Quotes About Existence

because human existence is ultimately meaningless.

We were warm and shivering, and young and ancient, and alive. (p. 24)

Teníamos calor y temblábamos, Éramos jóvenes y ancianos, Y estábamos vivos.

Every word affords me pain. Yet how sweet it would be if I could hear what the flowers have to say about death!

O não-saber é o fundamento de tudo, ele cria o todo através de um acto que repete a cada instante, produz este mundo e qualquer outro, uma vez que está sempre a tomar como real aquilo que o não é. O não-saber é o gigantesco equívoco que serve de base a todas as nossas verdades, o não-saber é mais antigo e mais poderoso do que todos os deuses juntos.

Ne pas naître est sans contredit la meilleur formule qui soit. Elle n'est malheureusement à la portée de personne

Le réel me donne de l'asthme.

The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.

The echo began in some indescribable way to undermine her hold on life. Coming at a moment when she chanced to be fatigued, it had managed to murmur, "Pathos, piety, courage—they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value." If one had spoken vileness in that place, or quoted lofty poetry, the [echo's] comment would have been the same—"Ou-boum."

Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.

Pathos, piety, courage, —they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value.

Who could help anything? Not only in sex, but in all things men have moved blindly, have evolved out of slime to dissolve into it when this accident of consequences is over.

Because history is a rational process, universal history is the manifestation of a "Spirit whose nature is always one and the same, but which unfolds this its one nature in the phenomena of the World's existence.

Is a universe of discrete material particles possible only with one specific set of natural laws and parameter values? In other words, does human imagination, which can conceive of other laws and values, thereby exceed possible existence?

If there were no God, we would have to invent one to keep people sane."*

Someone dying asks if there is life after death. Yes, comes the answer, only not yours.

If attachment is an evil, we must look for its cause in the scandal of birth, for to be born is to be attached. Detachment then should apply itself to getting rid of the traces of this scandal, the most serious and intolerable.

El abismo de dos mundos incomunicables se abre entre el hombre que tiene el sentimiento de la muerte y el que no lo tiene; sin embargo, los dos mueren; pero uno ignora su muerte, el otro la sabe; el uno no muere más que un instante, el otro no cesa de morir…

Quien no haya concebido jamás su propia anulación, quien no haya presentido el recurso a la cuerda, a la bala, al veneno o al mar, es un recluso envilecido o un gusano reptante sobre la carroña cósmica. Este mundo puede quitarnos todo, puede prohibirnos todo, pero no está en el poder de nadie impedir nuestra autoabolición

And who was ever bold enough to do nothing because every action is senseless in infinity?

I don't know how to make peace with things, were each moment to tear itself away from time to give me a kiss.

Why fear the nothing that is in store for us when it is no different from the nothing that preceded us?

La noia è pensiero in germe

Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.