#existent

Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas. J'ai reçu un télégramme de l'asile : « Mère décédée. Enterrement demain. Sentiments distingués. » Cela ne veut rien dire. C'était peut-être hier. ↗

— Albert Camus

#existentialism #nihilism #existentialism

The alarm bells sound regularly: cybergeddon; the next Pearl Harbor; one of the greatest existential threats facing the United States. With increasing frequency, these are the grave terms officials invoke about the menace of cybercrime - and they're not understating the threat. ↗

— Preet Bharara

#alarm #bells #existential #facing #frequency

Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent. ↗

— Barbara Ehrenreich

#about #ago #brash #career #century

I have to admit it humbly, mon cher compatriote, I was always bursting with vanity. I, I, I is the refrain of my whole life, which could be heard in everything I said. I could never talk without boasting, especially if I did so with that shattering discretion that was my specialty. It is quite true that I always lived free and powerful. I simply felt released in the regard to all the for the excellent reason that I recognized no equals. I always considered myself more intelligent than everyone else, as I’ve told you, but also more sensitive and more skillful, a crack shot, an incomparable driver, a better lover. Even in the fields in which it was easy for me to verify my inferiority–like tennis, for instance, in which I was but a passable partner–it was hard for me not to think that, with a little time and practice, I would surpass the best players. I admitted only superiorities in me and this explained my good will and serenity. When I was concerned with others, I was so out of pure condescension, in utter freedom, and all the credit went to me: my self-esteem would go up a degree. ↗

— Albert Camus

#self #self-awareness #self-esteem #equality

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. ↗

— Franz Kafka

#create #desired #does #exist #nonexistent

[in the true mad north] of introspection, where 'falcons of the inner eye' dive and die, glimpsing in their dying fall, all life's memory of existence. ↗

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#artist #beatnik #emptiness #existentialism #art

Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade, a musical idea, no matter how innovative, is threatened. ↗

— Archie Shepp

#culture #decade #existential #how #idea

I have read of the great wars of ages past, and men slaughtered by the tens of thousands. And we give but fleeting consideration to their deaths, for it is our nature to banish such thoughts. ↗

— Seth Grahame-Smith

#existential #war #age

I'd like to ask you more about your ears if I may," I said. "You want to ask whether or not my ears possess some special power?" I nodded. "See what I mean?" She said. She’d become so beautiful, it defied understanding. Never had I feasted my eyes on such beauty. It transcended all concepts within the boundaries of my awareness. She was at one with her ears, gliding down the oblique face of time like a protean beam of light. "You are extraordinary." I said after catching my breath. "I know." she said. "These are my ears in their unblocked state." Several of the other customers were now turned our way, staring agape at her. The waiter who came over with more coffee couldn't pour properly. Not a soul uttered a word, only the reels on the tape deck kept slowly spinning. She retrieved a clove cigarette from her purse and put it to her lips. I hurriedly offered her a light with my lighter. "I want to sleep with you," She said. So we slept together. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#look-with-thine-ears #beauty

A Christian is supposed to be in the world, and yet not of the world--a Both/And as perplexing and demanding as the Either/Or that precedes the life of faith. I'm at once a pure, beautiful, genderless soul, but at the same time a gendered body full of flaws, sins, and wanting. This contradiction, the Both/And, is the Cross. ↗

— Therese Doucet

#existentialism #faith #kierkegaard #philosophy #philosophy-of-religion