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2a98819 There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point... The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. self-determination follow-your-bliss self-actualization existentialism Richard Dawkins
0d962fb Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable. honesty truth seeking existentialism Albert Camus
d91378b Try again. Fail again. Fail better. inspirational existentialism failure Samuel Beckett
779db64 I can't go on, I'll go on. tragedy fiction humor tragic-comedy nihilism existentialism drama Samuel Beckett
164a53c Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night- she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question-- 'Is this all? marriage feminism inspirational housekeeping existentialism purpose parenting Betty Friedan
0ab6b31 About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough--and even miraculous enough if you insist--I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about? Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others--while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity--so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities... but there, there. Enough. existence morality faith religion god life secular-ethics supernaturalism meaning-of-life debate existentialism ethics materialism naturalism atheism respect self-respect Christopher Hitchens
2262449 A weird time in which we are alive. We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope. hopelessness future existentialism Philip K. Dick
02fb7e8 Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others. youth maturity existentialism Hermann Hesse
e9a2e70 No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse. existentialism Friedrich Nietzsche
1c4ba75 Il n'y a de realite que dans l'action action reality philosophy inspirational handeln existentialism Jean-Paul Sartre
cac80a0 Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat. human religion life human-condition existentialism José Saramago
8dafe1c Il n'y a de realite que dans l'action. (There is no reality except in action.) reality philosophy inspirational handeln existentialism Jean-Paul Sartre
fc47f32 I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself. self-loathing humble existentialism humility self-realization Hermann Hesse
2a506c3 Mother used to say that however miserable one is, there's always something to be thankful for. And each morning, when the sky brightened and light began to flood my cell, I agreed with her. literature life philosophy the-stranger albert-camus existentialism Albert Camus
6ec2e28 He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch. godard courage inspirational existentialism Jean-Luc Godard
ede203a Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death. existentialism Simone de Beauvoir
4d833ed We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself. meaning existentialism Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
f983c4c You live in a deranged age - more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing. philosophy existentialism Walker Percy
681a5f9 To stay or to go, it amounted to the same thing. philosophy existentialism choices Albert Camus
16aa070 A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison. morality existentialism Simone de Beauvoir
3fcdd19 Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us. life existentialism Tom Perrotta
daecfe7 As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it. philosophers existentialism Simone de Beauvoir
fe57997 Life is tragic simply because the earth turns, and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death - ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. freedom living-intentionally existentialism James Baldwin
284cc0a At this stage of the game, I don't have the time for patience and tolerance. Ten years ago, even five years ago, I would have listened to people ask their questions, explained to them, mollified them. No more. That time is past. Now, as Norman Mailer said in Naked and the Dead, 'I hate everything which is not in myself.' If it doesn't have a direct bearing on what I'm advocating, if it doesn't augment or stimulate my life and thinking, I don't want to hear it. It has to add something to my life. There's no more time for explaining and being ecumenical anymore. No more time. That's a characteristic I share with the new generation of Satanists, which might best be termed, and has labeled itself in many ways, an 'Apocalypse culture.' Not that they believe in the biblical Apocalypse--the ultimate war between good and evil. Quite the contrary. But that there is an urgency, a need to get on with things and stop wailing and if it ends tomorrow, at least we'll know we've lived today. It's a 'fiddle while Rome burns' philosophy. It's the Satanic philosophy. If the generation born in the 50's grew up in the shadow of The Bomb and had to assimilate the