Best 642 quotes in «existentialism quotes» category

What's the point of wandering? to find a better place? a home? But the loneliness will always capture me in its claws of no tomorrow

When a lack of white blood cells exposes the horizon of being, one has to make a choice. To cloister yourself away in a germ-free environment, alive but alone, or to embrace the woman you love and catch your death of cold at the marriage ceremony? What a great show. It’s inner-directed script was unmatched by any other soap opera.

What you think I think of you is what you think of yourself

When he told F. of his disgust at the eyelid's movement, he must have been sixteen. When he decided to study medicine, he must have been nineteen; by then, having already signed on to the contract to forget, he no longer remembered what he had said to F. three years before. Too bad for him. The memory might have alerted him, might have helped him see that his choice of medicine was wholly theoretical, made without the slightest self- knowledge. Thus he studied medicine for three years before giving up with a sense of shipwreck. What to choose after those lost years? What to attach to, if his inner self should keep as silent as it had before? He walked down the broad outside staircase of the medical school for the last time, with the feeling that he was about to find himself alone on a platform all the trains had left.

When one contemplated Portia, when one contemplated Sharon, when one contemplated one's own apparently pointless, utterly trivial being, the questions hung all around one, as urgent as knives at the throat. But the instant one tried to grasp one of them and turn it to one's own purpose and pierce through the murk, it became blunt and useless as a piece of cardboard.

When reason has followed its road to the end, the point of crisis is reached and man is brought to the great question mark over his own existence.

When Sartre says man has been thrown into the world, he is alone, there is no God, we are responsible for what we are, what we do, I say yes!" The affirmative echoed around the woods. The dog pricked up his ears. This man has no one to talk to, thought Inni. "But when he then asks me to be responsible for the world as well, for others, I say no! No. Why should I be? 'When man chooses himself, he chooses all men.' Why? I have not asked for anything. I have nothing to do with the vermin I see around me. I live out my time because I have to, that is all.

When T. finished she sat beside the toilet, her hand dipped in it, and lay there for the next few moments frozen in time, enjoying the rush of the excrement, but at the same time, paralyzed by the fear of what was to come. She felt like a person who has just lost their job, one they had worked so long for, and now, faced with the crushing reality of debt coming on them from all sides, feels overburdened and forlorn with no hope at all to rescue them from their insecure present. T. began to return home, as she walked through the University she realized it was deserted, everyone had fled. The stray cats were still there though, and they watched her as she walked by. When she returned home, she found the house empty. Kevin and her husband were both gone, and the only sign of her husband was a note left on the refrigerator, written angrily, and it said, “What the hell is wrong with you?” The Doctor had picked up their son Kevin from school and took him for a drive out into the country. Kevin was a sweet boy, innocent, whose light hair flowed down his forehead, touching in strands his eyebrows. His mother loved him very much. In fact, while Kevin sometimes wondered why his Father never seemed to notice him except for when he had to, he was always consoled by the pleasant sound of his mother’s voice as it put him to sleep in the evenings, and woke him from dangerous infantile dreams in the mornings. Kevin, for the first time in his life, felt that not only his Mother, but also his Father, loved him. “I love you dad.” He said to him in the car as they drove down the highway. His Father only smiled, artificially, as he said that, not glancing away from the road. Kevin did not know the difference between smiles, and how some can show sincerity, and others, dissimulation. Kevin did not know that his Father did not love him. He turned his gaze away from his Father to the window, watching the verdant fields roll past, smiling as he thought of how great his Father was.

Where is all my wisdom, then? I behaved stubbornly, pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well that there is no order in the universe.

Who, cher monsieur, will sleep on the floor for us? Whether I am capable of it myself? Look, I'd like to be and I shall be. Yes, we shall all be capable of it one day, and that will be salvation.

Why should injustice, the darkness of justice, exist and not be an imperfect entry in a book unread for centuries? Until it is so forgotten, that no one remembers it was ever there.

With older people, it's quite different. They're reliable, they show you what to do, and there's solidity in their affection.

Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I cannot know that, I cannot live either. In an infinity of time, in an infinity of matter, and an infinity of space a bubble-organism emerges while will exist for a little time and then burst, and that bubble am I.

Yes it’s me, I myself, what I turned out to be, (…) I’m the one here in myself, it’s me. (…) Whatever I was, whatever I wasn’t—it’s all in what I am. Whatever I wanted, whatever I didn’t want—all of this has shaped me. Whatever I loved, or stopped loving—in me it’s the same nostalgia (Álvaro de Campos)

Yes it’s me, I myself, what I turned out to be, (…) I’m the one here in myself, it’s me. (…) Whatever I was, whatever I wasn’t—it’s all in what I am. Whatever I wanted, whatever I didn’t want—all of this has shaped me. Whatever I loved, or stopped loving—in me it’s the same nostalgia.

