Quotes About Existentialism

We possess our being, the philosophers say, successively.

April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone - never.

People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as 'nauseatingly miserable beyond repair'.

Kill me, or you are a murderer.

What am I doing here in this endless winter?

No, said the priest, you don't need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary. Depressing view, said K. The lie made into the rule of the world.

What do I have in common with Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself.

the blend of absurd, surreal and mundane which gave rise to the adjective kafkaesque

I feel an unhappiness which almost dismembers me, and at the same time am convinced of its necessity

Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.

the poisonous world flows into my mouth like water into that of a drowning man

The fact that no one knows where I am is my only happiness. If only I could prolong this forever! It would be far more just than death. I am empty and futile in every corner of my being, even in my unhappiness.

What am I doing in this eternal winter?

I am so miserable, there are so many questions, I can see no way out and am so wretched and feeble that I could lie forever on the sofa and keep opening and closing my eyes without knowing the difference.

I was ashamed of myself when I realised life was a costume party and I attended with my real face

What do I have in common with Jews? I hardly have anything in common with myself, and really ought to go stand myself perfectly still in a corner, grateful to be able to breathe.

The state we find ourselves in is sinful quite independent of guilt.

It puzzled K., at least it puzzled him looking at it from the policemen's point of view, that they had made him go into the room and left him alone there, where he had ten different ways of killing himself. At the same time, though, he asked himself, this time looking at it from his own point of view, what reason he could have to do so. Because those two were sitting there in the next room and had taken his breakfast, perhaps?

But sometimes I really felt as though the starry sky rose and fell with the gasping of his chest.

Am I to leave this world as a man who shies away from all conclusions?

I am dead and despise anyone who isn't

I repeat: there was no attraction for me in imitating human beings; I imitated them because I needed a way out, and for no other reason.

What do I have in common with the Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself.

WHEN Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect.