100 Best Metaphysical Quotes From Philosophy And Literature

Rajnandini Roychoudhury
Dec 12, 2023 By Rajnandini Roychoudhury
Originally Published on Mar 11, 2021
Edited by Jacob Fitzbright
Statue of Aristotle in Olympiada village, Halkidiki, Greece.

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy which explores an area which isn't tangible.

It explores the area of thoughts and the dynamics between mind and matter. With the help of this study, one tries to decipher and goes into the depths of abstract concepts.

In the seventeenth century, metaphysical poets emerged in the history of English literature. In philosophy, the roots of metaphysics lie in the 1st century BCE with Aristotle.

If you like this, check out John Donne quotes and Allegory of the Cave quotes.

Famous Metaphysical Quotes

These inspirational quotes and metaphysical quotes are what you may want to read today.

1. "If things do not turn out as we wish, we should wish for them as they turn out."

- Aristotle.

2. "A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties."

-Karl Marx.

3. "All that we see is but a dream within a dream."

- Edgar Allan Poe.

4. "I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy next to me."

-Woody Allen.

5. "A poet without love were a physical and metaphysical impossibility."

-John Keats

6. "Really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery - the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets."

-Alan Watts.

7. "Mystery is what makes practicing magick so powerful."

-Alex Kazemi.

8. "I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream."

-Vincent van Gogh.

9."No man is an island, entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."

-John Donne.

10. "Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in an hour of anguish, are like playthings by the bedside of a child deathly sick."

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

11. "The sun doth shake

Light from his locks, and, all the way

Breathing perfumes, doth spice the day."

-Henry Vaughan.

12. "A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed."

-Rene Descartes.

13. "Or, if you like, we may say that determinism is the thesis that only one continuation of the state of things at a given moment is consistent with the laws of nature."

-Peter Van Inwagen.

14. "I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling."

-T.S. Eliot.

15. "Probably, as in all metaphysical questions, both are true: Life is or has meaning and meaninglessness."

- C.G. Jung.

Metaphysical Inspirational Quotes

These inspirational quotes and metaphysical quotes which you know will elevate your day.

16. "The universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are."

- Jalaluddin Rumi.

17. "If you feel like you don't fit into the world you inherited it is because you were born to help create a new one."

- Ross Caligiuri.

18. "Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest."

- Friedrich Nietzsche.

19. "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed."

-Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier.

20. "The main feature should be the teaching of principles through stories. Don't make it metaphysical at all."

-Swami Vivekananda.

21. "From a pure metaphysical perspective, there is no world outside ourselves."

- Marianne Williamson.

22."Even if things do not work out as you thought they should for you, they do - in their own way, as they were meant to."

-Fakeer Ishavardas.

23. "I believe that Spirit is raised to its highest level, when individuals gather with wisdom, compassion and a discerning desire to provide service to humanity."

-Kala Ambrose.

24. "Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail."

-John Donne.

25. “Feet sandaled with dreams tread paths of vision leading to wisdom’s sharp peaks.”

-Aberjhani.

26. "Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."

- Carl Jung.

27. "The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once."

- Rene Descartes.

28. "It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.”

-Alfred North Whitehead.

29. "Dada was an extreme protest against the physical side of painting. It was a metaphysical attitude."

-Marcel Duchamp.

30. "It's like doughnut holes. Whether you take a doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit."

― Haruki Murakami.

Metaphysical Quotes On Love

Metaphysical love quotes are going to take you on inspirational heights. You know it to be true - such an inspirational side is important to look forward!

31. "Let us band together as Humans, with love for all of humanity, living each day in harmony as we explore our spirit."

-Kala Ambrose.

32. "For it is from love that we are born. And to love that we must return. This is the journey of the soul we call Life."

-Michael J. Tamura.

33. "Love is metaphysical gravity."

-Richard Bookminster Fuller.

34. "You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean."

-Alan Watts.

35. "Fate and metaphysical aid doth seem to have thee crown'd."

-William Shakespeare.

36. "Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time."

-John Donne.

37. "Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart."

-Carl Jung.

38. "One may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions."

- Arthur Koestler.

39. "All these stand open, or I have the keyes:

Yet I love thee.."

-George Herbert.

40. "My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires, and more slow. "

-Andrew Marvell.

41. "Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind."

-Bertrand Russell.

42. "He that loves a rosy cheek,

Or a coral lip admires,

Or, from star-like eyes, doth seek

Fuel to maintain his fires;"

-Thomas Carew.

43. "To the dull angry World let's prove

There's a Religion in our Love."

-Katherine Philips.

44. "A miracle is a shift in perception from fear to love."

-Marianne Williamson.

45. "If our two loves are one, or thou and I

Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die."

-John Donne.

Metaphysical Jesus Quotes

Inspirational metaphysical quotes that every person you know would love.

46. "God Father (the Creator) geometrizes, God Mother (Nature) fractalizes."

- Stefan Emunds.

47. "The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity. "

-Alan Watts.

48. "I teach metaphysics and pastor a church."

-Della Reese.

49. "Study the Bible like a soldier on a mission, not a scholar on a sabbatical."

-Mark Driscoll.

50. "God is not only something metaphysical, but also the physical world."

-Jeffrey R. Anderson.

51. "God clothed Himself in vile man’s flesh, that so He might be weak enough to suffer woe."

-John Donne.

52. “I believe that what people call God is something in all of us."

-John Lennon.

53. "There is in God - some say -

A deep, but dazzling darkness; as men here

Say it is late and dusky, because they

See not all clear."

-Henry Vaughan.

