Quotes About Meaning

If I didn't try to assume responsibility for my own existence, it would seem utterly absurd to go on existing.

Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man....

Once they have slept together they will have to find something else to veil the enormous absurdity of their existence.

I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here; and this idea of a creating hand refers to God.

They are young and well built, they have another thirty years ahead of them. So they don't hurry, they take their time, and they are quite right. Once they have been to bed together, they will have to find something else to conceal the enormous absurdity of their existence.

Nothingness carries being in its heart.

Something begins in order to end: an adventure doesn't let itself be extended it achieves significance only through its death.

Then time started flowing again and the emptiness grew larger.

I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.

emotion is first of all and in principle an accident

I had spent my time counterfeiting eternity, I had understood nothing.

Man is a useless passion. It is meaningless that we live and it is meaningless that we die.

Il n'y a de réalité que dans l'action… [L'être humain] n'existe que dans la mesure où il se réalise, il n'est donc rien d'autre que sa vie

I had spent my time counterfeiting eternity.

to do something is to create existence

I know very well that I don't want to do anything: to do something is to create existence—and there's quite enough existence as it is.

Je pense, lui dis-je, que nous voilà, tous tant que nous sommes, à manger et à boire pour conserver notre précieuse existence et qu'il n'y a rien, rien, aucune raison d'exister… L'autodidacte répondit que la vie a un sens si on veut bien lui en donner un. Il faut d'abord agir, se jeter dans une entreprise. Il y a un but, Monsieur, il y a un but… il y a les hommes.

No doctrine is more optimistic [than existentialism], since it declares that man's destiny lies within himself.

Will you do me the honour of lunching with me on Wednesday?" "With pleasure." I had as much desire to eat with him as I had to hang myself.

Jean-Paul Sartre

BaÅŸlang?ç olmad??? gibi, son da yoktur. Bir kad?n, bir dost, bir kent bir kerede terk edilemez. Hepsi birbirine benzer zaten.

man is a useless passion.

Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realises himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.

Voici ce que j'ai pensé : pour que l'événement le plus banal devienne une aventure, il faut et il suffit qu'on se mette à la raconter. C'est ce qui dupe les gens : un homme, c'est toujours un conteur d'histoires, il vit entouré de ses histoires et des histoires d'autrui, il voit tout ce qui lui arrive à travers elles ; et il cherche à vivre sa vie comme s'il la racontait. Mais il faut choisir : vivre ou raconter.