Quotes About Existence

The future appeals to you? All yours! Myself I prefer to keep to the incredible present and the incredible past. I leave it to you to face the Incredible itself.

Death is not altogether useless: after all, it is because of death that we may be able to recuperate the prenatal space, our only space....

If only we could return to those ages when no utterance shackled existence, to the laconism of interjections, to the joyous stupor of the pre- verbal!

A patrimony all our own: the hours when we have nothing... It is they that form us, that individualize us, that make us dissimilar.

I fail to witness the gods' hilarity at leaving behind the human episode.

Deep inside, each man feels — and believes — himself to be immortal, even if he knows he will perish the next moment. We can understand everything, admit everything, realize everything, except our death, even when we ponder it unremittingly and even when we are resigned to it.

After the Spanish publication of the 'Précis,' two Andalusian students asked me if it was possible to live without "fundamentación." I answered that it was true that I had found no solid basis anywhere and that I had nonetheless managed to endure, for with the years one got used to everything, even vertigo. Then, too, one does not constantly keep watch and interrogate oneself, absolute lucidity being incompatible with breathing.

It may very well be tht man's sole purpose is none other than to think of god. If we could either love him or ignore him we would be saved.

If we do not regard ourselves as entrusted with a mission, existence is difficult; action, impossible.

Todas as nossas humilhações provêm de que não podemos resolver-nos a morrer de fome. Pagamos caro esta covardia. Viver em função dos homens, sem vocação de mendigo! Rebaixar-se ante esses macacos engravatados, sortudos, enfatuados! Estar à mercê dessas caricaturas indignas até de desprezo!

If the expression "metaphysical exile" had no meaning, my existence alone would afford it one.

Every anomaly seduces us, Life in the first place, that anomaly par excellence.

A exista e un plagiat.

We make choices, decisions, as long as we keep to the surface of things; once we reach the depths, we can neither choose nor decide, we can do nothing but regret the surface...

My weaknesses have spoiled my existence, but it is thanks to them that I exist

no reproach proceeding from men or gods can affect me: I have as good a conscience as if I had never existed.

If it is characteristic of the wise man to do nothing useless, no one will surpass me in wisdom: I do not even lower myself to useful things.

As long as you live on this side of the terrible, you will find words to express it; once you know it from inside, you will no longer find a single one.

Call it insensitivity or a passion for remorse, I have never undertaken to rescue what little Absolute this world contains.

In order not to be overwhelmed by our accident, we convert even our name into an entity: how can we die when we are called Peter or Paul?

Man is free, save for his depths.

Listening to Bach, one sees God come into being. His music generates divinity After a Bach oratorio, cantata, or passion, one feels that God must be. Otherwise, Bach's music would be only heartrending illusion. Theologians and philosophers wasted so many days and nights searching for proofs of his existence, ignoring the only valid one: Bach.

The human being delivered to himself, without any partiality for elegance, is a monster.

When I torment myself a little too much for not working, I tell myself that I might just as well be dead and that then I would be working still less...