#existentialism

"Perhaps love is a minor madness. And as with madness, it's unendurable alone. The one person who can relieve us is of course the sole person we cannot go to: the one we love. So instead we seek out allies, even among strangers and wives, fellow patients who, if they can't touch the edge of our particular sorrow, have felt something that cuts nearly as deep."

"I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100."

"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, there is no thinker to be found."

"Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death."

"Au milieu de l'hiver, j'ai découvert en moi un invincible été."

"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."

"I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing."

"Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

"I can't go on, I'll go on."

"What matters creative endless toil, When, at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil?"

"[E]very man ought to say to himself, "Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions?"

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"If you want good luck; you must go out there and search for that luck!! Because luck is waiting for you to look for it."

"In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations."

"Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies."

"The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it."

"What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?''I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is."

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