possibility of imminent self destruction of the entire planet at any time, those born in the 60's have had to reconcile the inevitability of our own destruction, not through the bomb but through mindless, uncontrolled overpopulation. And somehow resolve in themselves, looking at what history has taught us, that no amount of yelling, protesting, placard waving, marching, wailing--or even more constructive avenues like running for government office or trying to write books to wake people up--is going to do a damn bit of good. The majority of humans have an inborn death wish--they want to destroy themselves and everything beautiful. To finally realize that we're living in a world after the zenith of creativity, and that we can see so clearly the mechanics of our own destruction, is a terrible realization. Most people can't face it. They'd rather retreat to the comfort of New Age mysticism. That's all right. All we want, those few of us who have the strength to realize what's going on, is the freedom to create and entertain and share with each other, to preserve and cherish what we can while we can, and to build our own little citadels away from the insensitivity of the rest of the world. apocalypse-culture naked-and-the-dead satanism norman-mailer existentialism isolation Anton Szandor LaVey
08c6c69 There is no reality except in action. Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the extent that he fulfills himself; he is therefore nothing else than the ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life. existentialism life-philosophy Jean-Paul Sartre
20a49e7 It is suicide to be abroad. But what it is to be at home, ... what it is to be at home? A lingering dissolution. philosophy existentialism Samuel Beckett
47303c6 HAMM: Scoundrel! Why did you engender me? NAGG: I didn't know. HAMM: What? What didn't you know? NAGG: That it'd be you. (Pause.) beckett existentialism Samuel Beckett
d977f82 The achievement of maturity, psychologically speaking, might be said to be the realization and acceptance that we simply cannot live independently from the world, and so we must live within it, with whatever compromises that might entail. existence youth selling-out maturity existentialism Paul Murray
f1c8134 J'ai envie de partir, de m'en aller quelque part ou je serais vraiment a ma place, ou je m'emboiterais... Mais ma place n'est nulle part; je suis de trop. existentialism Jean-Paul Sartre
d716b0d The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not. present heaven present-moment forever existentialism paradise Franz Kafka
e364051 The misfortune is that although everyone must come to [death], each experiences the adventure in solitude. We never left Maman during those last days... and yet we were profoundly separated from her. death existentialism Simone de Beauvoir
31d6c6a "The Idiot. I have read it once, and find that I don't remember the events of the book very well--or even all the principal characters. But mostly the 'portrait of a truly beautiful person' that dostoevsky supposedly set out to write in that book. And I remember how Myshkin seemed so simple when I began the book, but by the end, I realized how I didn't understand him at all. the things he did. Maybe when I read it again it will be different. But the plot of these dostoevsky books can hold such twists and turns for the first-time reader-- I guess that's b/c he was writing most of these books as serials that had to have cliffhangers and such. But I make marks in my books, mostly at parts where I see the author's philosophical points standing in the most stark relief. My copy of Moby Dick is positively full of these marks. The Idiot, I find has a few... Part 3, Section 5. The sickly Ippolit is reading from his 'Explanation' or whatever its called. He says his convictions are not tied to him being condemned to death. It's important for him to describe, of happiness: "you may be sure that Columbus was happy not when he had discovered America, but when he was discovering it." That it's the process of life--not the end or accomplished goals in it--that matter. Well. Easier said than lived! Part 3, Section 6. more of Ippolit talking--about a christian mindset. He references Jesus's parable of The Word as seeds that grow in men, couched in a description of how people are interrelated over time; its a picture of a multiplicity. existentialism idiot Fyodor Dostoyevsky
81f7da1 The things I believed in dont exist any more. It's foolish to pretend that they do. Western Civilization finally went up in smoke in the chimneys at Dachau but I was too infatuated to see it. I see it now. realist existentialism Cormac McCarthy
153aaef "The Patrician took a sip of his beer. "I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining on mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built into the nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior." understanding patrician mothers existentialism evil Terry Pratchett
