Eternal Questions Quotes & Sayings

Millions of books written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds and in the end, none of them knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do ... I read Socrates. This guy knocked off little Greek boys. What the Hell's he got to teach me? And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we lived we're gonna live over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. It's not worth it. And Freud, another great pessimist. I was in analysis for years and nothing happened. My poor analyst got so frustrated, the guy finally put in a salad bar. Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer. — Woody Allen

I met an old lady once, almost a hundred years old, and she told me, 'There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge? — Elizabeth Gilbert

With the passage of days in this godly isolation [desert], my heart grew calm. It seemed to fill with answers. I did not ask questions any more; I was certain. Everything - where we came from, where we are going, what our purpose is on earth - struck me as extremely sure and simple in this God-trodden isolation. Little by little my blood took on the godly rhythm. Matins, Divine Liturgy, vespers, psalmodies, the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening, the constellations suspended like chandeliers each night over the monastery: all came and went, came and went in obedience to eternal laws, and drew the blood of man into the same placid rhythm. I saw the world as a tree, a gigantic poplar, and myself as a green leaf clinging to a branch with my slender stalk. When God's wind blew, I hopped and danced, together with the entire tree. — Nikos Kazantzakis

When compared to eternal verities, most of the questions and concerns of daily living are really rather trivial. What should we have for dinner? What color should we paint the living room? Should we sign Johnny up for soccer? These questions and countless others like them lose their significance when times of crisis arise, when loved ones are hurt or injured, when sickness enters the house of good health, when life's candle dims and darkness threatens. Our thoughts become focused, and we are easily able to determine what is really important and what is merely trivial. — Thomas S. Monson

She will try to find the nice way to exercise intelligence. But intelligence is not ladylike. Intelligence is full of excesses. Rigorous intelligene abhors sentimentality, and women must be sentimental to value the dreadful silliness of the men around them. Morbid intelligence abhors the cheery sunlight of positive thinking and eternal sweetness; and women must be sunlight and cheery and sweet, or the woman could not bribe her way with smiles through a day. Wild intelligence abhors any narrow world; and the world of women must stay narrow, or the woman is an outlaw. No woman could be Nietzsche or Rimbaud without ending up in a whorehouse or lobotomized. Any vital intelligence has passionate questions, aggressive answers; but women cannot be explorers; there can be no Lewis or Clark of the female mind. — Andrea Dworkin

Stop trying to make this life into what it cannot and never was intended to be: jennah. Only then will it stop breaking your heart. — Yasmin Mogahed

I have heard from my father and mother all the answers that faith in God could offer to those who doubt and search for the truth. In our home and in many other homes the eternal questions were more actual than the latest news in the Yiddish newspaper. In spite of all the disenchantments and all my skepticism I believe that the nations can learn much from those Jews, their way of thinking, their way of bringing up children, their finding happiness where others see nothing but misery and humiliation. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wonder meets it. That the starry vault shall surcharge the heart with all rapturous marvelings, is only because we ourselves are greater miracles, and superber trophies than all the stars in universal space. — Herman Melville

It is not the nature of love to force a relationship, but it is the nature of love to open the way. — Wm. Paul Young

I attribute that to the generosity of people that are in the entertainment business because they are all struggling. All roads seem to come to acting, for certain kinds of people that have a reason for being there. They want to be seen and heard, but there's more to it than that. There's a kindred spirit of struggling to find out, "What is this thing? What are we?" It's those eternal questions. But, in the meanwhile, I've met some wonderful people doing this. — Lance Henriksen

Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but rather, a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases
which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Freedom, inefficiency, and prosperity are not in it frequently found together, and it is seldom easy to distinguish between the first two. — Edmund S. Morgan

It began with your eyes cast down, and mine looking right at you,
I watched you rule out hundreds of questions and accept only mine. I poured my stories into your eager heart, and you sparked faith inside the stubbornness of mine. Our beginning was written in the stars - how could it not be? — Emalynne Wilder

All my life, until today, I have been content to ask questions. All the while knowing that the real questions, those that concern the creator and his creation, have no answers. I'll go even farther and say that there is a level at which only the questions are eternal, the answers never are. And so, the patient that I am, more charitable, repeats: 'Since God is, He is to be found in the questions as well as in the answers. — Elie Wiesel

Purpose in the suffering

A crisis-- the kind that knocks the wind out of ya, the kind that makes your blood run cold and alters your perception of all you think your reality "is," THAT kind of crisis brings us not only to our knees, but smack-dab with every question we've ever pondered on God's existence. There is purpose in the suffering. It MAKES us ask eternal questions with eternal answers. Often that's what it takes to wake us up. The suffering is actually merciful, from a God who would literally do ANYTHING to get us to run into His arms. — Carrie Lynn Jones

There are those who condemn five in midfield as a negative tactic, but when a side's centre-backs are as hapless as Chris Perry and Hermann Hreidarsson were on Sunday, it is not nearly negative enough. — Matthew Engel

Every generation has underestimated the potential for finding new ideas ... Possibilities do not add up. They multiply. — Paul Romer

I'm really no different than anybody else; except that sometimes I get my name in the paper. — Bobby Orr

Looking at Death, is Dying - ... — Emily Dickinson

Everything you assumed is no longer valid. — Brandon Sanderson

Fauve clenched her fists and bounded up from her bed, her gloom vanished in a rush of combat, which translated itself into the one eternal question which can make any female creature forget even such profound questions as the brevity of youth, the fleetingness of time.
What was she going to wear ? — Judith Krantz

Of the eternal questions, nothing else: is there a God, is there immortality? And those who do not believe in God will talk of socialism or anarchy, of the transformation of all humanity on a new pattern, which all comes to the same thing, they're the same questions turned inside out. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I don't think anyone is qualified to answer questions of eternal fate definitively, much less pinpoint it to a given day. — Jon Meacham

