Existentialism Quotes

“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.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, A Very Easy Death

“What matters creative endless toil, When, at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil?”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Der Tragödie erster und zweiter Teil. Urfaust

“Strangman shrugged theatrically. "It might," he repeated with great emphasis. "Let's admit that. It makes it more interesting—particularly for Kerans. 'Did I or did I not try to kill myself?' One of the few existential absolutes, far more significant than 'To be or not to be?', which merely underlines the uncertainty of the suicide, rather than the eternal ambivalence of his victim." He smiled down patronisingly at Kerans as the latter sat quietly in his chair, sipping at the drink Beatrice had brought him. "Kerans, I envy you the task of finding out—if you can.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World

“A little more and I would have fallen into the mirror trap. I avoided it, but only to fall into the window trap: with nothing to do, my arms dangling, I go over to the window.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Our greatest challenge today...is to couple conviction with doubt. By conviction, I mean some pragmatically developed faith, trust, or centeredness; and by doubt I mean openness to the ongoing changeability, mystery, and fallibility of the conviction.”
― Kirk Schneider

“apa yang dilakukan demi cinta, selalu terjadi diluar kebaikan dan kejahatan”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“kegilaan adalah suatu yang langka dalam individu--tapi dalam kelompok, partai politik, negara, epos, ia adalah peraturan...”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“Rien, rien n'avait d'importance et je savais bien pourquoi.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“It is the thought, not the incidentals of expression, that essentially makes an exposition unpopular. A systematic ribbon and button maker can become unpopular but essentially is not at all, inasmuch as he does not mean much by the very odd things he says (alas, and this is a popular art!). Socrates, on the other hand, was the most unpopular in Greece because he said the same thing as the simplest person but meant infinitely much by it. To be able to stick to one thing, to stick to it with ethical passion and undauntedness of spirit, to see the intrinsic duplexity of this one thought with the same impartiality, and at one and the same time to see the most profound earnestness and the greatest jest, the deepest tragedy and highest comedy―this is unpopular in any age for anyone who has not realized that immediacy is over. But neither can what is essentially unpopular be learned by rote. More on that later.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life's Way

“Vladimir: Now? ... (Joyous.) There you are again... (Indifferent.) There we are again... (Gloomy.) There I am again.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“When one contemplated Portia, when one contemplated Sharon, when one contemplated one's own apparently pointless, utterly trivial being, the questions hung all around one, as urgent as knives at the throat. But the instant one tried to grasp one of them and turn it to one's own purpose and pierce through the murk, it became blunt and useless as a piece of cardboard.”
― Deborah Eisenberg

“cinta mengungkapkan kualitaskualitas besar dan tersembunyi dari pencintanya--apa yang langka dan merupakan perkecualian dari dirinya: dalam artian bahwa cinta menyembunyikan apa yang biasabiasa saja”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“perempuan belajar membenci dengan cara yang sama saat mereka--belajar melupakan cara memperdaya”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“dalam keramahan tidak ada kebencian terhadap manusia--inilah mengapa begitu banyak hal yang menjijikkan”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“saat cinta ataupun kebencia tidak berperan, tindaka perempuan akan biasabiasa saja”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“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.”
― Muriel Barbery, L'elegància de l'eriçó

