Quotes About Existence

Dad was a philosopher and had what he called his Theory of Purpose, which held that everything in life had a purpose, and unless it achieved that purpose, it was just taking up space on the planet and wasting everybody's time. That

Dark is a way and light is a place, Heaven that never was Nor will be ever is always true —Dylan Thomas, 'Poem on His Birthday

I wondered if the fire had been out to get me. I wondered if all fire was related, like Dad said all humans were related, if the fire that had burned me that day while I cooked hot dogs was somehow connected to the fire I had flushed down the toilet and the fire burning at the hotel. I didn't have the answers to those questions, but what I did know was that I lived in a world that that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don't want to think any more, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I . . . because . . . ugh!

I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.

Ha! to forget. How childish! I feel you in my bones. Your silence screams in my ears. You may nail your mouth shut, you may cut out your tongue, can you keep yourself from existing? Will you stop your thoughts.

This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell.

Il n'y a de réalité que dans l'action. (There is no reality except in action.)

Man is what he wills himself to be.

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations.

Existence is an imperfection.

There is only one day left, always starting over: It is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.

Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.

As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.

I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.

Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being - like a worm.

What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be.

Life is a useless passion.

There is a universe behind and before him. And the day is approaching when closing the last book on the last shelf on the far left; he will say to himself, now what?

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.