Life and Existence

Look thy last on all things lovely.

He told me … that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found by long experience was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness.

They go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.

The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale.

However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead.

However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead.

With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.

From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.

There is grandeur in this view of life.

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

… Nessun maggior dolore,

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita.

i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more.

An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last instalment missing.

An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last instalment missing.

Behind a frowning providence

God moves in a mysterious way

We perished, each alone:

Do your duty, and leave the outcome to the Gods.

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

The horror! The horror!

I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections.

These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife.

The primary imagination I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.