Religion will always have a future because it is an expression of the profound search for the meaning of life and a consequence of introspection and encounters with Him. As long as life continues to be a mystery and man wonders who created the natural order - while those questions, which I believe will be eternal, persist - the concept of religion will endure as a manifestation of the urgent calling to understand who we are. — Abraham Skorka

And then there are the eternal questions of love and sex. Can there be friendship between men and women as long as the hormones rage and rule? How is sex related to love
and love to sex? Are we truly pigeonholed in our sexuality
or does society alone insist on this? What is 'straight'? What is 'gay'? What is 'bi'? And does any of it matter deep in one's soul? Shouldn't we get rid of these labels in an attempt to be really open to ourselves and to each other? — Erica Jong

The whole image is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. That's the message we're brought up with, isn't it? Believe or die! Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options. — Bill Hicks

Men have differed in opinion, and been divided into parties by these opinions, from the first origin of societies; and in all governments where they have been permitted freely to think and to speak. the same political parties which now agitate the U.S. have existed through all time. Whether the power of the people, or that of the (best men; nobles) should prevail, were questions which kept the states of Greece and rome in eternal convulsions ... — Thomas Jefferson

From time to time, ask yourself these questions: "Am I ready to meet my Maker?" "Am I worthy of all the blessings He has in store for His faithful children?" "Have I received my endowment and sealing ordinances of the temple?" "Have I remained faithful to my covenants?" "Have I qualified for the greatest of all God's blessings-the blessing of eternal life." — Russell M. Nelson

Eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions god's infinite love. — Bill Hicks

We have to discard the past / and, as one builds / floor by floor, window by window, / and the building rises, / so do we keep shedding - first, broken tiles, / then proud doors ... and each new day / gleams / like an empty / plate. — Pablo Neruda

It's different for other people; but we in our green youth have to settle the eternal questions first of all. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

To an omniscient being, nothing in all of Creation can be original, fashionable, or even distinct, as every event, thought, action, adventure and discovery is occurring simultaneously in one stretched-out moment. To be omniscient means to have never felt even the slightest twang of curiosity, for there can be no unexpected twists if every outcome to every drama and experiment is already known. Without the capacity for curiosity it is, therefore, impossible for the omniscient being to be interested in anything, let alone be attentive to His own pleasure, as pleasure is inaccessible if all of Creation is, from His great perspective, perfectly flat and of a uniform temperature. — John Zande

There are two distinct methods of interpreting the Quran. The first, tafsir, is primarily concerned with elucidating the literal meaning of the text, while the second, ta'wil, is more concerned with the hidden, esoteric meaning of the Quran. Tafsir answers questions of context and chronology, providing an easily understandable framework for Muslims to live a righteous life. Ta'wil delves into the concealed message of the text, which, because of its mystical nature, is comprehensible only to a select few. While both are considered equally valid approaches, the tension between tafsir and ta'wil is but one of the inevitable consequences of trying to interpret an eternal and uncreated scripture that is nevertheless firmly grounded in a specific historical context. For — Reza Aslan

Whitby's often silent, and when he speaks his questions and concerns do nothing to alleviate the pressure of that gloom, the sense of intent eternal and everlasting that occupies this stretch of land, that predates Area X. The still, standing water, the oppressive blackness of a sky in which the blue peers down through the trees at startling intervals, only to be taken away again, and only ever seeming to come to you from a thousand miles off anyway. — Jeff VanderMeer

At some point, I had to make a decision: I could practice more and become a really great guitar player or I could work on writing better songs. There are only so many hours in the day, and I found writing songs more fulfilling than working on becoming this virtuoso guitar player. — James Iha

The Bible, as a revelation from God, was not designed to give us all the information we might desire, nor to solve all the questions about which the human soul is perplexed, but to impart enough to be a safe guide to the haven of eternal rest. — Albert Barnes

Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out; — Thomas More

Unlike television, nature does not steal time; it amplifies it. Nature offers healing for a child living in a destructive family or neighborhood. — Richard Louv

I believe in the pursuit of happiness. Not its attainment, nor its final definition, but its pursuit. I believe in the journey, not the arrival; in conversation, not monologues; in multiple questions rather than any single answer. I believe in the struggle to remake ourselves and challenge each other in the spirit of eternal forgiveness, in the awareness that none of us knows for sure what happiness truly is, but each of us knows the imperative to keep searching. I believe in the possibility of surprising joy, of serenity through pain, of homecoming through exile. — Andrew Sullivan

I cannot really play. Either at piano or at life; never, never have I been able to. I have always been too hasty, too impatient; something always intervenes and breaks it up. But who really knows how to play, and if he does know, what good is it to him? Is the great dark less dark for that, are the unanswerable questions less inscrutable, does the pain of despair at eternal inadequacy burn less fiercely, and can life ever be explained and seized and ridden like a tamed horse or is it always a mighty sail that carries us in the storm and, when we try to seize it, sweep us into the deep? Sometimes there is a hole in me that seems to extend to the center of the earth. What could fill it? Yearning? Dispair? Happiness? What happiness? Fatigue? Resignation? Death? What am I alive for? Yes, for what am I alive? — Erich Maria Remarque

I'm really intrigued by those eternal questions of creation and belief and faith. I don't care who you are, it's what we all think about. It's in the back of all our minds. — Ridley Scott

I cannot too greatly emphasize the importance and value of Bible study - more important than ever before in these days of uncertainties, when men and woman are apt to decide questions from the standpoint of expediency rather than the eternal principles laid down by God, Himself. — John Wanamaker