Quotes About Existentialism

We do not rush toward death, we flee the catastrophe of birth

The flayed man as theoretician of detachment...The convulsionary as skeptic...

Man interests me only since he has ceased to believe in himself. Wile he was in his ascending phase, he deserved no more than indifference. Now he provokes a new sentiment, a special sympathy: compassionate horror.

I do not forgive myself for being born. It is as if, creeping into this world, I had profaned a mystery, betrayed some momentous pledge, committed a fault of nameless gravity.

my nature forces me to drift, to remain forever in the equivocal

I breathe in my fashion.

At this very moment, I am suffering—as we say in French, j'ai mal.

Il semplice fatto di esistere è talmente grave che, a paragone, Dio non è che un mero trastullo.

The salutary or awkward consequences of what he thinks matter little to the man who questions himself at hours when others are the prey of sleep.

What is more fruitful than the worst, for the man who knows how to desire it? For it is not suffering which liberates, but the desire to suffer.

All thoughts are alike the moans of a worm stepped on by the angels

Ne se suicident que les optimistes qui ne peuvent plus l'être. Les autres, n'ayant aucune raison de vivre, pourquoi en auraient-ils de mourir ?

For every discomfort is only an abortive metaphysical experience.

During the long nights in the caves, how many Hamlets must have murmured their endless monologues

The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don't know where that elsewhere is.

Usted puede ser tan pesimista, o en su defecto tan existencialista como quiera. Sin embargo también se ha enamorado. Cómo cualquier idiota.

Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it.

Sein heisst in der Klemme sein.

Parking was well on the way to becoming the British population's greatest spiritual need.

Forse non riuscirò mai a voltarmi indietro completamente. Se la vita è un accumularsi di cose che, per quanto ci si sforzi, proprio non si possono spiegare, allora questo avvenimento basterebbe da solo a esaurire il mistero di una intera esistenza.

There is a vast difference between positive thinking and existential courage.

The death of God left the angels in a strange position. They were overtaken suddenly by a fundamental question. One can attempt to imagine the moment. How did they look at the instant the question invaded them, flooding the angelic consciousness, taking hold with terrifying force? The question was, "What are angels?" New to questioning, unaccustomed to terror, unskilled in aloneness, the angels (we assume) fell into despair.

I think God just died of old age. And, when I realized that he wasn't any more, it didn't shock me. It seemed natural and right!

I believe that body and spirit are not really separate, though it often seems that way. I believe that redemption is never impossible and always equivocal. But I guess that I just don't know.