Quotes About Existence

Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of from a distance; it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast - or else there is nothing at all.

Perhaps its inevitable, perhaps one has to choose between being nothing at all and impersonating what one is.

He is always becoming, and if it were not for the contingency of death, he would never end.

Death is a continuation of my life without me...

INEZ: Prove it. Prove it was no dream. It's what one does, and nothing else, that shows the stuff one's made of. GARCIN: I died too soon. I wasn't allowed time to - to do my deeds. INEZ: One always dies too soon - or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are - your life, and nothing else.

I am myself and I am here.

Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.

Nothingness haunts Being.

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterward.

A pale reflection of myself wavers in my consciousness...and suddenly the "I" pales, pales, and fades out.

People. You must love people. Men are admirable. I want to vomit—and suddenly, there it is: the Nausea

There is no reality except in action. Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the extent that he fulfills himself; he is therefore nothing else than the ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life.

The consciousness that says 'I am' is not the consciousness that thinks.

It is disgusting -- Why must we have bodies?

All men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

What is there to fear in such a regular world?

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

Time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.

I am not asking for sensational revelations, but I would like to sense the meaning of that minute, to feel it's urgency...

I exist. It's sweet, so sweet, so slow. And light: you'd think it floated all by itself. It stirs. It brushes by me, melts and vanishes. Gently, gently. There is bubbling water in my throat, it caresses me- and now it comes up again into my mouth. For ever I shall have a little pool of whitish water in my mouth - lying low - grazing my tongue. And this pool is still me. And the tongue. And the throat is me.

Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.

J'existe, c'est tout.

There is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it.

man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, in other respect is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. The Existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion.