have become very much accustomed by modern psychology and sociology, not to speak of modern bureaucracy, to explaining away the responsibility of the doer for his deed in terms of this or that kind of determinism."

Men Responsibility Essence
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Hannah Arendt Philosopher, Political Theorist
Essence

"Even though we have lost yardsticks by which to measure, and rules under which to subsume the particular, a being whose essence is a beginning may have enough of origin within himself to understand without preconceived categories and to judge without the set of customary rules which is morality."

May Judging Essence
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Fernando Pessoa Poet, Writer
Essence

"Walking on these streets, until the night falls, my life feels to me like the life they have. By day they’re full of meaningless activity; by night, they’re full of meaningless lack of it. By day I am nothing, and by night I am I. There is no difference between me and these streets, save they being streets and I a soul, which perhaps is irrelevant when we consider the essence of things"

Fall Night Essence
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Essence

"If we reverse the outer shell and the essence--in other words, consider the outer shell the essence and the essence only the shell--our lives might be a whole lot easier to understand."

Might Essence Shells
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Essence

"Exerting yourself to the limit over and over again, that is the essence of running. Running is painful, but the pain doesn't leave me, I can take care of it. That agrees with my mentality."

Running Pain Essence
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Margaret Thatcher Politician
Essence

"Let me give you my vision: A man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master. These are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free country, and on that freedom all of our other freedoms depend."

Men Country Essence
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George Bernard Shaw Playwright, Critic
Essence

"What is the matter with universities is that the students are school children, whereas it is of the very essence of university education that they should be adults."

Children School Essence
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Leo Tolstoy Novelist, Philosopher
Essence

"I'll tell you truly: I value my thought and work terribly, but in essence - think about it - this whole world of ours is just a bit of mildew that grew over a tiny planet. And we think we can have something great - thoughts, deeds! They're all grains of sand"

Thinking World Essence
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Leo Tolstoy Novelist, Philosopher
Essence

"The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me?"

Lying Answers Essence
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George Orwell Writer, Journalist
Essence

"The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals."

Love Essence Loyalty
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