Metaphysics Quotes

“A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.”
― H.L. Mencken

“The death of a dream can in fact serve as the vehicle that endows it with new form, with reinvigorated substance, a fresh flow of ideas, and splendidly revitalized color. In short, the power of a certain kind of dream is such that death need not indicate finality at all but rather signify a metaphysical and metaphorical leap forward.”
― Author-Poet Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams

“Love taught me to die with dignity that I might come forth anew in splendor. Born once of flesh, then again of fire, I was reborn a third time to the sound of my name humming haikus in heaven’s mouth.”
― Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams

“One can never "fall" in love, you must rise to it's level of consciousness. Love is not a feeling, it's a state of MIND!”
― T.C. Carrier

“One possibility is: God is nothing but the power of the universe to organize itself.”
― Lee Smolin

“Change happens very slow and very sudden.”
― Dorothy Bryant, The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You

“How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask-half our great theological and metaphysical problems-are like that.”
― C.S. Lewis

“You are as prone to love, as the sun is to shine.”
― Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations

“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”
― Benjamin Disraeli

“…every feeling is the perception of a truth...”
― Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding

“Can all this just be an accident? Or could there be some alien intelligence behind it?”
― Gene Rodenberry

“My religion is to live - and die - without regret.”
― Milarepa

“One can ask why the I has to appear in the cogito {Descartes’ argument “I think therefore I am.}, since the cogito, if used rightly, is the awareness of pure consciousness, not directed at any fact or action. In fact the I is not necessary here, since it is never united directly to consciousness. One can even imagine a pure and self-aware consciousness which thinks of itself as impersonal spontaneity.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Attaining consciousness is connected with the gradual liberation from mechanicalness, for man is fully and completely under mechanical laws.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way: An Arrangement by Subject of Verbatim Extracts from the Records of Ouspensky's Meetings in London and New York, 1921-46

“Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible.”
― Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics and Other Essays

“Life is not a fairground, but a school. -- Franz Bardon”
― Franz Bardon

“Q. But it seems to me there are circumstances that simply induce one to have negative emotions!

A. This is one of the worst illusions we have. We think that negative emotions are produced by circumstances, whereas all negative emotions are in us, inside us. This is a very important point. We always think our negative emotions are produced by the fault of other people or by the fault of circumstances. We always think that. Our negative emotions are in ourselves and are produced by ourselves. There is absolutely not a single unavoidable reason why somebody else's action or some circumstance should produce a negative emotion in me. It is only my weakness. No negative emotion can be produced by external causes if we do not want it. We have negative emotions because we permit them, justify them, explain them by external causes, and in this way we do not struggle with them.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way: An Arrangement by Subject of Verbatim Extracts from the Records of Ouspensky's Meetings in London and New York, 1921-46

“Origin of man now proved.—Metaphysics must flourish.—He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.”
― Charles Darwin, Notebooks

“[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.”
― Samuel Butler

“The person who wishes to attain human perfection should study logic first, next mathematics, then physics, and, lastly, metaphysics.”
― Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed

“There's a limit to my patience with anything that smacks of metaphysics. I squirm at the mention of "mind expansion" or "warm healing energy." I don't like drum circles, public nudity or strangers touching my feet.”
― Koren Zailckas, Fury: A Memoir

“God who gave Animals self motion beyond our understanding is without doubt able to implant other principles of motion in bodies [which] we may understand as little. Some would readily grant this may be a Spiritual one; yet a mechanical one might be showne, did not I think it better to pass it by.”
― Isaac Newton, The Correspondence of Isaac Newton: Published for the Royal Society. VOLUMES 1 through 7

“Many things are mechanical and should remain mechanical. But mechanical thoughts, mechanical feelings—that is what has to be studied and can and should be changed. Mechanical thinking is not worth a penny. You can think about many things mechanically, but you will get nothing from it.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way: An Arrangement by Subject of Verbatim Extracts from the Records of Ouspensky's Meetings in London and New York, 1921-46

