Quotes About Existentialism

Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.

I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

... it is true that I do not respect [human life] more than I respect my own life. And if it is easy for me to kill, that is because it is difficult for me to die.

As in an icicle the agnostic abides alone. The vital principle is taken out of all endeavor for improving himself or bettering hisfellows. All hope in the grand possibilities of life are blasted.

It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.

The earthly meaning of eternal life was death, and she refused to die.

I've been going for walks.  Shore of the sea, accompanied by the most somber thoughts. And if I throw myself from the top of a cliff?

Being and Nothingness by Sartre.

because human existence is ultimately meaningless.

A book is a postponed suicide.

Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself. What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Peking? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.

If there is a God, his plan is very similar to someone not having a plan.

I am not interested in living in a city where there isn't a production by Samuel Beckett running.

E acabamos fatalmente por desembocar na pergunta essencial, que se encontra por detrás de todas as outras quando todas as outras se afastam ou foram afastadas e que é, se me permitem, Quem Sou Eu? Interrogo-me e a resposta consiste, obcecantemente, invariavelmente, assim: Uma Merda.

There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be.

Philosophically I am, or at least have been, a follower of Sartre. I am very interested in the choices we make, or don't make, in life-defining matters. That moment of 'angst' and its consequences can be such a cruel thing.

I've always thought of absurdism as a French fad I'd like to belong to.

My consultants recommended several nihilists and existentialists but I rejected them all. A black turtleneck sweater does not a misanthrope make. Nihilists and existentialists tend to be bohemians, who invariably run in packs; despite their alienated stance, they have always struck me as a sociable lot who surround themselves with people because they are forever saying Nothing matters, and they need someone to say it to.

If he was nothing, or almost nothing, with no idea of where he had come from or where he was going, why he was living or what he was supposed to be doing (the piano only an elusive hint), and if, further, he was buffeted by forces he could not name but which were loneliness, sadness, longing, anger, fear, and spiritual nausea, would he not deeply attend the infinite story of life? Would he not pay the fucking twenty-five cents to get into the cathedral and see the light?

Misterul vie?ii nu este o problem? care trebuie rezolvat?, ci o realitate care se cere tr?it?.

He had taken his place in a universe he did not want, wearing flesh that did not fit.

life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.

I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It's more important to confirm the least sincere. The clouds get enough attention as it is...