Quotes About Existence

Das Leben schwingt, gleich einem Pendel, hin und her, zwischen dem Schmerz und der Langeweile.

The truth is that we ought to be wretched, and are so.

If life – the craving for which is the very essence of our being – were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing. But as it is, we take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something; and then distance and difficulties to be overcome make our goal look as if it would satisfy us.

une foule énorme de gens ne sont sur la terre que pour mettre finalement au monde, à la suite de longs et mystérieux croisements, un homme qui, entre mille, possédera quelque indépendance

It is for this reason that we find that co-existence, which could neither be in time alone, for time has no contiguity, nor in space alone, for space has no before, after, or now

Exigir la inmortalidad del individuo es querer perpetuar un error hasta el infinito. En el fondo, toda individualidad es un error especial, una equivocación, algo que no debiera existir, el verdadero objetivo de la vida es librarnos de él.

The only freedom that exists is of a metaphysical character. In the physical world freedom is an impossibility.

Time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us take breath, but always coming after us, like a taskmaster with a whip. If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the misery of boredom.

Mancarea buna, vinurile alese – iata scopul suprem al existentei; sa-si procure tot ce contribuie la binele sau material este tinta vietii sale. Seriozitatea rece, lipsita de sens este proprie filistinului si-l caracterizeaza. Odata sfarsite placerile materiale, societatea filistinilor devine curand plictisitoare. Pana si jocul de carti devine monoton.

Querer es esencialmente sufrir, y como vivir es querer, toda la vida es por esencia dolor. Cuanto más elevado es el ser, más sufre... La vida del hombre no es más que una lucha por la existencia, con la certidumbre de resultar vencido...

Nothing is without a reason why it is rather than it is not

I was gripped by the misery of life as Buddha was in his youth when he saw sickness, old age, pain and death. The truth . . . was that this world could not have been the work of an all-loving Being, but rather that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings; to this the data pointed, and the belief that it is so won the upper hand.

El hecho de que, detrás de la angustia, se encuentre de inmediato el aburrimiento, que afecta hasta a los animales más inteligentes, es consecuencia de que la vida no tiene ningún contenido verdadero y auténtico, sino que solo se mantiene en movimiento por necesidad e ilusión: y tan pronto como el movimiento se detiene, aparece toda la esterilidad y el vacío de la existencia.

The highest, i.e., the most general concepts, are the poorest; ultimately these are just empty shells, as, e.g., being, essence, thing, becoming, ect. - incidentally, whatever could philosophical systems produce when they are merely spun out of these same concepts and have as their matter only such empty shells of thought? They must be infinitely empty and poor, and therefore, turn out to be tedious and suffocating.

Not the least of the torments which plague our existence is the constant pressure of time, which never lets us so much as draw breath but pursues us all like a taskmaster with a whip. It ceases to persecute only him it has delivered over to boredom.

The eternal being, as it lives in us, also lives in every animal.

Man is the dream of a shadow.

Of every event in our life we can say only for one moment that it is; for ever after, that it was. Every evening we are poorer by a day. It might, perhaps, make us mad to see how rapidly our short span of time ebbs away; if it were not that in the furthest depths of our being we are secretly conscious of our share in the exhaustible spring of eternity, so that we can always hope to find life in it again.

Volere il meno possibile e conoscere il più possibile è stata la massima che ha guidato la mia vita.

What keeps all living things busy and in motion is the striving to exist. But when existence is secured, they do not know what to do: that is why the second thing that sets them in motion is a striving to get rid of the burden of existence, not to feel it any longer, 'to kill time', to escape boredom.

That which has been exists no more; it exists as little as that which has never been.

The will of the individual is dwarfed by the will of the species - for every suicide, there are thousands of unwilling births.

When, at the end of their lives, most men look back they will find that they have lived throughout ad interim. They will be surprised to see that the very thing they allowed to slip unnapreciated and unenjoyed by was their life. And so a man, having been duped by hope, dances into the arms of death.

Life is known to be a process of combustion; intellect is the light produced by this process.