Quotes About Existence

Las palabras se habían desvanecido, y con ellas la significación de las cosas, sus modos de empleo, las débiles marcas que los hombres han trazado en su superficie. Estaba sentado, un poco encorvado, cabizbajo, solo frente a aquella masa negra y nudosa, enteramente bruta y que me daba miedo. Y entonces tuve esa iluminación.

Dans mes mains, par exemple, il y a quelque chose de neuf, une certaine façon de prendre ma pipe ou ma fourchette. Ou bien c'est la fourchette qui a, maintenant, une certaine façon de se faire prendre, je ne sais pas.

C'est ça le temps, le temps tout nu, ça vient lentement à l'existence, ça se fait attendre et quand ça vient, on est écoeuré parce qu'on s'aperçoit que c'était déjà là depuis longtemps.

Hiçbir ÅŸey deÄŸiÅŸmedi, ama yine de her ÅŸey baÅŸka bir biçimde var olup gidiyor. Anlatam?yorum. Bulant?ya benziyor bu, ama ayn? zamanda onun tam tersi.

The bond between being and non-being can be only internal. It is within being qua being that non-being must arise, and within non-being that being must spring up; and this relation can not be a fact, a natural law, but an upsurge of the being which is its own nothingness of being.

Nous sommes seuls, sans excuses. C'est ce que j'exprimerais en disant que l'homme est condamné à être libre. Condamné, parce qu'il ne s'est pas créé lui-même, et par ailleurs cependant libre, parce qu'une fois jeté dans le monde, il est responsable de tout ce qu'il fait. […] L'homme, sans aucun secours, est condamné à chaque instant à inventer l'homme.

Giacometti knows that space is a cancer on being, and eats everything; to sculpt, for him, is to take the fat off space, he compresses space, so as to drain off its exteriority.

all of us abandon ourselves to existence, because we were among ourselves, only among ourselves, it has taken us unawares, in the disorder, the day to day drift: I am ashamed for myself and for what exists in front of it.

When I can't see myself I begin to wonder if I really and truly exist. I pat myself just to make sure, but it doesn't help much.

Man is not only that which he conceives himself to be, but that which he wills himself to be...

Tout existant naît sans raison, se prolonge par faiblesse et meurt par rencontre.

El criminal no hace la belleza; él mismo es la auténtica belleza.

One always dies too soon — or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

The flesh is the pure contingency of presence.

Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God.

I exist because I think … and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment–it's frightful–if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing.

L'existence précède l'essence

Those who conceal from themselves this total freedom, under the guise of solemnity, or by making deterministic excuses, I will call cowards. Others, who try to prove their existence is necessary, when man's appearance on earth is merely contingent, I will call bastards.

Things are entirely what they appear to be and BEHIND THEM... there is nothing.

movements never quite exist, they are passages, intermediaries between two existences, moments of weakness, I expected to see them come out of nothingness, progressively ripen, blossom: I was finally going to surprise beings in the process of being born.

We were a heap of living creatures, irritated, embarrassed at ourselves, we hadn't the slightest reason to be there, none of us, each one, confused, vaguely alarmed, felt in the way in relation to others. In the way: it was the only relationship I could establish between these, tress, these gates, these stones. . . .

Suddenly they existed, then suddenly they existed no longer: existence is without memory; of the vanished it retains nothing—not even a memory. Existence everywhere, infinitely, in excess, for ever and everywhere; existence—which is limited only by existence.

Me levanté, salí. Al llegar a la verja, me volví. Entonces el jardín me sonrió. Me apoyé en la verja y miré largo rato. La sonrisa de los árboles, de macizo de laurel quería decir algo; aquél era el verdadero secreto de la existencia.

And naturally, everything they tell about in books can happen in real life, but not in the same way. It is to this way of happening that I clung so tightly.