Best 642 quotes in «existentialism quotes» category

Slobodan sam: više mi ne ostaje nijedan razlog da živim; svi oni, koje sam prokušao, propali su, a ja ne mogu više zamisliti neke nove. Još sam dosta mlad, imam još dostatno sila da ponovo počnem. Ali što treba ponovo početi?

Sleepless nights Spent looking at the ceiling Searching in those etched patterns For some sort of adhesive To glue together the broken pieces Of a soul crushed By the weight of the fact that Life is profoundly sad.

So I stayed with the old priest who was my teacher, but lots of unanswered questions always came up. Then I thought, “Why don’t you teach me anything?” But my teacher didn’t care. He just lived. He just let me be alive every day.

Solitude removes us from the mindless humdrum of everyday life into a higher consciousness which reconnects us with ourselves and our deepest humanity, and also with the natural world, which quickens into our muse and companion. By setting aside dependent emotions and constraining compromises, we free ourselves up for problem solving, creativity, and spirituality. If we can embrace it, this opportunity to adjust and refine our perspectives creates the strength and security for still greater solitude and, in time, the substance and meaning that guards against loneliness.

Solitude, the joy of being alone, stems from, as well as promotes, a state of maturity and inner richness.

So maybe it’s not sad that Gran lives alone. Maybe it’s a choice. “But what if it never rains again here?” I ask her. She makes a quick face—like a face she might make if I were blowing that whistle right in her ear. Then she says, “I guess I’ll have to take that question one day at a time.

Somebody told me that none of us get to decide where we come from. We only get to decide where we're going.

Some of the greatest tastes in life are acquired (i.e., the taste for classical music, learning, exercise, solitude). A man should set himself out to acquire good taste. Above all, he should first set out to determine just what good taste is. What in the limited time of this limitation in its totality, that I call life, what will be most beneficent to me as Dasein?

Someone's got to do some more research, but I would really like to know: when a CBT therapist really gets distressed, who does he go see?

Sometimes at midnight, in the great silence of the sleep-bound town, the doctor turned on his radio before going to bed for the few hours’ sleep he allowed himself. And from the ends of the earth, across the thousands of miles of land and sea, kindly, well-meaning speakers tried to voice their fellow-feeling, and indeed did so, but at the same time proved the utter incapacity of every man truly to share in suffering that he cannot see.

Sometimes I couldn't figure it out, what all the living was for.

Sometimes it’s like that in life too. We look into a past that no longer exists, looking as if it’s real. We hold onto things in our life that there’s no reason to hold onto anymore because, unlike the stars, they don’t bring us beauty, they bring us pain.

Sometimes I wish I had not woken up from a beautiful dream, and continued dreaming within sleep upon sleep until I become a dream itself. Because sometimes waking up is more frightening than a nightmare.

Somos una errata que ha pasado inadvertida y que hace confuso un texto por lo demás muy claro; el trastocamiento de las líneas de un texto que nos hace cobrar vida de esta manera prodigiosa; o un texto que por estar reflejado en un espejo cobra un sentido totalmente diferente del que en realidad tiene.

Subconsciously, we all want to be nebula... In the end, we’re all connected. We’re all going to become one cloud of light whether you like it or not. We’re all made of the same star dust.

So we must run back and forth between these two suns in our firmament—the presentiment of death and awareness of life—and avoid being transfixed by either of them. If we are lucky in this uncertain middle distance, we may form attachments and projects that enhance the sentiment of life. However, even as we try our luck, death comes to us, and brings our experiment to a end.

Still, somewhere in the depths of ourselves we all harbor an ashamed, unsatisfied melancholy that quietly awaits a funeral.

Suffering makes valid the act of significance in the moment, in the moment we suffer, suffering has total significance. We feel in the act of suffering as if our suffering will never end, as if we had spent an entire life suffering, but all this gives way to a moment in which we do not suffer. Given enough time our suffering becomes insignificant. A person would do well to keep this in mind. They would do even better to take measures to reduce the factors that cause suffering in their lives.

Supposing there is no life everlasting. Think what it means if death is really the end of all things. They've given up all for nothing. They've been cheated. They're dupes." Waddington reflected for a little while. "I wonder if it matters what they have aimed at is illusion. Their lives are in themselves beautiful. I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books the write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.

