Existential Quotes - Page 11

• There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules

  Albert Camus

  Integrity, People, Needs

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.66, Vintage

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• Artistic symbols and myths speak out of the primordial, preconscious realm of the mind which is powerful and chaotic. Both symbol and myth are ways of bringing order and form into this chaos.

  Rollo May

  Powerful, Speaks Out, Order

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

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Hard Times, Today, Existentialism

  Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre (2016). “The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection: Essays in Metaphysics, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Philosophy of Existentialism”, p.116, Open Road Media

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• All who have read a few old books have picked up the old tactics of considering every new idea a 'heresy' which must be rooted out.

  Lu Xun

  Book, Ideas, Tactics

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• ...Erich Fromm wondered why most people did not become insane in the face of the existential contradiction between a symbolic self, that seems to give man infinite worth in a timeless scheme of things, and a body that is worth about 98¢.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Self, People

  "The Denial of Death". Book by Ernest Becker, 1973.

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• Denial is a critical part of the human coping mechanism. Without it, we would all wake up terrified every morning about all the ways we could die. Instead, our minds block out our existential fears by focusing on stresses we can handle—like getting to work on time or paying our taxes.

  Dan Brown

  Morning, Block, Stress

  Dan Brown (2014). “Inferno: Special Illustrated Edition (Enhanced): Featuring Robert Langdon”, p.377, Knopf

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• And desires are never here and now - they are non-existential. They are just mental, in the mind. And they cannot be fulfilled because their very nature is to move into the future.

  Rajneesh

  Moving, Mind, Desire

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• Optimism....is neither weak nor naive. It can be tough and pure and earned just as clearly as any brooding existential despair.

  Charlie Pierce

  Optimistic, Optimism, Despair

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• When in the evening we are alone with our most existential thoughts, it is then that we come face to face with the most precious truths that we discover in our brief existence in this world. Just before fatigue envelopes us, taking us into sleep. We think of what our lives actually mean. And then we know how lucky we are if we still enjoy consciousness, rationality and love. But the greatest of these is love.

  Michael Kirby

  Love, Mean, Sleep

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• Symbols are specific acts or figures, while myths develop and elaborate these symbols into a story which contains characters and several episodes. The myth is thus more inclusive. But both symbol and myth have the same function psychologically; they are man's way of expressing the quintessence of his experience - his way of seeing his life, his self-image and his relations to the world of his fellow men and of nature - in a total figure which at the same moment carries the vital meaning of this experience.

  Rollo May

  Character, Men, Self

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• Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, they all have ties to Iranian money. I think they are the biggest exist - existential threat... Russia could be up there, but I think it would probably be to one of our NATO allies rather than the homeland.

  Eric Bolling

  Thinking, Russia, Ties

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• Of course, the surest way to free yourself from an existential crisis is through comedy.

  Jennifer Beals

  Way, Free Yourself, Comedy

  "Jennifer Beals on life after death, loving Campbell Scott, and The L Word". Interview with Will Harris, tv.avclub.com. August 4, 2015.

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• There is certainly a part of my filmmaking that harkens to a more simpler commercial kind of taste, but then with this theres certainly a kind of avant-garde, abstract, existential element to it.

  J. C. Chandor

  Avant Garde, Elements, Taste

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• It was a truism that all civilizations were basically neurotic until they made contact with everybody else and found their place within the ever-changing meta-civilisation of other beings, because, until then, during the stage when they honestly believed they might be entirely alone in existence, all solo societies were possessed of both an inflated sense of their own importance and a kind of existential terror at the sheer scale and apparent emptiness of the universe.

  Iain Banks

  Civilization, Might, Emptiness

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• All gradients of reality, all existential distinctions, have finally been annihilated.

  Margaret Wertheim

  Art, Reality, Distinction

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• A poverty learned with the humble, the poor, the sick and all those who are on the existential outskirts of life. A theoretical poverty is no use to us. Poverty is learned by touching the flesh of the poor Christ, in the humble, in the poor, in the sick and in children.

  Pope Francis

  Children, Humble, Sick

  Pope Francis' address to The Participants in The Plenary Assembly of The International Union of Superiors General, w2.vatican.va. May 8, 2013.

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• Though love is instinctive, it cannot develop without a certain stimulus and use.

  Lu Xun

  Love Is, Use, Certain

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• The most important thing... was to change their spirit; and since at that time I felt that literature was the best means to this end, I decided to promote literary movement.

  Lu Xun

  Mean, Important, Movement

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• But anyone who thinks themselves genuinely unbiased is bound to be taken in.

  Lu Xun

  Taken, Thinking, Unbiased

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• True, we must dare look things in the face before we dare think, speak, act, or assume responsibility. If we dare not even look, what else are we good for?

  Lu Xun

  Responsibility, Thinking, Looks

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• The world is changing from day to day; it is high time for our writers to take off their masks, look frankly, keenly, and boldly at life, and write about real flesh and blood. It is high time for a brand-new arena for literature, high time for some bold fighters to charge headlong into battle!

  Lu Xun

  Real, Writing, Blood

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• True fighters dare face the sorrows of humanity, and look unflinchingly at bloodshed. What sorrow and joy are theirs! But the Creator's common device for ordinary people is to let the passage of time wash away old traces leaving only pale-red bloodstains and a vague pain; and he lets men live on ignobly and amid these, to keep this quasi-human world going.

  Lu Xun

  Pain, Men, People

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• Men who have not known the horror of death are not likely to be awed by it.

  Lu Xun

  Men, Horror, Known

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• Why should young people look for guides who hang out gided placards to advertise themselves? They would do better to look for friends, unite with them, and advance together towards some quarter where it seems possible to survive.

  Lu Xun

  People, Together, Looks

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• I could not blot out hope, for hope belongs to the future.

  Lu Xun

  Lu Xun (2014). “Call to Arms”, p.9, Simon and Schuster

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