Existential Quotes - Page 4

• Humour's the pay-off for all that existential horror.

  Tim Winton

  Pay, Horror, Humour

  Source: www.readings.com.au

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• We might say that psychoanalysis revealed to us the complex penalties of denying the truth of man's condition, what we might call the costs of pretending not to be mad.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Mad, Cost

  Ernest Becker (1997). “The Denial of Death”, p.29, Simon and Schuster

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• Polar fleece is a plush, spongy, totally artificial material that weighs nothing and conveys no quality of warmth or coolness; in fact, you can wear it in the most bitter weather or in the hottest heat. Polar fleece looks neither flimsy and light nor hearty and warm. It has no historical, cultural, or physical association with a place, a season, a society, or any living thing. It is the first existential fabric - eminentaly useful, meaningless, dissociated and weird.

  Mary Ruefle

  Weather, Light, Historical

  Mary Ruefle (2012). “Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures”, p.60, Wave Books

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• Human social life, I suggest, is the magma that erupts and builds up, so to speak, at the fault lines where natural human capacities meet and grind against and over natural human limitations…. This meeting of powers and limitations produces a creative, dynamic tension and energy that generates and fuels the making of human social life and social structures…. It is real human persons living through the tensions of natural existential contradictions who construct patterned social meanings, interactions, institutions, and structures.

  Christian Smith

  Real, Creative, Fuel

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• I'm only trying to present as honest a portrayal of the grimness of human ambition as I can. I'd hope it's rather uplifting, actually, since I find the sort of blind optimism and empty laughter of a great deal of "contemporary culture" to be more depressing than something that admits to a potential for disappointment and a gnawing sense of existential mockery.

  Chris Ware

  Uplifting, Depressing, Disappointment

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Therefore, it is we who are responsible for much of the evil in the world; and we are each morally required to accept rather than project that ponderous responsibility-lest we prefer instead to wallow in a perennial state of powerless, frustrated, furious, victimhood. For what one possesses the power to bring about, one has also the power to limit, Mitigate, counteract, or transmute.

  Stephen A. Diamond

  Responsibility, Evil, Frustrated

  Stephen A. Diamond (1996). “Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil, and Creativity”, p.85, SUNY Press

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• Be wary of too much calm, particularly in your mid-fifties.

  Ian Mcewan

  Too Much, Calm

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• Know your magic, trust your magic, use your magic and know that you are a manifestation of life's magic.

  Rasheed Ogunlaru

  Magic, Use, Crisis

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• Only something as insane as human beings would ever asked themselves if 'I'm good.' You don't find oak trees having existential crisis. 'I feel so rotten about myself. I don't produce as much acorns as the one next to me.'

  Adyashanti

  Tree, Insane, Rotten

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• But freedom is the possibility of a total and centered act of the personality, an act in which all the drives and influences which constitute the destiny of man are brought into the centered unity of a decision.

  Paul Tillich

  Destiny, Men, Personality

  "Systematic Theology".

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• Man is not what he believes himself to be in his conscious decisions.

  Paul Tillich

  Believe, Men, Decision

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• Forever I shall be a stranger to myself. In psychology as in logic, there are truths but no truth.

  Albert Camus

  Forever, Psychology, Logic

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.19, Vintage

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• In those who rest on their unshakable faith, pharisaism and fanaticism are the unmistakable symptoms of doubt which has been repressed. Doubt is not overcome by repression but by courage. Courage does not deny that there is doubt, but it takes the doubt into itself as an expression of its own finitude and affirms the content of an ultimate concern. Courage does not need the safety of an unquestionable conviction. It includes the risk without which no creative life is possible.

  Paul Tillich

  Expression, Safety, Creative

  Paul Tillich (1958). “Dynamics of faith”

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• Good therapy, gently but firmly, moves people out of denial and compartmentalization. It helps clients to develop richer inner lives and greater self-knowledge. It teaches clients to live harmoniously with others and it enhances Existential consciousness, and allows people to take responsibility for their effects on the world at large. For me , happiness is about appreciating what one has. Practically speaking,this means lowering expectations about what is fair, possible and likely. It means,finding pleasure in the ordinary.

  Mary Pipher

  Moving, Mean, Responsibility

  Mary Pipher (2009). “Letters to a Young Therapist: Stories of Hope and Healing”, p.16, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Sometimes it has to do with other longings that are much more existential. Sometimes you go elsewhere not because you are not liking the one you are with; you are not liking the person you have become.

  Esther Perel

  Sometimes, Longing, Elsewhere

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• 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

  Couple, Mean, Challenges

  Kirk J. Schneider (1990). “The Paradoxical Self: Toward an Understanding of Our Contradictory Nature”, Prometheus Books

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• Only the philosophical question is perennial, not the answers.

  Paul Tillich

  Philosophical, Philosophical Questions, Answers

  Paul Tillich (1988). “Writings on religion”

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• The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.

  Rollo May

  People, Purpose, Psychotherapy

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• The desire to do something because you find it deeply satisfying and personally challenging inspires the highest levels of creativity, whether
  it's in the arts, sciences, or business.

  Teresa Amabile

  Art, Creativity, Challenges

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• Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky.

  Albert Camus

  Believe, Blue, Sky

  Albert Camus (1960). “The plague: translated from the French”

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• We are called to reach out to those who find themselves in the existential peripheries of our societies and to show particular solidarity with the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters: the poor, the disabled, the unborn and the sick, migrants and refugees, the elderly and the young who lack employment.

  Pope Francis

  Inspiring, Wise, Brother

  Pope Francis' Message to Cardinal Kurt Koch On The Occasion of The 10th General Assembly of The World Council Of Churches, w2.vatican.va. October 4, 2013.

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• I think that half of us feel fraudulent in our lives anyway. There's that strange disconnect of not really knowing what we're doing sometimes, or why it matters. It's our existential crisis.

  Carrie Brownstein

  Thinking, Knowing, Half

  "Portlandia Brings Out the Fan in Carrie Brownstein" by Scott Thill, www.wired.com. January 06, 2012.

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• The Room is a drama that is also a comedy that is also an existential cry for help that is finally a testament to human endurance.

  Greg Sestero

  Drama, Endurance, Rooms

  Greg Sestero, Tom Bissell (2014). “The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

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• Yoga is existential, experiential, experimental. No belief is required, no faith is needed - only courage to experience. And that's what's lacking. You can believe easily because in belief you are not going to be transformed. Belief is something added to you, something superficial. Your being is not changed; you are not passing through some mutation.

  Rajneesh

  Believe, Yoga, Mutation

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• To be inspired is the ultimate antidote to existential despair.

  Jason Silva

  Despair, Inspired, Antidote

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