cf30b38 Maybe it's not logical. I don't know. I don't care. I've been asked didnt I think it odd that I should be present to witness the death of everything and I do think it's odd but that doesnt mean it's not so. Someone has to be here. realist existentialism Cormac McCarthy
3239f57 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.... man existence humanism consistency essence atheistic views definition beliefs sartre jean-paul-sartre existentialism atheist humans Jean-Paul Sartre
7059c18 "One day about a month ago, I really hit bottom. You know, I just felt that in a Godless universe, I didn't want to go on living. Now I happen to own this rifle, which I loaded, believe it or not, and pressed it to my forehead. And I remember thinking, at the time, I'm gonna kill myself. Then I thought, what if I'm wrong? What if there is a God? I mean, after all, nobody really knows that. But then I thought, no, you know, maybe is not good enough. I want certainty or nothing. And I remember very clearly, the clock was ticking, and I was sitting there frozen with the gun to my head, debating whether to shoot. [The gun fires accidentally, shattering a mirror] All of a sudden, the gun went off. I had been so tense my finger had squeezed the trigger inadvertently. But I was perspiring so much the gun had slid off my forehead and missed me. And suddenly neighbors were, were pounding on the door, and, and I don't know, the whole scene was just pandemonium. And, uh, you know, I-I-I ran to the door, I-I didn't know what to say. You know, I was-I was embarrassed and confused and my-my-my mind was r-r-racing a mile a minute. And I-I just knew one thing. I-I-I had to get out of that house, I had to just get out in the fresh air and-and clear my head. And I remember very clearly, I walked the streets. I walked and I walked. I-I didn't know what was going through my mind. It all seemed so violent and un-unreal to me. And I wandered for a long time on the Upper West Side, you know, and-and it must have been hours. You know, my-my feet hurt, my head was-was pounding, and-and I had to sit down. I went into a movie house. I-I didn't know what was playing or anything. suicide nihilism existentialism Woody Allen
c56671f It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish. humanity existentialism Jean-Paul Sartre
79e4f3e Still, somewhere in the depths of ourselves we all harbor an ashamed, unsatisfied melancholy that quietly awaits a funeral. sadness existential melancholy funeral sartre existentialism Jean-Paul Sartre
38d98b2 "One's own free unfettered choice, one's own caprice, however wild it may be, one's own fancy worked up at times to frenzy -- is that very "most advantageous advantage" which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms. And how do these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice? What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice." -- existentialism Fyodor Dostoyevsky
ca0011a The greatest discovery of the 21st century will be the discovery that Man was not meant to live at the speed of light. existentialism Marshall McLuhan
853f05a I don't complain about the horror of life; I complain about the horror of my life. The only fact I worry about is that I exist and suffer and can't even dream of being removed from my feeling of suffering. suffering worry existentialism horror Fernando Pessoa
d01b504 I see the insipid flesh blossoming and palpitating with abandon. existentialism Jean-Paul Sartre
83753f2 I kissed her and forgot death. kiss love lesbianism lesbian existentialism Jeanette Winterson
3414688 She was like a landscape you see from the train, and you want to stop just there. fiction script existentialism play fear-of-death psychology Graham Greene
2ba9dda Do I dream you? Or you dream me? Or does someone, something bigger than all' - her hands swept the vast constellations above them - 'this beauteous calamity, dream everything we see and more? existentialism questions David Hewson
c0ac46a We have been cut off, the past has been ended and the family has broken up and the present is adrift in its wheelchair. ... That is no gap between the generations, that is a gulf. The elements have changed, there are whole new orders of magnitude and kind. [...] My grandparents had to live their way out of one world and into another, or into several others, making new out of old the way corals live their reef upward. I am on my grandparents' side. I believe in Time, as they did, and in the life chronological rather than in the life existential. We live in time and through it, we build our huts in its ruins, or used to, and we cannot afford all these abandonings. present time history past family life build-up chronology development generation-gap existentialism modernity Wallace Stegner
9397687 I know we didn't accomplish anything, but it felt great to sit there and talk about our place in things. existence friends life life-roles existentialism Stephen Chbosky
