#existential

Now I can broach the notion of suicide. It has already been felt what solution might be given. At this point the problem is reversed. It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning. Living an experience, a particular fate, is accepting it fully. Now, no one will live this fate, knowing it to be absurd, unless he does everything to keep before him that absurd brought to light by consciousness. ↗

— Albert Camus

#existentialism #experience

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 J. Schneider

#faith #faith

He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being. ↗

— Jean-Paul Sartre

#philosophy #death

Remember you are never really alone. Although it may feel like it for very long stretches of time. ↗

— Steven L. Peck

#existentialism #hell #solitude #humor

I know we didn't accomplish anything, but it felt great to sit there and talk about our place in things. ↗

— Stephen Chbosky

#existence #existentialism #friends #life #life-roles

We are born from a quiet sleep, and we die to a calm awakening ↗

— Zhuangzi

#existentialism #life #tao #taoism #death

When a person screams in pain, the actual pain is only half the noise they make. The other half is the terror at being forced to accept that they exist. ↗

— Noah Cicero

#pain #screaming #suffering #terrorism

I want my name to mean me. ↗

— Mark Haddon

#authority

All around us were people I had spent ten years avoiding--shapeless women in wool bathing suits, dull-eyed men with hairless legs and self-conscious laughs, all Americans, all fearsomely alike. These people should be kept at home, I thought; lock them in the basement of some goddamn Elks Club and keep them pacified with erotic movies; if they want a vacation, show them a foreign art film; and if they still aren't satisfied, send them into the wilderness and run them with vicious dogs. ↗

— Hunter S. Thompson

#americans #existential #people #art

This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world. ↗

— Raymond Carver

#gazebo #pessimism #pessimism