Quotes about Being

What thou art, that thou art.

You have to 'be'' before you can 'do', and do before you can 'have'.

There is a huge difference between being bound in relationship by the joy of love, and being tied up in obligation and guilt.

Human nature is not an empty notion, no purely abstract conception, but a reality, a particular manner of being, which includes distinctive habits, inclinations, and attributes.

The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity. This Word manifests itself in every creature.

If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.

What we do is not as important as what we are. Our functionalistic modern society tends to reduce our being to our function. What is the first question we ask about someone? "What does he do?" But love never asks that question first. The first question for love is always "Who are you?" rather than "What do you do?" Being is prior to doing, and love's realism refuses to reverse that real order.

Heidegger says that "the fundamental question of metaphysics" is "why is there anything at all rather than nothing?" The fundamental question is not, as Plato thought, "what" a thing is (every Platonic dialogue is about that, about an essence, a definition, a concept, such as justice or piety or learning) but why it exists, why anything exists. Plato never asked that ultimate question. And the answer is God.

The universe is the sum total of all these moving things, however many there are. The whole universe is in the process of change. But we have already seen that change in any being requires an outside force to actualize it. Therefore, there is some force outside (in addition to) the universe, some real being transcendent to the universe. This is one of the things meant by God.

All that exists is metaphysically true and metaphysically good.

This is what God did in the Incarnation. Being became a being, the Subject became an object, God became a man, I AM became a He.

best to be who you is. What you is deep down inside. Ain't no other good way of livin'.