Existential Quotes - Page 10

• The blues is also existential and offers a sense of mature reflection that enabled it to be the leitmotif of modern life.

  Lewis Gordon

  Reflection, Modern Life, Mature

  Source: www.aaihs.org

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• Being on the spiritual path means you want to be a success in an existential sphere, not just on a social level.

  Jaggi Vasudev

  Spiritual, Mean, Perception

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• Death is the door from the superficial life, the so-called life, the trivial. There is a door. If you pass through the door you reach another life - deeper, eternal, without death, deathless. So from so-called life, which is really nothing but dying, one has to pass through the door of death; only then does one achieve a life that is really existential and active - without death in it.

  Rajneesh

  Death, Doors, Dying

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• I can negate everything of that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. I can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends or enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance and this divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don't know whether this world has meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms.

  Albert Camus

  Spring, Mean, Unity

  Albert Camus (1955). “The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays”

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• When I first heard the word existential, I didn't know what it meant. But then I found out that no one knows what it means, so now I use it all the time.

  Francine Pascal

  Mean, Firsts, Use

  Francine Pascal (2014). “My First Love and Other Disasters: My First Love and Other Disasters; Love & Betrayal & Hold the Mayo; My Mother Was Never a Kid”, p.651, Simon and Schuster

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• For my generation, coming of age at the height of the Cold War, fear of nuclear winter seemed the leading existential threat on the horizon. But the danger posed by war to all humanity-and to our planet-is at least matched by climate change.

  Ban Ki-moon

  War, Winter, Humanity

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• Love can exist only after meditation, not before it. That is a simple existential law. Before meditation - only lust, only sexuality. Before meditation you are an animal and not really a human being. With meditation a transformation comes: you become human, and out of your humanness, love flows.

  Rajneesh

  Animal, Simple, Law

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• As history confirms, people will change their minds about almost anything, from which god they worship to how they style their hair. But when it comes to existential judgments, human beings in general have an unfalteringly good opinion of themselves and their condition in this world and are steadfastly confident they are not a collection of self-conscious nothings.

  Thomas Ligotti

  Hair, Self, People

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• I think what we like about music - and what we like about art in general....is that enterprise that stops our minds from spinning. Because we're always all over the place. A good song, a good lyric is a movie: it will just focus and calm and confer significance on this completely bewildering reality that all of us live in.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Art, Reality

  "Leonard Cohen at 80". Interview with Mark Ellen, www.thetimes.co.uk. September 19, 2014.

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• Because imaginary time behaves like another direction in space, histories in imaginary time can be closed surfaces, like the surface of the Earth, with no [existential] beginning or end.

  Stephen Hawking

  Space, Earth, Surface

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• For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Happiness, Dedication, Causes

  Viktor E. Frankl (1985). “Man's Search For Meaning”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

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• Like most human behavior, violence has meaning: it only seems 'senseless' or 'meaningless' to the extent we are unable-or unwilling-to decode it.

  Stephen A. Diamond

  Violence, Behavior, Humans

  Stephen A. Diamond (1996). “Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil, and Creativity”, p.9, SUNY Press

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• When you are totally defeated you begin again to enjoy the small things around you. Just going to the mountains, not for victory or glory, but to enjoy nature or enjoy fine people. If you always succeed you enjoy the admiration of many people. Being defeated means being limited to the basis existential choices of life. If you can enjoy the quiet evening hours it is beautiful; a hero who always succeeds may not have time to enjoy such things.

  Wojciech Kurtyka

  Beautiful, Hero, Mean

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• The arrogant elimination of the Djaouts of our world must nerve us to pursue our own combative doctrine, namely: that peaceful cohabitation on this planet demands that while the upholders of any creed are free to adopt their own existential absolutes, the right of others to do the same is thereby rendered implicit and sacrosanct. Thus the creed of inquiry, of knowledge and exchange of ideas, must be upheld as an absolute, as ancient and eternal as any other.

  Wole Soyinka

  Our World, Ideas, Peaceful

  FaceBook post by Wole Soyinka from Apr 07, 2015

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• Like great works, deep feelings always mean more than they are conscious of saying.

  Albert Camus

  Mean, Feelings, Conscious

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.10, Vintage

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• There is a vast difference between positive thinking and existential courage.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Positive Thinking, Thinking, Differences

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2009). “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”, p.13, Macmillan

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• For what endless years this life will have to go on! He felt, with a kind of horror, his own strong youth and the bounding blood in his veins.

  Edith Wharton

  Strong, Blood, Years

  Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.2054, Delphi Classics

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• Indeed, there is nothing more arbitrary than intervening as a stranger in a destiny which is not ours.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Destiny, Arbitrary, Stranger

  Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre (2016). “The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection: Essays in Metaphysics, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Philosophy of Existentialism”, p.99, Open Road Media

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• I feel there’s an existential angst among young people. I didn’t have that. They see enormous mountains, where I only saw one little hill to climb.

  Sergey Brin

  People, Mountain, Existential Angst

  "Google co-founder Sergey Brin wants more computers in schools" by Dan Fost, latimesblogs.latimes.com. October 28, 2009.

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• One of the manifestations of depression for me is that I lose my will. And I thereby lose my ability to focus. I don't think I'll ever have the day-to-day consistency in my performance that something like This American Life has. If I'm not depressed and I'm on and I can focus and I can think through something hard and without interruption and without existential emptiness that comes from depression, that gives me - not mania. But I exalt. I exalt in not being depressed.

  Rachel Maddow

  Thinking, Giving, Focus

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• We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

  Albert Camus

  Love, Life, Deceived Us

  "A Happy Death" by Albert Camus, translated by Richard Howard, 1972.

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• Let us go singing as far as we go: the road will be less tedious.

  Virgil

  Music, Optimism, Singing

  "Eclogues (Book IX)". Book by Virgil, 37 BC.

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• A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.

  Albert Camus

  Reality, Use, Symbols

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.124, Vintage

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• When in the evening we are alone with our most existential thoughts, it is then that we come face to face with the most precious truths that we discover in our brief existence in this world. Just before fatigue envelopes us, taking us into sleep. We think of what our lives actually mean. And then we know how lucky we are if we still enjoy consciousness, rationality and love. But the greatest of these is love.

  Michael Kirby

  Love, Mean, Sleep

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• Though love is instinctive, it cannot develop without a certain stimulus and use.

  Lu Xun

  Love Is, Use, Certain

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