Life is whole only when it isn't subordinate to a specific object that exceeds it. In this way, the essence of entirety is freedom.
Strip away all the assumptions about what competition is supposed to do, all the claims in its behalf that we accept and repeat reflexively. What you have left is the essence of the concept: mutually exclusive goal attainment (MEGA). One person succeeds only if another does not. From this uncluttered perspective, it seems clear right away that something is drastically wrong with such an arrangement. How can we do our best when we are spending our energies trying to make others lose--and fearing that they will make us lose?
Another very strong image from the first day was giving my initial press conference in the morning - going down and finding out that everything I had said, the essence of what I had said, was wrong.
To deceive gracefully is the very essence of social life. One must start by deceiving oneself, and make a lifelong practice of deceiving others; if one does it well enough, in time one might even become an artist, the greatest illusionists of all.
The essence of man is not what he is, but in what he is able to be.
Zen, like life, defies exact definition, but its essence is the experience, moment by moment, of our own existence -- a natural, spontaneous encounter, unclouded by the suppositions and expectations that come between us and reality. It is, if you like, a paring down of life until we see it as it really is, free from our illusions; it is merely a divestment of ourselves until we recognize our own true nature.
Man you can define; but the true essence of any man, say, for instance, of Abraham Lincoln, remains the endlessly elusive and mysterious object of the biographer's interest, of the historian's comments, of popular legend, and of patriotic devotion.
You're not a person. We take that form. We're an essence. We're an awareness of God's. We're made up of countless, countless realities.
The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him. The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him.
Pursuit and seduction are the essence of sexuality. It's part of the sizzle.
. . . the essence of the evil government is that it anticipates bad conduct on the part of its citizens. Any government which assumes that the population is going to do something evil has already lost its franchise to govern.
The inability to stop is the essence of what addiction is,. . . my favorite drug was more and all.
To maintain the PPC Balance, the balance between the golden egg (production) and the health and welfare of the goose (production capability) is often a difficult judgment call. But I suggest it is the very essence of effectiveness.
Love in its essence is spiritual fire.
If you distill the essence of everything, what life is about, every single one of us is given a short moment in time on this planet, and we all have one universal need and desire, and that is to be loved and to love.
I could never be French, I could never become German - I shall always remain American - the essence which is in me is American mysticism just as Davies declared it when he saw those first landscapes.
The essence of Taoism is really expressed by these few words. Taoism is the way of the child, the way of the fool, the way of someone who doesn't need to be noticed.
In essence, the stock market represents three separate categories of business. They are, adjusted for inflation, those with shrinking intrinsic value, those with approximately stable intrinsic value, and those with steadily growing intrinsic value. The preference, always, would be to buy a long-term franchise at a substantial discount from growing intrinsic value.
My definition of God is: the ever-present essence of love.
Once there is a certain degree of Presence, of still and alert attention in human beings' perceptions, they can sense the divine life essence, the one indwelling consciousness or spirit in every creature, every life-form, recognize it as one with their own essence and so love it as themselves. Until this happens, however, most humans see only the outer forms, unaware of the inner essence, just as they are unaware of their own essence and identify only with their own physical and psychological form.