1c98571 La voluntad, el deseo de vivir, es tan fuerte en el animal como en el hombre. En el hombre es mayor la comprension. A mas comprender, corresponde menos desear. Esto es logico, y ademas se comprueba en la realidad. La apetencia por conocer se despierta en los individuos que aparecen al final de una evolucion, cuando el instinto de vivir languidece. El hombre, cuya necesidad es conocer, es como la mariposa que rompe la crisalida para morir. El individuo sano, vivo, fuerte, no ve las cosas como son, porque no le conviene. Esta dentro de una alucinacion. Don Quijote, a quien Cervantes quiso dar un sentido negativo, es un simbolo de la afirmacion de la vida. Don Quijote vive mas que todas las personas cuerdas que le rodean, vive mas y con mas intensidad que los otros. El individuo o el pueblo que quiere vivir se envuelve en nubes como los antiguos dioses cuando se aparecian a los mortales. El instinto vital necesita de las ficcion para afirmarse. La ciencia entonces, el instinto de critica, el instinto de averiguacion, debe encontrar una verdad: la cantidad de mentira que se necesita para la vida science existentialism don-quijote pesimism Pío Baroja
8f14b46 Saving and pinching to get married, you're losing the best time of your life. marriage newlyweds engagement existentialism Muriel Spark
4454026 The doctor was not, he thought, really sure that anyone else existed, and wanted to prove they did by helping them. existentialism psychiatry Ursula K. Le Guin
b31c32f She wants to have her notebooks so that the flimsy framework of events, as she has constructed them in her school notebook, will be provided with walls and become a house she can live in. Because if the tottering structure of her memories collapses like a clumsily pitched tent, all that Tamina will be left with is the present, that invisible point, that nothingness moving slowly toward death. philosophy czech meaning-of-life existentialism novel memory Milan Kundera
9b32798 Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it. religion meaning-of-life science-fiction existentialism ethics prophecy mythology Frank Herbert
34492c1 These young people amaze me; drinking their coffee, they tell clear, plausible stories. If you ask them what they did yesterday, they don't get flustered; they tell you all about it in a few words. If I were in their place, I'd start stammering. It's true that for a long time now nobody has bothered how I spend my time. When you live alone, you even forget what it is to tell a story : plausibility disappears at the same time as friends. solitude existentialism Jean-Paul Sartre
f7bffa4 "You certainly remember this scene from dozens of films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running and laughing. By laughing the two runners are proclaiming to the whole world, to audiences in all the movie theaters: "We're happy, we're glad to be in the world, we're in agreement with being!" It's a silly scene, a cliche, but it expresses a basic human attitude: serious laughter, laughter "beyond joking." All churches, all underwear manufacturers, all generals, all political parties, are in agreement about that kind of laughter, and all of them rush to put the image of the two laughing runners on the billboards advertising their religion, their products, their ideology, their nation, their sex, their dishwashing powder." -- laughter happiness philosophy czech kitsch meaning-of-life existentialism novel Milan Kundera
20bb239 Polarities of the 'authentic' vs. the 'inauthentic' are easily discernible in recreational modes. The criteria of authenticity are not necessarily objective but rather have to do with the rules by which the self allows or disallows its own experience. genuineness the-self existentialism experience Walker Percy
32e3503 " Once a person has been poisoned by self-deception, he can't make decisions about himself as neatly as all that," Himiko said, elaborating her friend's terrific prophecy; " You won't get a divorce Bird. You'll justify yourself like crazy, and try to salvage your married life by confusing the real issues. A decision like divorce is beyond you now, Bird, the poison has gone to work. And you know how the story ends ? Not even your own wife will trust you absolutely, and one day you'll discover for yourself that your entire private life is in the shadow of deception and in the end you'll destroy yourself. Bird, the first signs of self-destruction have appeared already!" " But that's a blind alley! Leave it to you to paint the most hopeless future you can think of. " Bird lunged at jocularity..." divorce existentialism Kenzaburō Ōe
d208ebe I thought of the fate of Descartes' famous formulation: man as 'master and proprietor of nature.' Having brought off miracles in science and technology, this 'master and proprietor' is suddenly realizing that he owns nothing and is master neither of nature (it is vanishing, little by little, from the planet), nor of History (it has escaped him), nor of himself (he is led by the irrational forces of his soul). But if God is gone and man is no longer master, then who is master? The planet is moving through the void without any master. There it is, the unbearable lightness of being. history nature humanity destiny god self-determinism modern meaning-of-life end-of-history existentialism Milan Kundera
004e4e6 "Tereza keeps appearing before my eyes. I see her sitting on the stump petting Karenin's head and ruminating on mankind's debacles. Another image also comes to mind: Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman beating it with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman's very eyes, put his arms around the horse's neck and burst into tears. That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too, had removed himself from the world of people. In other words, it was at the time when his mental illness had just erupted. But for that very reason I feel his gesture has broad implications: Nietzsche was trying to apologize to the horse for Descartes. His lunacy (that is, his final break with mankind) began at the very moment he burst into tears over the horse. And that is the Nietzsche I love, just as I love Tereza with the mortally ill dog resting his head on her lap. I see them one next to the other: both stepping down from the road along which mankind, "the master and proprietor of nature," marches onward." dogs-and-humans existentialism nietzsche descartes Milan Kundera
a7110ae The uniform is that which we do not choose, that which is assigned to us; it is the certitude of the universal against the precariousness of the individual. When the values that were once so solid come under challenge and withdraw, heads bowed, he who cannot live without them (without fidelity, family, country, discipline, without love) buttons himself up in the universality of his uniform as if that uniform were the last shred of transcendence that could protect him against the cold of a future in which there will be nothing left to respect. pasenow sleepwalkers individual post-modernism universal existentialism uniform values Milan Kundera
725969c "Every novel says to the reader: "Things are not as simple as you think." That is the novel's eternal truth, but it grows steadily harder to hear amid the din of easy, quick answers that come faster than the question and block it off. In the spirit of our time, it's either Anna or Karenin who is right, and the ancient wisdom of Cervantes, telling us about the difficulty of knowing and the elusiveness of truth, seems cumbersome and useless." tolstoy modernism epistemology existentialism Milan Kundera
2cf5ee7 Perhaps it was because a terrible anguish had developed within my soul, occasioned by a circumstance which loomed infinitely larger than my own self: to be precise, it was the dawning conviction that in the world at large, . I had had a presentiment of this for a good long time, but complete conviction came swiftly during this last year. All of a sudden, I realized that it to me whether the world existed or whether there was nothing at all anywhere. I began to intuit and sense with all my being, that . dreams existentialism Fyodor Dostoyevsky
d576214 Let us see what words can do. Will you understand me, for a start, if I tell you that I have never known what I am? My vices, my virtues, are under my nose, but I can't see them, nor stand far enough back to view myself as a whole. I seem to be a sort of flabby mass in which words are engulfed; no sooner do I name myself than what is named is merged in him who names, and one gets no farther. I have often wanted to hate myself and, as you know, had good reasons for so doing. But my attempted hatred of myself was absorbed into my insubstantiality and was nothing but a recollection. I could not love myself either, I am sure, though I have never tried to. But I was eternally compelled to be myself; I was my own burden, but never burdensome enough, Mathieu. For one instant, on that June evening when I elected to confess to you, I thought I had encountered myself in your bewildered eyes. You saw me, in your eyes I was solid and predictable; my acts and moods were the actual consequences of a definite entity. And through me you knew that entity. I described it to you in my words, I revealed to you facts unknown to you, which had helped you to visualize it. And yet you saw it, I merely saw you seeing it. For one instant you were the heaven-sent mediator between me and myself, you perceived that compact and solid entity which I was and wanted to be in just as simple and ordinary a way as I perceived you. For, after all, I exist, I am, though I have no sense of being; and it is an exquisite torment to discover in oneself such utterly unfounded certainty, such unsubstantiated pride. I then understood that one could not reach oneself except through another's judgment, another's hatred. And also through another's love perhaps; but there is here no question of that. For this revelation I am not ungrateful to you. I do not know how you would describe our present relations. Not goodwill, nor wholly hatred. Put it that there is a corpse between us. My corpse. philosophy existentialism Jean-Paul Sartre
9b49d9c We rush through our days in such stress and intensity, as if we were here to stay and the serious project of the world depended on us. We worry and grow anxious; we magnify trivia until they become important enough to control our lives. Yet all the time, we have forgotten that we are but temporary sojourners on the surface of a strange planet spinning slowly in the infinite night of the cosmos. earth nature impermanence mindfulness existentialism John O'Donohue
7a2a722 Y lo que, por el contrario, me sucede a mi en las raras horas de placer, lo que para mi es delicia, suceso, elevacion y extasis, eso no lo conoce, ni lo ama, ni lo busca el mundo mas que si acaso en las novelas; en la vida, lo considera una locura. Y en efecto, si el mundo tiene razon, si esta musica de los cafes, estas diversiones en masa, estos hombres americanos contentos con tan poco tienen razon, entonces soy yo el que no la tiene, entonces es verdad que estoy loco, entonces soy efectivamente el lobo estepario que tantas veces me he llamado, la bestia descarriada en un mundo que le es extrano e incomprensible, que ya no encuentra ni su hogar, ni su ambiente, ni su alimento. life lobo-estepario vida-moderna existencialismo lobo hesse modern-life existentialism Hermann Hesse
ae5445c La seriedad (...) se produce por una hiperestimacion del tiempo. (...) En la eternidad, sin embargo, no hay tiempo: la eternidad es solo un instante, lo suficientemente largo para una broma. time eternidade existencialismo eternidad existentialism eternity tiempo Hermann Hesse
03d7dca If the achievement of so much in life could not make one happy, then why bother living? existentialism Christopher Bram
abce140 You didn't succeed. Well, what of that? There's nothing to prove, you know, and the revolution's not a question of virtue but of effectiveness. There is no heaven. There's work to be done, that's all. And you must do what you're cut out for; all the better if it comes easy to you. The best work is not the work that takes the most sacrifice. It's the work in which you can best succeed. success dirty-hands hœderer les-mains-sales the-great-work true-will existentialism Jean-Paul Sartre
1ca748a In the presence of Esch, values have hidden their faces. Order, loyalty, sacrifice--he cherishes all these words, but exactly what do they represent? Sacrifice for what? Demand what sort of order? He doesn't know. If a value has lost its concrete content, what is left of it? A mere empty form; an imperative that goes unheeded and, all the more furious, demands to be heard and obeyed. The less Esch knows what he wants, the more furiously he wants it. Esch: the fanaticism of the era with no God. Because all values have hidden their faces, anything can be considered a value. Justice, order--Esch seeks them now in the trade union struggle, then in religion; today in police power, tomorrow in the mirage of America, where he dreams of emigrating. He could be a terrorist or a repentant terrorist turning in his comrades, or a party militant or a cult member a kamikaze prepared to sacrifice his life. All the passions rampaging through the bloody history of our time are taken up, unmasked, and terrifyingly displayed in Esch's modest adventure. sacrifice esch sleepwalkers imperative broch cult post-modern modern certainty purpose-of-life order symbolic existentialism fanaticism novel values loyalty Milan Kundera
5bc7d3d What do you expect? This place is one big anti-climax. hopelessness time existence futility apathy existentialism hopeless habit Michel Faber
cca534d Live with the consequences of your deeds and enjoy the warmth they create. The only warmth in the cold, indifferent universe is that which we create ourselves. And that is what a work of art is, it is what a constructed life is, a fulfilled life, the warmth of acts. existentialism Peter Watson
6ed3cc7 "You've a perfect right to call me as impractical as a dormouse, and to feel I'm out of touch with life. But this is the point where we simply can't see eye to eye. We've nothing whatever in common. Don't you see. . . it's not an accident that's drawn me from Blake to Whitehead, it's a certain line of thought which is fundamental to my whole approach. You see, there's something about them both. . . They trusted the universe. You say I don't know what the modern world's like, but that's obviously untrue. Anyone who's spent a week in London knows just what it's like. . . if you mean neurosis and boredom and the rest of it. And I do read a modern novel occasionally, in spite of what you say. I've read Joyce and Sartre and Beckett and the rest, and every atom in me rejects what they say. They strike me as liars