Yet I loathe the thought of annihilating myself quite as much now as I ever did. I think with sadness of all the books I’ve read, all the places I’ve seen, all the knowledge I’ve amassed and that will be no more. All the music, all the paintings, all the culture, so many places: and suddenly nothing. ... If it had at least enriched the earth; if it had given birth to… what? A hill? A rocket? But no. Nothing will have taken place. I can still see the hedge of hazel trees flurried by the wind and the promises with which I fed my beating heart while I stood gazing at the gold-mine at my feet: a whole life to live. The promises have all been kept. And yet, turning an incredulous gaze towards that young and credulous girl, I realise with stupor how much I was gypped.

Yet, the existential intellection has disregarded the possibility that a coming-into-being as not a finality but a process and that it is a making of meaning from the ground zero, for we are incomplete beings. Being is nothing but containment of essence, and the precedent-will has to be taken a priori to coming-to-being. Because we are choosing to become a volitional being.

Y lo que, por el contrario, me sucede a mí en las raras horas de placer, lo que para mí es delicia, suceso, elevación y éxtasis, eso no lo conoce, ni lo ama, ni lo busca el mundo más que si acaso en las novelas; en la vida, lo considera una locura. Y en efecto, si el mundo tiene razón, si esta música de los cafés, estas diversiones en masa, estos hombres americanos contentos con tan poco tienen razón, entonces soy yo el que no la tiene, entonces es verdad que estoy loco, entonces soy efectivamente el lobo estepario que tantas veces me he llamado, la bestia descarriada en un mundo que le es extraño e incomprensible, que ya no encuentra ni su hogar, ni su ambiente, ni su alimento.

You are the life and you are the death - it is only motion that separates the two.

You ask if I miss having my vision. And I give you polite answers and deflections so you won't worry about me. But I'm not afraid of blindness. I made sure when I was young to see everything. The ocean, the sky, every kind of person on Earth, all the animals that were left before they were gone. I even saw space from inside, the Earth as it trailed away behind us - even if only in my mind. I've seen sunrise on Mars and my own baby, though she's nearly grown up now and doesn't talk to me much. "I'm about as afraid to die as I am of being blind. What else is there to do or see? I've seen it all, and all that's left is reminders that it's gone, all of it gone.

You burn like a candle inside my soul, showing me a way through this darkness.

[W]hat we also see in sex is a kind of submissiveness. But not a kind of submissiveness which is simply 'do what you like, I'm just here for you', but it...is, or can be, very manipulative. It is a way of getting the other person to exercise all his or her efforts towards pleasing you, and in that way controlling what they're thinking, and in particular what they're thinking of you.

When a man gets drunk he gets sentimental. That's what I wanted to avoid.

Who am I? The great inquiry indeed.

Why doesn't the pope convert to Calvinism? Why doesn't the Dalai Lama, convert to Christianity, why doesn't Billy Graham convert to Islam, Why doesn't the Ayatollahs convert to Buddhism, Why isn't Buddhism swept away? Religious leaders know that all religions are equal; they know that no one of them has the monopoly to the knowledge of God. They know that each religion is trying to find the hidden God and that no one religion can claim to have found him beyond doubt. That's why they remain where they are and respect each other.

Why must we overlook what we are most likely able to do?

Will is nobler than truth

Without your stories, without your heroes and their awesome powers, how could you explain this, this here, this incomprehensible real that ever refuses to embrace any rule, any cliché besides the intransigent, pathetic truth that we all end, that no one comes back.

Wouldn’t the joys of life lose all colour, if life was eternal?

[Y]ou are here to learn something. Don’t try to figure out what it is. This can be frustrating and unproductive.

You are only excused for happiness and success if you generously agree to share them. But if one is to be happy, one should not worry too much about other people - which means there is no way out. Happy and judged or absolved and miserable.

You are the illusion. The person in the mirror is real.

You didn't succeed. Well, what of that? There's nothing to prove, you know, and the revolution's not a question of virtue but of effectiveness. There is no heaven. There's work to be done, that's all. And you must do what you're cut out for; all the better if it comes easy to you. The best work is not the work that takes the most sacrifice. It's the work in which you can best succeed.

You don't choose to choose what you choose in life!

You certainly remember this scene from dozens of films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running and laughing. By laughing the two runners are proclaiming to the whole world, to audiences in all the movie theaters: "We're happy, we're glad to be in the world, we're in agreement with being!" It's a silly scene, a cliche, but it expresses a basic human attitude: serious laughter, laughter "beyond joking." All churches, all underwear manufacturers, all generals, all political parties, are in agreement about that kind of laughter, and all of them rush to put the image of the two laughing runners on the billboards advertising their religion, their products, their ideology, their nation, their sex, their dishwashing powder.

