our situation reminded me of a fable I had read somewhere. Chased by a tiger, a man slips and falls over the edge of a mountain. As he falls, he manages to grab a bush growing by the side of the mountain and hangs on to it for dear life. The bush is laden with...

the sky here’s very strange. I often have the sensation when I look at it that it’s a solid thing up there, protecting us from what’s behind . . . [from] nothing, I suppose. Just darkness. Absolute night.

CLOV:Do you believe in the life to come?HAMM:Mine was always that.

There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to say that life is moving, but life is movement itself. Life and movement are not two different things. In other words, there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought,...

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.

Te leven betekent strikt genomen niets anders dan dag voor dag zelfmoord op te schuiven.

The day had been spent in the expectation of these hours, and now they were crumbling away, becoming, in their turn, another period of expectancy…It was a journey without end, leading to an indefinite future, eternally shifting just as she was reaching the present.

Every war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who undertake it.

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.

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

A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.

It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths.

When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself; it is always dependent upon the reality of the immediate relationship.

Good art wounds as well as delights. It must, because our defenses against the truth are wound so tightly around us. But as art chips away at our defenses, it also opens us to healing potentialities that transcend intellectual games and ego-preserving strategies.

It seemed funny that one day I would go to bed in her arms and the next not feel anything, like a switch had gone off. But no, that wasn’t honest either. This had been building for a long time. Our silences were getting longer. Our arguments more frequent. How do you stay with someone...

It took a couple of months before we were both convinced there were no rules about sexual activities in Hell and our spouses were not going to show up out of the blue. It was hard to start a sexual relationship in circumstances of such bizarre uncertainty, especially for an active Mormon and a good...

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

Since we are nothing but packages of tepid, half-rotted viscera, we shall always have trouble with sentiment. Being in love is nothing, it’s sticking together that’s difficult. Faeces on the other hand make no attempt to endure or to grow. On this score we are far more unfortunate than shit: our frenzy to persist in...

(…) provou que (o prazer) é um presente da divindade, ‘pois – dizia – o homem não pode dar a si próprio nem sensações nem ideias, recebe tudo; a dor e o prazer lhe vêm de fora, como sua existência’.

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,...

For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.

All I can tell you with certainty is that I, for one, have no self, and that I am unwilling or unable to perpetrate upon myself the joke of a self…. What I have instead is a variety of impersonations I can do, and not only of myself — a troupe of players that I...

Barefoot conducts his seminars on his houseboat in Sausalito. It costs a hundred dollars to find out why we are on this Earth. You also get a sandwich, but I wasn’t hungry that day. John Lennon had just been killed and I think I know why we are on this Earth; it’s to find out...

So we must run back and forth between these two suns in our firmament—the presentiment of death and awareness of life—and avoid being transfixed by either of them. If we are lucky in this uncertain middle distance, we may form attachments and projects that enhance the sentiment of life. However, even as we try our...

Nietzsche says very clearly all the way through his career that if you want to define human nature the first thing you must say is that human beings insist on value–we see the world through value colored eyes. We do not know how to look at things neutrally, value-free. So, it’s not a question of...

When reason has followed its road to the end, the point of crisis is reached and man is brought to the great question mark over his own existence.

All that is transitory is but a metaphor.

ကြ်န္ေတာ္ကေတာ့ ႐ိုးေျဖာင့္ခ်င္သူမွ်သာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ ႏွစ္သက္ သေဘာက်သလိုသာ သူမ်ားကို မထိပါးေစဘဲ ေနခ်င္ပါတယ္။

Man is a fantastic animal; he was born of fantasy, he is the son of “the mad woman of the house.” And universal history is the gigantic and thousand-year effort to go on putting order into that huge, disorderly, anti-animal fantasy. What we call reason is no more than fantasy put into shape. Is there...

Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!One thing at least is certain – This Life flies;One thing is certain and the rest is Lies -The Flower that once has blown forever dies.

The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a singularly variegated...

Personne ne semble avoir songé au fait que si l’existence est absurde, y réussir brillamment n’a pas plus de valeur qu’y échouer.

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

This is the world, he thought. And I am in it.

When he told F. of his disgust at the eyelid’s movement, he must have been sixteen. When he decided to study medicine, he must have been nineteen; by then, having already signed on to the contract to forget, he no longer remembered what he had said to F. three years before. Too bad for him....

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

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

Şimdi’nin gerçek özü kendini açığa vuruyordu. Şimdi var olandı, şimdi olmayan hiçbir şey varoluşmuyordu. Geçmiş var olan bir şey değildi. Hem de hiç değildi. Ne eşyada hatta ne de düşüncemde varoluşuyordu. Kendi geçmişimin benden kaçmış olduğunu çoktan beri anlamıştım… İşi biten her olay, kendi kendine bir kutunun içine usulca giriyor ve fahri olay niteliğini alıyordu....

İnsanın kendi yüzünü anlayabilmesi belki de elinde değil. Belki de tek başıma yaşadığım için böyle oluyor. Topluluk içinde yaşayanlar, kendilerini, arkadaşlarına nasıl görünüyorlarsa aynalarda tıpkı öyle görmeyi öğrenmişlerdir. Benim arkadaşım yok. Tenimin bunca çıplak olması acaba bu yüzden mi? Buna insansız… evet insansız doğa denilebilir.

Será verdade que sou um salafrário? A poltrona é verde, a corda parece uma alça, isso é indiscutível. Mas em relação às pessoas pode-se sempre discutir, tudo o que fazem pode ser explicado, por cima ou por baixo, como se queira. Recusei porque quero permanecer livre. É o que posso dizer. Mas posso dizer também:...

J’ai envie de partir, de m’en aller quelque part où je serais vraiment à ma place, où je m’emboîterais… Mais ma place n’est nulle part; je suis de trop.

If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse.

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….

I really should have died then, Tsukuru often told himself. Then this world, the one in the here and now, wouldn’t exist. It was a captivating, bewitching thought. The present world wouldn’t exist, and reality would no longer be real. As far as this world was concerned, he would simply no longer exist—just as this...

New mysteries. New day. Fresh doughnuts.

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

Sometimes I couldn’t figure it out, what all the living was for.

Logica e de neclintit, dar aceasta nu-i rezista unui om care vrea sa traiasca.

That’s the point of it, to have those connections, as painful as they are, as much worry as they might cause; they give back in strength and comfort and joy, believe it or not, and the more connections you make, the happier you are, the more point there is to getting up and getting through...

Pure logic is the impossibility by means of which science is maintained.