“But it is just as useless for a man to want first of all to decide the externals and after that the fundamentals as it is for a cosmic body, thinking to form itself, first of all to decide the nature of its surface, to what bodies it should turn its light, to which its dark side, without first letting the harmony of centrifugal and centripetal forces realize [*realisere*] its existence [*Existents*] and letting the rest come of itself. One must learn first to know himself before knowing anything else (γνῶθι σε αυτόν). Not until a man has inwardly understood himself and then sees the course he is to take does his life gain peace and meaning; only then is he free of the irksome, sinister traveling companion―that irony of life which manifests itself in the sphere of knowledge and invites true knowing to begin with a not-knowing (Socrates), just as God created the world from nothing. But in the waters of morality it is especially at home to those who still have not entered the tradewinds of virtue. Here it tumbles a person about in a horrible way, for a time lets him feel happy and content in his resolve to go ahead along the right path, then hurls him into the abyss of despair. Often it lulls a man to sleep with the thought, "After all, things cannot be otherwise," only to awaken him suddenly to a rigorous interrogation. Frequently it seems to let a veil of forgetfulness fall over the past, only to make every single trifle appear in a strong light again. When he struggles along the right path, rejoicing in having overcome temptation's power, there may come at almost the same time, right on the heels of perfect victory, an apparently insignificant external circumstance which pushes him down, like Sisyphus, from the height of the crag. Often when a person has concentrated on something, a minor external circumstance arises which destroys everything. (As in the case of a man who, weary of life, is about to throw himself into the Thames and at the crucial moment is halted by the sting of a mosquito). Frequently a person feels his very best when the illness is the worst, as in tuberculosis. In vain he tries to resist it but he has not sufficient strength, and it is no help to him that he has gone through the same thing many times; the kind of practice acquired in this way does not apply here. Just as no one who has been taught a great deal about swimming is able to keep afloat in a storm, but only the man who is intensely convinced and has experiences that he is actually lighter than water, so a person who lacks this inward point of poise is unable to keep afloat in life's storms.―Only when a man has understood himself in this way is he able to maintain an independent existence and thus avoid surrendering his own I. How often we see (in a period when we extol that Greek historian because he knows how to appropriate an unfamiliar style so delusively like the original author's, instead of censuring him, since the first prize always goes to an author for having his own style―that is, a mode of expression and presentation qualified by his own individuality)―how often we see people who either out of mental-spiritual laziness live on the crumbs that fall from another's table or for more egotistical reasons seek to identify themselves with others, until eventually they believe it all, just like the liar through frequent repetition of his stories.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“aku telah melakukannya"--kata ingatanku.
"aku tidak mungkin telah melakukannya"--kata kesombonganku dan tetap tidak tergoyahkan. akhirnya--ingatanku menyerah”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“melalui musik, bahkan hasrat kita dapat meikmati dirinya sendiri”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“seseorang yag merasa dirinya ditakdirkan untuk megamati dan bukan meyakini akan menemukan bahwa semua penganut terlalu cerewet dan suka mendesak: dia akan menolak mereka”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“dari sekolah militer kehidupan: apa yang tidak membunuhku membuatku kuat”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“apa? kamu mencari? kamu ingin membanyakkan dirimu menjadi sepuluh, seratus kali? kamu mencari pengikut? carilah nol!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“kepuasan diri melindungi orang bahkan dari terkena pilek. pernahkah seorang perempuan yang tahu bahwa ia berpakaian pantas terkena pilek? saya asumsikan dia hampir tidak berpakaian samasekali”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“It’s tragic that most of us spend our private lives paradoxically thinking something is watching us and permanently disapproving. We say we believe in benevolent deities but smear them with hate and the power to smite. We see sin everywhere, when the only sin is when we forget to treat each other with respect. That is the sad secret that makes the Universe vulnerable.”
― Sean J. Halford, Stronger Than Lions

“Our objective as a realist is to maximize our worth, and our objective as a romanticist is to be foolishly youthful.”
― Bongha Lee, On Resistism

“Deep down, it's all baseball, no matter what kind of geometrical shape you play it with.”
― Vernon D. Burns, Gods of the Jungle Planet

“Anybody who has done high school physics knows Newton’s Third Law. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You push against a wall; it pushes back against you. I love the poetry hidden in these truths, in the many laws we’ve discovered that underpin the universal fabric. We search for meaning ever hungrier, perhaps even with desperation: the symmetry in the equations freaks us out; for all we know, there is just us on this lonely little marble in the inky void.”
― Sean J. Halford, Stronger Than Lions

“All kinds of things are happening to me." I begin. ,,Some I choose, some I didn't. I don't know how to tell one from the other any more. What I mean is, it feels like everything's been decided in advance - that I'm following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me. It doesn't matter how much I think things over, how much effort I put into it. In fact, the harder I try, the more I lose my sense od who I am. It's as if my identity's an orbit that I've strayed far away from, and that really hurts. But more than that, it scares me. Just thinking about it makes me flinch.


Oshima gazes deep into m eyes. "Listen, Kafka. What you are experiencing now is the motif od many Greek tragedies. Man does not chose fate. Fate chooses man. That is the basic world view of Greek drama. And the sense od tragedy - according to Aristotle - somes, ironically enough, not drom the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I am getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. Sophocles' Oedipus Rex being a Great example. Oedipus is drawn into tragedy not because of lazines or stupidity, but because of his courage and honesty. So an inevitable irony results.”
― Haruki Murakami

“There is life in walking, but death in running - there is life in communication, but death in talking - there is life in awareness, but death in judgement - so, be the life my friend, without the judgement, without the talking, without the running - simply be the life, full with sparkling communications, revelatory awareness and heart-warming walks.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Time to Save Medicine

“Where am I asking others to take responsibility for my life? Let's face it - we would all love to be taken care of. We all are recovering children who project the dynamics of intrapsychic parent onto an institution, an ideology ...Growing up is ever more difficult because it requires letting go of old expectations of rescue and redemption. We are it; this is it; this is as good as it gets, and we better deal with it.”
― James Hollis, Creating a Life: Finding Your Individual Path