Quotes About Existentialism

I wasn't meant for reality, but life came and found me.

Dac? Dumnezeu exist? cu adev?rat, m? întreb ce o fi învârtit în ziua aia.

Iadul dureaz? o or? ?i trei sferturi. Cartea de fa?? la fel.

Sl?pošana ir m?ta par S?zifu m?sdienu versija.

Ellos no saben lo que es la vejez. Vosotros no podéis imaginar este suplicio: no haber tenido nada de la vida y no esperar nada de la muerte. Que no haya nada al otro lado del mundo, que no exista explicación alguna, que la palabra del enigma no nos sea revelada jamás...

Pero el horror de la vejez es que ésta es el total de una vida, un total en el que no sabríamos cambiar una cifra. He tardado sesenta años en convertirme en este anciano muerto de odio. Soy lo que soy; sería necesario convertirme en otro... ¡Oh, Dios, Dios, si Tú existieras...!

C'était l'époque où une de ces phrases saisonnières dont la France était friande traînait sur toutes les lèvres : "L'enfer, c'est les autres." Pour moi, au contraire, l'enfer, je le vérifiais à mes dépens, c'est d'être toujours autre soi-même, au point d'être de nulle part.

Realism provides only amoral observation, while Absurdism rejects even the possibility of debate.

We read every day about the rich, the famous, the talented who are disillusioned. Many of them are turning to the occult, or Transcendental Meditation, or Eastern religions. Some are turning to crime. The questions they thought were answered are left dangling: What is man? Where did he come from? What is his purpose on this planet? Where is he going? Is there a God who cares? If there is a God, has He revealed Himself to man?

In our day many people are broad but shallow. Agnosticism, anxiety, and emptiness have gripped much of our world.

We discussed the present, but what we really meant was our past. Both of us were living among the living, yet we didn't really belong with them- we were actually the dead, on stolen leave, accidental survivors who got left behind in life.

Sometimes I felt so badly about those cats that I'd find myself wishing that both I and the cats could simply cease to exist.

Freud, slyly following Shakespeare, gave us our map of the mind; Kafka intimated to us that we could not hope to use it to save ourselves, even from ourselves.

A man said to the universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."  —Stephen Crane

I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.

But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return. Was that so depressing? Who knows? Maybe that was 'despair.' What Turgenev called 'disillusionment.' Or Dostoyevsky, 'hell.' Or Somerset Maugham, 'reality.' Whatever the label, I figured it was me.

I'm always tripped up by the eternal who am I?

Where are you now?' Where was I now? Gripping the receiver, I raised my hand and turned to see what lay beyond the telephone booth. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again, I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was no place.

What would tomorrow bring? I wondered. Both hands on the wheel, I closed my eyes. I didn't feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing. What would become of me tomorrow I did not know.

What was I hoping to gain from this?...Was I trying to confirm the ties that make it possible for me to exist here and now. Was I hoping to be woven into some new plot, to be given some new and better defined role to play? No, he thought, that's not it. What I was chasing in circles must have been the tail of darkness inside me. I just happened to catch sight of it, and followed it, and clung to it, and in the end let it fly into still deeper darkness. I'm sure I'll never see it again.

Turning all this over in my mind, I started to imagine another me somewhere, sitting in a bar, nursing a whiskey, without a care in the world. The more I thought about it, the more that other me became the real me, making this me here not real at all.

I am me and not me.

Realizing all over again how important sunlight is to human beings, I appreciate each second of that precious light. The intense loneliness and helplessness I felt under those millions of stars has vanished

Are you prepared to die?" "I am half dead already," Nimit said as if stating the obvious.