Quotes About Existentialism

Now is the age of anxiety.

Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet. BELIEF

Instead of Gnostics, we have Existentialists and God-is-dead theologians, instead of Neo-Platonists, devotees of Zen, instead of desert hermits, heroin addicts and Beats (who also, oddly enough, seem averse to washing), instead of mortification of the flesh, sado-masochistic pornography; as for our public entertainments, the fare offered by television is still a shade less brutal than that provided by the Amphitheatre, but only a shade and may not be so for long.

For existential mathematics, which does not exist, would probably propose this equation: the value of coincidence equals the degree of its improbability.

The great courage is to stare as squarely at the light as at death.

It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.

To bear children into this world is like carrying wood to a burning house.

I've got death inside me. It's just a question of whether or not I can outlive it.

Tomorrow is another day toward death.

Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.

I do not believe in my death.

It would be an exaggeration to say I'm not afraid of death, but I'm not afraid of what comes after, because I'm not a believer.

Old elephants limp off to the hills to die; old Americans go out to the highway and drive themselves to death with huge cars.

acknowledging wholeheartedly, as the enigma that it is, the pointless meaningfulness of living—

the meaninglessness of existence.

I note that I've lived longer in the past, now, than I can expect to live in the future. I have more to remember than I have to look forward to. Memory fades, not much of the past stays, and I wouldn't mind forgetting a lot more of it.

These are the days when, however simple the future, we do not go towards it but leave part of life in a lobby whose elevators divide and enclose us, brightening digits that show exactly where we are headed, while a young Polish woman is emptying an ashtray, and we are drawn to a window whose strings, if we pull them, widen an emptiness.

I read somewhere; while God still existed one sustained a dialogue with God, and now that He no longer exists one has to sustain a dialogue with other people, I guess, or, better still, with oneself, that is to say, one talks or mumbles to oneself.

The Seventh Seal is one of the few films really close to my heart. Actually, I don't know why. It's certainly far from perfect. I had to contend with all sorts of madness, and one can detect here and there the speed with which it was made. But I find it even, strong, and vital.

I think I am a better ghost than I am a human being.

Mi vida ha sido algo completamente vacío, sin sentido. He cazado, he viajado, he convivido con todo el mundo. Pero todo ha sido inútil... Lo digo sin vergüenza y sin remordimiento, porque sé que la vida de los hombres está hecha así. Es precisamente por eso por lo que deseo utilizar mi aplazamiento: para realizar aunque sólo sea un único acto que tenga alguna significación.

I only exist here as a formality. — Ingmar Bergman, from the screenplay The Passion of Anna (1969)

We in our secular, rationalist world are utterly unprepared for such existential-spiritual spasms. For one thing, we do not study the history of religion in any serious way, even for explanations of religious phenomena. Instead, we look for sociological explanations, or economic explanations, or even political explanations, and we do so precisely because we find it almost impossible to posit spiritual appetites and spiritual passions as independent, primary forces in human history.

Tout le grand charme poignant de la vie vient peut-être de la certitude absolue de la mort. Si les choses devaient durer, elles nous sembleraient indignes d'attachement.