Quotes About Existentialism

The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow.

Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts.

God is dead, God remains dead, and we have killed him.

Everything in the world displeases me: but, above all, my displeasure in everything displeases me.

Men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy: they have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and strangle it, out of jealousy--ah, they know only too well that it will flee from them!

Always look on the bright side of the abyss

To leave is to suffer,to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity; and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.

Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit….I doubt that such pain makes us 'better'; but I know that it makes us more profound.

But I am still far from them, and my sense does not speak to their sense. To men I am something between a fool and a corpse.

Life consists of rare, isolated moments of the greatest significance, and of innumerable many intervals, during which at best the silhouettes of those moments hover about us.

Where are we headed? Are we not endlessly plunging —backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there an up and a down anymore? Do we not wander as if through an endless nothingness? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Hasn't it grown colder?

It is obvious that my head does not stand properly on my shoulders; for it is well known that everyone else knows better than I what I should do and not do: only I, poor rogue, do not know what I should be at. Are we not all like statues with the wrong heads on them? Isn't that so, my dear neighbor? - But no, you, precisely you, are the exception.

Was that - life? I will say to death. Very well! Once more!

It is only great pain--that slow, sustained pain that takes its time, in which we are, as it were, burned with smoldering green firewood--that forces us philosophers to sink to our ultimate profundity and to do away with all the trust, everything good-natured, veil-imposing, mild and middling, on which we may have previously based our humanity. I doubt that such a pain makes us 'better'--but I know that it makes us deeper.

This - is now my way: where is yours?' Thus I answered those who asked me 'the way'. For the way - does not exist!

I praise, I do not reproach, [nihilism's] arrival. I believe it is one of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest self-reflection of humanity. Whether man recovers from it, whether he becomes master of this crisis, is a question of his strength

What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; 'why?' finds no answer.

we know the way; we got our knowledge of it from thousands of years in the labyrinth. Who else has found it?—The man of today?—"I don't know either the way out or the way in; I am whatever doesn't know either the way out or the way in"—so sighs the man of today… . This is the sort of modernity that made us ill,—we sickened on lazy peace

Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the madness with which you should be cleansed

Wherever life and knowledge seemed to contradict each other, there was never any serious struggle: in such cases, denial and doubt amounted to madness.

Did I seek where the wind bites keenest, learn to live where no one lives, in the desert where only the polar bear lives, unlearn to pray and curse, unlearn man and god, become a ghost flitting across the glaciers?

This – is now my way: where is yours?' Thus I answered those who asked me 'the way'. For the way – does not exist!

With regard to philosophical metaphysics, I always see increasing numbers who have attained to the negative goal, but as yet few who climb a few rungs backwards; one ought to look out, perhaps, over the last steps of the ladder, but not try to stand upon them.