“We often think we express negative emotions, not because we cannot help it, but because we should express them.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way: An Arrangement by Subject of Verbatim Extracts from the Records of Ouspensky's Meetings in London and New York, 1921-46

“...The spiritual Oriental teachers say a person has three forms of mind,'' Beatrice was explaining to him once, while they were on break between one lesson and another at university, ''which are the dense mind, the subtle level and the ultra-subtle mind. Primary Consciousness, or the dense mind, is that existential, Sartrean mind which is related to our senses and so it is guided directly by human primitive instincts; in Sanskrit, this is referred to as ālaya-vijñāna which is directly tied to the brain. The subtle mind comes into effect when we begin to be aware of our true nature or that which in Sanskrit is called Ātman or self-existent essence that eventually leads us to the spiritual dimension. Ultimately there is the Consciousness-Only or the Vijñapti-Mātra, an ultra-subtle mind which goes beyond what the other two levels of mind can fabricate, precisely because this particular mind is not a by-product of the human brain but a part of the Cosmic Consciousness of the Absolute, known in Sanskrit as Tathāgatagarbha, and it is at this profound level of Consciousness that we are able to achieve access to the Divine Wisdom and become one with it in an Enlightened State.''

''This spiritual subject really fascinates me,'' the Professor would declare, amazed at the extraordinary knowledge that Beatrice possessed.''

''In other words, a human being recognises itself from its eternal essence and not from its existence,'' Beatrice replied, smiling, as she gently touched the tip of his nose with the tip of her finger, as if she was making a symbolic gesture like when children are corrected by their teachers. ''See, here,'' she had said once, pulling at the sleeve of his t-shirt to make him look at her book. ''For example, in the Preface to the 1960 Notes on Dhamma, the Buddhist philosopher from the University of Cambridge, Ñāṇavīra Thera, maintains those that have understood Buddhist teachings have gone way beyond Existential Thought. And on this same theme, the German scholar of Buddhist texts, Edward Conze, said that the possible similarity that exists between Buddhist and Existential Thought lies only on the preliminary level. He said that in terms of the Four Noble Truths, or in Sanskrit Catvāri Āryasatyāni, the Existentialists have only the first, which teaches everything is ill. Of the second - which assigns the origin of ill to craving - they have a very imperfect grasp. As for the third and fourth, which consist of letting go of craving, and the Noble Eightfold Path that leads to liberation from the cycle of rebirth in the form of Nirvāṇa - these are unheard of. Knowing no way out, the Existentialists are manufacturers of their own woes...”
― Anton Sammut, Paceville and Metanoia

“The body is a treacherous friend. Give it its due; no more. Pain and pleasure are transitory; endure all dualities with calmness, trying at the same time to remove yourself beyond their power. Imagination is the door through which disease as well as healing enters. Disbelieve in the reality of sickness even when you are ill; an unrecognized visitor will flee!”
― Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi

“It is true, there could be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed. We behold all things through the human head and cannot cut off this head; while the question nonetheless remains what of the world would still be there if one had cut it off.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“A great physicist is always a metaphysicist as well; he has a higher concept of his knowledge and his task.”
― Ernst Jünger, The Glass Bees

“This cause, therefore, of all existing things cannot be any one of them.”
― Plotinus, The Essential Plotinus

“I should still, paradoxical as it may sound, like to maintain the opposite valuation of the dream in relation to the mysterious foundation of our being, whose phenomena we are. The more aware I become of these omnipotent art impulses in nature, and find in them an ardent longing for illusion and for redemption by illusion, the more I feel compelled to make the metaphysical assumption that the truly existent, the primal Oneness, eternally suffering and contradictory, also needs the delightful vision, the pleasurable illusion for its constant redemption: an illusion that we, utterly caught up in it and consisting of it—as a continuous becoming in time, space and causality, in other words—are required to see as empirical reality.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy