Existentialism Quotes

Our life is a hope which is continually converting itself into memory and memory in its turn begets hope.

If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.

Modern Existentialism... is a total European creation, perhaps the last philosophic legacy of Europe to America or whatever other civilization is now on its way to supplant Europe.

A picture was a motionless record of motion. An arrested representation of life. A picture was the kiss of death pretending to possess immutability.

At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.

Uncertainty is the normal state.

The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists.

When a person screams in pain, the actual pain is only half the noise they make. The other half is the terror at being forced to accept that they exist.

I just look around and say, I'm a mess. I don't know why I do things.

My favorite word is existentialism. I can't say it and I'm not quite sure what it means.

You say 'I' and you are proud of this word. But greater than this- although you will not believe in it - is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say 'I' but performs 'I'.

There is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it.

Having just enough life to enjoy being dead.

I want my name to mean me.

Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy's favor, offering to sell her charms to it.

the best existential analysis of the human condition leads directly into the problems of God and faith

After awhile you could get used to anything.

Obviously, all religions fall far short of their own ideals.

We only have one life to live, and must go on with it to the end, that if we feel it is meaningless, then we ourselves must give it meaning.

It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.

if we possess a why of life we can put up with almost any how.

It is suicide to be abroad. But what it is to be at home, ... what it is to be at home? A lingering dissolution.

One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.

We are gods with anuses.

Insofar we are death-bound, existence is urgent and frightful. Insofar as are groundless, it is vertiginous and dreamlike. Insofar as we are insatiable, it is unquiet and tormented.

To stay or to go, it amounted to the same thing.

Artistic symbols and myths speak out of the primordial, preconscious realm of the mind which is powerful and chaotic. Both symbol and myth are ways of bringing order and form into this chaos.

I don't really believe anything I say. Because the nature of my work concerns the spaces between the words, rather than the words themselves.

And it's always better, isn't it, when you discover answers on your own?

It is man's unique privilege, among all other organisms. By pursuing falsehood you will arrive at the truth!

All creation necessarily ends in this: Creators, powerless, fleeing from the things they have wrought.

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.

One must have at least a readiness to love the other person, broadly speaking, if one is to be able to understand him.

Existence is illusory and it is eternal.

Death is the ultimate negative.

Paradise does not exist, but we must nonetheless strive to be worthy of it.

He had stylized himself--life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as writer chooses a technical form.

I found motherhood a crash course in existentialism (what is my purpose in life, am I mistress or slave of my destiny, when the hell do I get some sleep?) and [the book] ROOM was the result.

Some men become what they were born for.

Live as long as you please, you will strike nothing off the time you will have to spend dead.

The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.

Apparently there is no profit in the unique, or not enough to make it worthwhile to preserve. Ultimately it drains the life out of us, and existentialism starts to make more and more sense.

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.

There are two ways to go to the gas chamber, free and not free.

People are like dice. We throw ourselves in the direction of our own choosing.

Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.

I see the insipid flesh blossoming and palpitating with abandon.

It's like practicing pole vaulting your entire life, and then getting to the olympics and saying, ‘what the hell did I want to jump over this stupid bar for?

...freedom only gives you something to be sorry for.

Existentialism's first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him.