54. "The human being is not the lord of beings, but the shepherd of Being."

- Martin Heidegger.

55. "To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential to being a sound, believing Christian."

-David Hume.

56. "And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence."

-Bertrand Russell.

57. "This religion and the Bible require of woman everything, and give her nothing. They ask her support and her love, and repay her with contempt and oppression."

-Helen H. Gardener.

58. "While that my soul repairs to her devotion,

Here I intomb my flesh, that it betimes

May take acquaintance of this heap of dust;"

-George Herbert.

59. “When a man is willing and eager, the Gods join in.”

-Aeschylus.

60. "Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right, By these we reach divinity."

-John Donne.

Metaphysical Philosophy Quotes

These inspirational quotes are going to brighten your day.

61. "You are the author of your life. So please don’t let anyone including yourself make you think otherwise."

-Iva Kenaz.

62. "Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."

-Carl Sagan.

63. "It only takes one person, one voice from somewhere beyond, to save a life."

- Kirsten Arcadio.

64. "If you say morality is just what you like, you lose the metaphysical level of what in the history of philosophy is called 'categorical imperative.'"

- Emir Kusturica.

65. "Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck."

-Immanuel Kant.

66. "As I already explaned, I don't have any form. I'm a conceptual metaphysical object."

-Haruki Murakami.

67. "Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way."

-Alan Watts.

68. "By working with one's own dream images and learning how to interpret them, a dreamer is unlocking the treasure box of insight, guidance, and transformation.”

-Teresa Decicco.

69. "Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man."

- Martin Heidegger.

70. “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

-Bertrand Russell.

71. "The most fatal blow to progress is slavery of the intellect."

-Helen H. Gardener.

72. "It is a profoundly erroneous truism that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case."

-Alfred North Whitehead.

73. "At some point, for all eternity, there will be no more unmerited suffering: this present darkness, "the age of evil", will eventually be remembered as a brief flicker at the beginning of human history."

-Peter Van Inwagen.

74. "When spiritual, metaphysical, material, or immaterial events come into my life, I can only fix them by way of painting."

-Max Beckmann.

75. "That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise."

-David Hume.

Metaphysical Motivational Quotes

Inspirational quotes and metaphysical quotes that will be the highlight of your day.

76. "Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage; the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage."

-Auguste Comte.

77. "Human rebellion ends in metaphysical revolution. It progresses from appearances to acts, from the dandy to the revolutionary."

-Albert Camus.

78. "For every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together."

- Alan Watts.

79. "Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system."

-Aldous Huxley.

80. “If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.”

-Amit Ray.

81. "Religion, which true policy befriends,

Designed by God to serve man's noblest ends,

Is by that old deceiver's subtle play."

-Katherine Philips.

82. "You certainly wouldn’t want to invest much time in an argument with someone who would believe it in the first place."

-Peter van Inwagen.

83. "We can speak and think only of what exists. And what exists is uncreated and imperishable for it is whole and unchanging and complete."

-Parmenides.

84. "For the Cro-Magnons, space is a metaphysical arena of continually intermittent appearances and disappearances."

-John Berger.

85. "World War II was a trauma that paralysed writers. It was something metaphysical, diabolical."

- A. B. Yehoshua.

Hand-picked Metaphysical Quotes

Metaphysical words that  are extremely inspirational which will make your day.

86. "Metaphysics is a restaurant where they gives you a thirty thousand page menu and no food."

-Robert M. Pirsig.

87. "Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently."

-Jean Cocteau.

88. "You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself."

-Alan Watts.

89. "Whose life is truer, the rational man of action pursuing practical goals of personal happiness and wealth or the philosophic man who lives in a world of theoretical and metaphysical ideas?"

-Kilroy J. Oldster.

90. "Spirit does not exist in just one location; rather it is all encompassing, living within and amongst us in each moment, thought and action."

-Kala Ambrose.

91. “Spiritual dreams are meant to comfort us during difficult times, show us how much we have grown, and encourage us to go to a higher level.”

-Pamela Cummins.

92. “To walk the spiritual path is to continually step out into the unknown.”

-Wallace Huey.

93. "For each inclosed spirit is a star

Enlightening his own little sphere."

-Henry Vaughan.

94. "A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker."

-David Hume.

95. "Wise poets that wrapt Truth in tales,

Knew her themselves through all her veils."

-Thomas Carew.

96. "For the metaphysical term 'will' we may in these instances safely substitute the chemical term 'photochemical action of light. "

-Jacques Loeb.

97. "Once you make a decision, it work around that decision."

-Deepak Chopra.

98. "A metaphysical tour de force of untethered meaning and involuting interlocking contrapuntal rhythms, 'The Clock' is more than a movie or even a work of art."

-Jerry Saltz.

99. "By then running had entered the realm of the metaphysical."

-Haruki Murakami.

100. "I think in metaphysics terms, I would call that the increasing speed of the vibration in life."

-Neale Donald Walsch.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for metaphysical quotes then why not take a look at law of attraction quotes and manifestation quotes.

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Written by Rajnandini Roychoudhury

Bachelor of Arts specializing in English, Master of Arts specializing in English

Rajnandini Roychoudhury picture

Rajnandini RoychoudhuryBachelor of Arts specializing in English, Master of Arts specializing in English

With a Master of Arts in English, Rajnandini has pursued her passion for the arts and has become an experienced content writer. She has worked with companies such as Writer's Zone and has had her writing skills recognized by publications such as The Telegraph. Rajnandini is also trilingual and enjoys various hobbies such as music, movies, travel, philanthropy, writing her blog, and reading classic British literature. 

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