Superfluity was the only relationship I could establish between these trees, these hedges, these paths. Vainly I strove to compute the number of the chestnut trees, or their distance from the Velleda, or their height as compared with that of the plane trees; each of them escaped from the pattern I made for it, overflowed from it or withdrew. And I too among them, vile, languorous, obscene, chewing the cud of my thoughts, I too was superfluous. [I is you or I or anyone.] Luckily I did not feel it, I only understood it, but I felt uncomfortable because I was afraid of feeling it. . . . I thought vaguely of doing away with myself, to do away with at least one of these superfluous existences. But my death – my corpse, my blood poured out on this gravel, among these plants, in this smiling garden – would have been superfluous as well. I was superfluous to all eternity.

Svaki čovjek mora odlučiti hoće li hodati u svjetlu kreativnog altruizma ili u tami destruktivnog egoizma.

Sure, people can make you happy, but no one can stop you from being happy.

Te leven betekent strikt genomen niets anders dan dag voor dag zelfmoord op te schuiven.

(…) symbolism did not fall out of heaven or rise out of subterranean depths: it was elaborated like language, by the human reality…

Take fireflies for example. Try to imagine their beauty, the evanescent beauty of their lives, which don't even last a week. Female fireflies flash their lights only to have intercourse with the males; males twinkle just to have intercourse with the females. And once their mating has finished, they die. In short, their reproductive instinct is the single, absolute reason for fireflies to live. In that simple instinct and their simple world, no kind of sadness can intervene. This is precisely why fireflies are so fleetingly beautiful.

Tears are a wonderful thing; they wash, they warm, they are the rivers that run through our minds, seeking release. In their salinity they remind us that we came from the sea. Our cells know this, and go about their machinations, ceaselessly recreating the primordial brine. We are water, whether or not the Spirit of God once hovered formless and magnificent above the idea of us, in some ancient place before the Singularity uncoiled itself into space and time.

Thank you, Jesus, for blindness that every once in a great while allows one of us to hit the target.

(...) Tada, ne znam zašto, kao da nešto puknu u meni. Prodereh se iz sveg glasa, ispsovah ga i rekoh neka se ne moli za mene. Zgrabih ga za ovratnik. Istresoh na njega sve što mi je ležalo na srcu koje je igralo od radosti i bijesa. On je baš tako siguran, je li? Pa ipak, cijela ta sigurnost ne vrijedi ni pišljiva boba. Nije čak siguran ni da je živ jer živi kao mrtvac. Ja sam naoko praznoruk, ali sam siguran u sebe, siguran sam u sve, sigurniji od njega, siguran u svoj život i u smrt koja će uskoro doći. Da, ja imam samo to, ali bar posjedujem tu istinu isto onoliko koliko ona posjeduje mene. Imao sam pravo, imam još pravo, imam svako pravo. Živio sam ovako, a mogao sam živjeti i drukčije. Činio sam ovo, a nisam činio ono. Ovo nisam uradio, a ono jesam. Pa onda? Čini mi se kao da sam cijelo vrijeme čekao ovaj čas i osvit dana kad ću se iskupiti. Ništa, ništa nije važno i dobro znam zašto. I on zna zašto. S dna moje budućnosti, za cijelog ovog besmislenog života koji sam vodio, diže se do mene, kroz godine koje još nisu došle, neki neodređeni dah, a taj dah izjednačuje na svom putu sve ono što su mi nekad predlagali, u onim godinama koje sam proživio i koje nisu bile nimalo stvarnije. Što se mene tiče smrt drugih, ljubav jedne majke, što me se tiče njegov Bog, život za koji se netko odlučio, sudbina koju je odabrao, kad jedna jedina sudbina odabire mene i sa mnom na milijarde povlaštenih koji, kao i on, trvrde da su mi braća. Razumije li, razumije li napokon? Svi su povlašteni. Postoje samo povlašteni. I ostali će jednog dana biti osuđeni. I on će biti osuđen. Što mari ako ga optuže zbog ubojstva i smaknu zato što nije plakao na sprovodu svoje majke? Salamanov je pas vrijedio isto toliko koliko i njegova žena. Ona ženica-automat isto je toliko kriva koliko i Marie koja je željela da se uda za mene. Što mari što mi je Raymond bio isto tako pajdaš kao i Céleste koji vrijedi više od njega? Šta mari što Marie pruža danas usne nekom drugom Mersaultu? Razumije li, napokon, taj osuđenik, da s dna moje budućnosti... Gušio sam se vičući sve ovo. Ali ključari su mi već oteli iz ruku ispovjednika i prijetili mi. On ih, međutim, umiri i zagleda se načasak nijemo u mene. Oči mu bijahu pune suza. Okrenu se i nestade.

The air is so dry, so clear, and there's so few people, almost no lights. And you can lie on your back and look up and see the Milky Way. All the stars like a splash of milk in the sky. And you see them slowly move. Because the Earth is moving. And you feel like you're lying on a giant spinning ball in space.