and fools. I don't think they're dishonest so much as hopelessly tired and defeated." Lewis had lit his pipe. He did it as if Reade were speaking to someone else. Now he said, smiling faintly, "I don't think we're discussing modern literature." Reade had an impulse to call the debater's trick, but he repressed it. Instead he said quietly, "We're discussing modern life, and you brought up the subject. And I'm trying to explain why I don't think that murders and wars prove your point. I'm writing about Whitehead because his fundamental intuition of the universe is the same as my own. I believe like Whitehead that the universe is a single organism that somehow takes account of us. I don't believe that modern man is a stranded fragment of life in an empty universe. I've an instinct that tells me that there's a purpose, and that I can understand that purpose more deeply by trusting my instinct. I can't believe the world is meaningless. I don't expect life to explode in my face at any moment. When I walk back to my cottage, I don't feel like a meaningless fragment of life walking over a lot of dead hills. I feel a part of the landscape, as if it's somehow aware of me, and friendly." meaning phenomenological-existentialism whitehead existentialism Colin Wilson
857ec62 To seek out the upright. No fall but preceded by a declination. He took great marching steps into the nothingness, counting them against his return. Eyes closed, arms oaring. Upright to what? Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars were common satellite. Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yet know it must. the-road existentialism Cormac McCarthy
9b28ecc "The insistent drums were an unwelcome reminder of the existence of another world, wholly autonomous, with its own necessities and patterns. The message they were beating out, over and over, was for her; it was saying, not precisely that she did not exist but rather that it did not matter whether she existed or not, that her presence was of no consequence to the rest of the cosmos. It was a sensation that suddenly paralyzed her with dread. There had never been any question of her "mattering"; it went without saying that she mattered, because she was important to herself. But what was the part of her to which she mattered?" drums observer subjectivity meaning-of-life message the-other existentialism Paul Bowles
0cfee0b She now felt an incessant and universal numbness. loss passion darkness love numbness existentialism Gustave Flaubert
2d815e4 "HAMM: Yesterday! What does that mean? Yesterday! CLOV (violently): beckett existentialism Beckett Samuel
23ccf05 ...the meaning of a few moments of forgetfulness in an evil hour and in a dangerous place. Had they been lived through and remained unknown, there on the kapia, they would have meant nothing at all; one of those youthful pranks later told to friends during dull patrol duties at night. But thus, reduced to a question of definite responsibility, they meant everything. They meant more than death, they meant the end of everything, an unwanted and unworthy end. There would be no more full and frank explanations either to himself or to comrades. There would be no more letters from Kolomea, no more family photographs, no money orders such as he had sent home with pride. It was the end of one who has deceived himself and allowed others to deceive him. responsibility life existentialism Ivo Andrić
b898f2f The air is so dry, so clear, and there's so few people, almost no lights. And you can lie on your back and look up and see the Milky Way. All the stars like a splash of milk in the sky. And you see them slowly move. Because the Earth is moving. And you feel like you're lying on a giant spinning ball in space. stars existence wonder life stargazing the-milky-way the-world space existentialism Mohsin Hamid
11f859f She must have been pretty once. At least, like everyone, she had been young. Now her eyes, her mouth, her whole body exuded weakness. Could it be that she was ill and waiting for her next attack? Some people who know that at a particular hour they are going to start suffering again have that expression, subdued and yet tense, like drug addicts waiting for the hour of their dose. apathy-quotes existentialism Georges Simenon
5f4c609 "...Alan, the first winter we knew him, stood at my desk in the Cathedral library and remarked, "I think you and Hugh live more existentially than most people." I felt we'd made it: we, like Sartre and Camus and Kierkegaard, were existential; we were really with it. It doesn't matter that I'm still not quite sure what living existentially means, though I have a suspicion that it's not far from living ontologically, because it's one of those words that's outside the realm of provable fact and touches on mystery. Nothing important is completely explicable." life importance existentialism mystery Madeleine L'Engle
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