the best existential analysis of the human condition leads directly into the problems of God and faith
A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison.
There is scarcely any passion without struggle.
Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.
I think living in our culture right now, there's a universal experience where we feel like we become what we do. Sometimes that's rewarding and sometimes that creates an existential crisis.
It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.
Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level.
The process of rewriting is enjoyable, because you're not in that existential panic when you don't have a novel at all.
We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.
Some men become what they were born for.
I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.
The rightful claim to dissent is an existential right of the individual.
You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.
Don't you feel the same way? When I cannot see myself, even though I touch myself, I wonder if I really exist.
I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.
Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.
I dropped out of high school when I was 16, after I had a huge argument with my English teacher over the meaning of the word 'existentialism. '
Apparently there is no profit in the unique, or not enough to make it worthwhile to preserve. Ultimately it drains the life out of us, and existentialism starts to make more and more sense.
To eat is to appropriate by destruction.
I suppose if we couldn't laugh at things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life.