You know what I am - I am the same thing that you are. I am the torch, as well as the torch-bearer - I am harmony, as well as the advocate of harmony - I am progress, as well as the driver of progress - I am humanity's beacon of oneness - I am humanity's struggle for equality - I am humanity's fight for justice - and this is not I speaking to you, this is you speaking to yourself - for you and I are not separate, but one eternal all-encompassing reflection that has the potential to resonate through the chambers of time, once it recognizes, realizes and utilizes its reverberating responsibilities towards the world it's born in.

You live in a deranged age - more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.

you make me laugh, with your metaphysical anguish, its just that you're scared silly, frightened of life, of men of action, of action itself, of lack of order. But everything is disorder, dear boy. Vegetable, mineral and animal, all disorder, and so is the multitude of human races, the life of man, thought, history, wars, inventions, business and the arts, and all theories, passions and systems. Its always been that way. Why are you trying to make something out of it? And what will you make? what are you looking for? There is no Truth. There's only action, action obeying a million different impulses, ephemeral action, action subjected to every possible and imaginable contingency and contradiction, Life. Life is crime, theft, jealousy, hunger, lies, disgust, stupidity, sickness, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, piles of corpses. what can you do about it, my poor friend?

You look at everything wrong, and so long as you do so, this life will forever remain a tragedy to you, and the best things that lie in front of you will be forgotten for something that matters but little, simply because that matters little which one cannot have, and what is the point in wanting that which we cannot have if it takes away from the things in which we can have. “And what can we have?” I asked. Life, and the greatness that comes from living it. You are unique toilet, it is possible that in all of history, and all of the future there will never be one such as yourself. You are an individual, and being an individual you are as a star that shines but once, so shine brightly.

You’re better looking than me. You’re more intelligent than me. Your personality is more likable than mine. You make more money than me. Your family is nicer than mine. Your religion is better than mine. You’ve seen more beaches than me. You’ve been to more cities than me. Your automobile is nicer than mine. Your significant other is better looking than mine. Your candidate won. Your home team won. You’re number one. But life is a tie. We all die.

You know sometimes the water, it speaks to me, and it calms me. It says ‘yes Nindo you are a beggar without a home, yes you are a disgrace to your family, but Nindo remember, you will be fine. Nindo will be fine, Nindo will flow like water

You talk a lot about this amazing flow of time but you hardly see it. you see a women, you think that one day she'll be old, only you don't see her grow old. But there are moments when you think you see her grow old and feel yourself growing old with her: this is the feeling of adventure.

You’re not interested in her because by your definition she isn’t real. But your brain doesn’t know the difference. It’s all just chemicals firing and testosterone giving you a hard-on.

All of the things I used to obsess over, I'm no longer as obsessed with. I have new concerns but they're a little more existential or cosmic.

You've a perfect right to call me as impractical as a dormouse, and to feel I'm out of touch with life. But this is the point where we simply can't see eye to eye. We've nothing whatever in common. Don't you see. . . it's not an accident that's drawn me from Blake to Whitehead, it's a certain line of thought which is fundamental to my whole approach. You see, there's something about them both. . . They trusted the universe. You say I don't know what the modern world's like, but that's obviously untrue. Anyone who's spent a week in London knows just what it's like. . . if you mean neurosis and boredom and the rest of it. And I do read a modern novel occasionally, in spite of what you say. I've read Joyce and Sartre and Beckett and the rest, and every atom in me rejects what they say. They strike me as liars and fools. I don't think they're dishonest so much as hopelessly tired and defeated." Lewis had lit his pipe. He did it as if Reade were speaking to someone else. Now he said, smiling faintly, "I don't think we're discussing modern literature." Reade had an impulse to call the debater's trick, but he repressed it. Instead he said quietly, "We're discussing modern life, and you brought up the subject. And I'm trying to explain why I don't think that murders and wars prove your point. I'm writing about Whitehead because his fundamental intuition of the universe is the same as my own. I believe like Whitehead that the universe is a single organism that somehow takes account of us. I don't believe that modern man is a stranded fragment of life in an empty universe. I've an instinct that tells me that there's a purpose, and that I can understand that purpose more deeply by trusting my instinct. I can't believe the world is meaningless. I don't expect life to explode in my face at any moment. When I walk back to my cottage, I don't feel like a meaningless fragment of life walking over a lot of dead hills. I feel a part of the landscape, as if it's somehow aware of me, and friendly.

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

You think it’s a game? Unintelligible? Ha! Envision no spoons. This is serious. It is a matter of joy versus emptiness.

All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.

Apparently there is no profit in the unique, or not enough to make it worthwhile to preserve. Ultimately it drains the life out of us, and existentialism starts to make more and more sense.

Dasein is a being that does not simply occur among other beings. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that in its being this being is concerned about its very being. Thus it is constitutive of the being of Dasein to have, in its very being, a relation of being to this being.