#existent

They are so very cultivated, so very rich and so utterly charming. At the end of each day, they all ask themselves: 'Is it time I stopped?' And they all reply: 'If I did, there would be no meaning to my life.' As if they actually knew what the meaning of life was. ↗

— Paulo Coelho

#life #meaning #life

How hollow to have no secrets left; you shake yourself and nothing rattles. You're boneless as an anemone. ↗

— Andrew Sean Greer

#secrets #marriage

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

— Zhuangzi

#existentialism #life #tao #taoism #death

Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us? ↗

— Cornelia Funke

#character #cornelia-funke #existentialism #words #writers

One must not let oneself be misled: they say 'Judge not!' but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#judgement #christ

Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#existentialism #maturity #youth #youth

It seemed funny that one day I would go to bed in her arms and the next not feel anything, like a switch had gone off. But no, that wasn’t honest either. This had been building for a long time. Our silences were getting longer. Our arguments more frequent. How do you stay with someone when there are no dreams to build? No purpose to accomplish? No meaning? No meaning —that was the monster that drove us away from one another in the end. Always. ↗

— Steven L. Peck

#dreams #existence #existentialism #love #meaning

Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable. ↗

— Albert Camus

#existentialism #honesty #seeking #truth #desire

She laughed. 'It won't last. Nothing lasts. But I'm happy now.' 'Happy,' I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception--especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they're scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence. ↗

— Hunter S. Thompson

#existential #happiness #love #faith

I knew a man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life and who one evening recognized that he had never loved her. He had been bored, thats all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen even loveless slavery, even war or death. ↗

— Albert Camus

#existentialism #philosophy #the-fall #death