That's something we all want to know, isn't it? Is there a "purpose" to our form and substance? Or are we simply the random result of billions of years of chemical reactions and accidents influenced by pressures from the environment?..." -Jules, BOOM

That stage in life when older people assume that just because you've graduated college you know who you are, or what you're doing, and in fact most people don't.

The actions of real conscientious original beings become the beacon of what real human existence looks like.

The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a singularly variegated landscape. In one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine rushing beneath; and on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing vineyards with green sloping banks and a meandering river and populous towns occupy the scene.

The awkwardness of getting reward in a well-off society is that the creation of appetite often requires undoing the work of satisfying appetite.

The children laughing without knowing why - isn't that beautiful?

The combination of our mortality with our groundlessness imparts to human life its pressing and enigmatic character. We struggle to in our brief time in the midst of an impenetrable darkness. A small area is lighted up: our civilizations, our sciences, our loves. We prove unable to define the place of the lighted area within a larger space devoid of light, and must go to our deaths unenlightened.

The continuous work of our life,” says Montaigne, “is to build death.” He quotes the Latin poets: Prima, quae vitam dedit, hora corpsit. And again: Nascentes morimur. Man knows and thinks this tragic ambivalence which the animal and the plant merely undergo. A new paradox is thereby introduced into his destiny. “Rational animal,” “thinking reed,” he escapes from his natural condition without, however, freeing himself from it. He is still a part of this world of which he is a consciousness. He asserts himself as a pure internality against which no external power can take hold, and he also experiences himself as a thing crushed by the dark weight of other things. At every moment he can grasp the non-temporal truth of his existence. But between the past which no longer is and the future which is not yet, this moment when he exists is nothing. This privilege, which he alone possesses, of being a sovereign and unique subject amidst a universe of objects, is what he shares with all his fellow-men. In turn an object for others, he is nothing more than an individual in the collectivity on which he depends.

The cultural problem was 'the fallacy of insignificance', and it was a philosophical form of this fallacy that had somehow landed existentialism in a cul de sac.

The distance between the being and the conscience is the nothing

The determination of what is significant is difficult. It is not a matter of pure subjectivity, nor is it one science can deal with adequately, its investigations lie in the relation between the two. The ego of Fichte is not applicable here, if it were a matter of pure subjectivity it would be a matter entirely defined by the individual's tastes and preferences, (and there is nothing said here against the individual creating for himself-apart-from-others his own values of what is significant) there would be no method to determine which tastes are good, and which bad. If it were a matter of pure objectivity there would not be taken into account the ground from which that objectivity derived, it would annul itself. (i.e., the failure of various political and organizational ideologies is perhaps due to the fact that they place an Idea before that of the individual who gives that Idea reality). It is thus in the relation, in both tastes and preferences, along with a scientific method that philosophy sets out to study what is significant. However, whatever is given significance is significant only in the moment it is signified in relation to the limited that at that moment is (the objective and subjective variables that create that specific moment in consciousness). Philosophy is thus always busy at its task.

The doctor was not, he thought, really sure that anyone else existed, and wanted to prove they did by helping them.

The Existentially Preoccupied Long Distance Runner Sometimes I like to run so hard and for so long with each mile I can feel the pain of my own awareness, my own heightened consciousness of what ails me, the ills of the world, the limitations of our existence, the losses we must endure, the superficial interactions. Sometimes I like to run so hard and for so long that I can feel all of these feelings seep out of the pours of my own skin, the sweat cleansing my very being, my awareness of beauty heightened, the experience of joy possible, each mile, each minute, ridding me of these feelings, washing away the illusions, showing me the truth. Sometimes I like to run so hard and for so long… until finally I feel free… until finally I AM free…

The existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that “the good” exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse.

The ego is an illusion. The more we submit to its cravings, the more unhappy we become.

The existentialists' view of love is not romantic, because they do not believe in love as an abstract force or amorous sunset walks along the beach. However, Cox also said, "if your idea of romance is somewhat more gothic and stormy, full of heartache, yearning and the thwarted desire to possess breaking up, making up and breaking up again, tears before bedtime and tears in the rain, then maybe it is romantic".

The greatest discovery of the 21st century will be the discovery that Man was not meant to live at the speed of light.

The four greatest threats to humanity are fundamentalism, nationalism, transhumanism and democracy.

The goal toward which I surpass myself must appear to me as a point of departure toward a new act of surpassing.

The greatest events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow out in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion. We reject the burden of their memory, and have anodynes against them. But the little things, the things of no moment, remain with us.

The greatest form of retaliation is not loving your enemy but ignoring them.