Quotes About Existentialism

He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him.

Los dioses no estaban ya, y Cristo no estaba todavía, y de Cicerón a Marco Aurelio hubo un momento único en que el hombre estuvo solo.

I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. He sees himself against nature. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave?

What can we know? How we should act? What might we hope for?

Alas! there comes the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man…. Lo! I show you the last man. The earth has become small and on it hops the last man who makes everything small. His species is ineradicable like the ground flea; the last man lives longest.

Many existential thinkers hypothesize that the fear of death is greater in people who do not live up to their potential than in those who fulfill themselves (Yalom, 1980). This thesis leads to the conclusion that therapeutic interventions which free patients from their repressions, so that they will be better able to actualize themselves, will also reduce their fears about dying.

Every existentialist in good standing must own a gun, and every week the existentialist rulebook says that gun ought to be inserted barrel first into the mouth. Then you make a choice. Is life worth the trouble it takes to live it?

As Camus' reworking of the myth reveals, liberty can be found in the oddest of places—even Oran or Hades.

Camus felt defenseless against these "deep forces rising within me that said 'no.' " No, in a word, to plans for the future, to talk about tomorrow, to things not yet done. Instead, Camus demands the weight of the present, of the earth, of a world shorn of its myths and faith in anything other than what we can see and touch and feel.

Estoy muerto y quiero vivir. Esa es la verdad.

I don't know what I'm doing in Santa Teresa," Amalfitano said to himself after he'd been living in the city for a week. "Don't you? Don't you really?" he asked himself. "Really I don't," he said to himself. And that was as eloquent as he could be.

Y sin embargo cuando hablamos, digamos, cuando hablamos de hombre a hombre. Suena horrible, pero ese es el nombre de ese tipo de conversación crepuscular. Me dejo entender que estaba allí para hacerse matar, que supongo no es lo mismo que estar allí para matarte o para suicidarte. El matiz está en que no te tomas la molestia de hacerlo tu mismo

En un oasis uno puede beber, comer, curarse las heridas, descansar, pero si el oasis es de horror, si sólo existen oasis de horror, el viajero podrá confirmar, esta vez de forma fehaciente, que la carne es triste, que llega un día en que todos los libros están leídos y que viajar es un espejismo. Hoy, todo parece indicar que sólo existen oasis de horror o que la deriva de todo oasis es hacia el horror.

The thought balloon of my own breath said, How have I found myself here?

The trick to flying safely, Zoe always said, was to never buy a discount ticket and to tell yourself you had nothing to live for anyway, so that when the plane crashed it was no big deal. Then, when it didn't crash, when you had succeeded in keeping it aloft with your own worthlessness, all you had to do was stagger off, locate your luggage, and, by the time a cab arrived, come up with a persuasive reason to go on living.

Then, when it didn't crash, when you succeeded in keeping it aloft with your own worthlessness, all you had to do was stagger off, locate your luggage, and, by the time a cab arrived, come up with a persuasive reason to go on living.

Ultimately, what I am seeking in the photograph taken of me... is Death: Death is the eidos of that Photograph

Ya no quiero pensar más en vivir para mí misma, ya no tengo el deseo ni la facultad para ello, ya no me siento para nada viva ni joven, ya no sé qué es la alegría ni el placer.

Each of us thinks somewhere inside we have a purpose. Long ago we didn't have this existentialist angst; we were hunters or gatherers.

I could no longer believe even in life. Which meant that I had come to be the reverse, the opposite of a Christian. For me, now, the only reality is death.

Más tarde, cuando se hubieron marchado todos los panaderos, fontaneros, electricistas, carteros y porteros, la ciudad de piedra perdió su razón de ser, el sentido de su existencia. No era más que un esqueleto desnudo pulido por el viento, un hueso roído que sobresalía de la tierra en dirección al sol

Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.