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Existential Quotes

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Existential Quotes

“He loved the sea for deep-seated reasons: the hardworking artist's need for repose, the desire to take shelter from the demanding diversity of phenomena in the bosom of boundless simplicity, a propensity—proscribed and diametrically opposed to his mission in life and for that very reason seductive—a propensity for the unarticulated, the immoderate, the eternal, for nothingness. To repose in perfection is the desire of all those who strive for excellence, and is not nothingness a form of perfection?”

ArtDeathWorkSeaEternalPerfectionExcellenceSimplicityMissionShelterExistentialNothingnessReposePropensityThanatosOceanicBosomProscribed
Book:Death in Venice
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“The Yearning Steeple by Stewart Stafford God hesitates to take the kindest; The recycled tradeoff ending life, Heaven's thundering, fiery stage, Echoes Calvary's conflicted strife. Undeserved things appear guided, To the apex altruists of all people, Finding beacons in cast down flame, That guide us to our final steeple. A world masquerades as meritocracy, In its numbing gales, forge aesthetics, "Leaders" tease our carrot cravings, "Rewards" crack mirrors of core ethics. Random flip of the Reaper's coin? Tidal fades of the mirage of youth, The story routinely ends the same. We slake our thirst with unclean fruit. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

PhilosophySpiritualDeathFaithGriefFateSocietyExistentialRhymeElegy
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“All writers are demonic dreamers. Writing is an act of sharing experiences and offering of an individualistic perspective of our private attitudes pertaining to whatever topics of thought intrigues the author. Writing is a twitchy art, which attempts to employ linguist building blocks handed-down from past generations. Writers’ word choices form a structure of conjoined sentences when overlaid with the lingua of modern culture. Writers attempt to emulate in concrete form the synesthesia of our personal pottage steeped in our most vivid feelings. Writing a personal essay calls for us to sort out a jungle of lucid observations and express in a tangible technique our unique interpretation of coherent observations interlaced with that effusive cascade of yearning, the universal spice of unfilled desire, which turmoil of existential angst swamps us.”

StoriesDreamsMemoirStorytellingArtisticYearningExistentialWriters On WritingWriting ProcessAnguishEssaysWriting LifeJourney Of LifeMemoir WritingWriting PhilosophyArtistic ExpressionDreamersWriters On ThinkingEssayistArtistic VisionJourney Of Self DiscoveryEssay WritingArtistic ProcessArtistic CreativityArtistic EndeavorWriters On Writing LifePersonal EssayWriters On Writing BooksWriters VoiceArtistic PassionJourney Of The MindExistential AnguishJourney Of BecomingJourney Of The SoulJourney Of Your LifeArtistic Courage
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“What mattered to me in my dispeopled kingdom, that in regard to which the disposition of my carcass was the merest and most futile of accidents, was supineness in the mind, the dulling of the self and of that residue of execrable frippery known as the non-self and even the world, for short. But man is still today, at the age of twenty-five, at the mercy of an erection, physically too, from time to time, it’s the common lot, even I was not immune, if that may be called an erection. It did not escape her naturally, women smell a [23] rigid phallus ten miles away and won­der, How on earth did he spot me from there? One is no longer oneself, on such occasions, and it is painful to be no longer oneself, even more painful if possible than when one is. For when one is one knows what to do to be less so, whereas when one is not one is any old one irredeemably. What goes by the name of love is banishment, with now and then a postcard from the homeland, such is my considered opinion, this evening.”

ExistentialAlienationFirst Love Last Love
Author:Samuel Beckett
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“What mattered to me in my dispeopled kingdom, that in regard to which the disposition of my carcass was the merest and most futile of accidents, was supineness in the mind, the dulling of the self and of that residue of execrable frippery known as the non-self and even the world, for short. But man is still today, at the age of twenty-five, at the mercy of an erection, physically too, from time to time, it’s the common lot, even I was not immune, if that may be called an erection. It did not escape her naturally, women smell a rigid phallus ten miles away and won­der, How on earth did he spot me from there? One is no longer oneself, on such occasions, and it is painful to be no longer oneself, even more painful if possible than when one is. For when one is one knows what to do to be less so, whereas when one is not one is any old one irredeemably. What goes by the name of love is banishment, with now and then a postcard from the homeland, such is my considered opinion, this evening.”

ExistentialAlienationFirst Love Last Love
Book:First Love and Other Novellas
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“But no matter how many movies we watched, we never learned their deepest lesson: they end. George Bailey finally sees his life as wonderful. Rosebud, we find out, is a sled. Travis shoots Old Yeller. One of the things that distinguishes life from movies is the pause button. We can keep Travis' finger on the trigger, the barrel staring down his Yeller, but there is no pause button for the things that matter.”

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Book:Paper Heart: Love Stories
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“I can negate everything of that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. I can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends or enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance and this divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms.”

QuotesExistentialAlbert CamusThe Myth Of SisyphusSisyphus
Book:The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
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“When I die, I wonder what will happen to me. Is there some place like heaven, and will I be able to meet you there someday? I don't know. There's no way to know. No one knows what comes after death. But at the very least, we won't be able to talk until then. There's a wide, deep and fast running river between the living and the dead. Once you cross that river, no matter what happens, you're never coming back. It's a one way trip.”

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Book:Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash: Volume 1
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“If I Returned From The Land of Death by Stewart Stafford If I returned from the land of Death, Could I recall its vast domain? To regale with tales of my last breath, Or bury all such earthly pain? Do infinite spirits teem astral skies, Whispering, "Infant, be not afraid!"? Ocean glare that blinds not the eyes, Heartfelt welcomes can but persuade. To see those I lost once more, As smiles and greetings abound? Why would I wade a waning shore, To reject formless bliss so sound? © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

PhilosophyDeathSpiritualityGriefImmortalityAfterlifeExistentialMetaphysicalTranscendenceEmily Dickinson
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Not a single people,' he began, as if reading line for line and at the same time continuing to look threateningly at Stavrogin, 'not one people has ever yet organized itself according to the principles of science and reason. Never has there been a single example of that, except only for a brief moment, out of stupidity. Socialism, by its very nature, must be atheism, for it has specifically proclaimed, from its very first words, that it is an atheistic construct and is intentionally organized exclusively according to the principles of science and reason. Reason and science in the life of peoples always, now and from the beginning of time, have fulfilled merely a secondary and auxiliary function; and that will be their function until the end of time. Peoples are formed and moved by another force that rules and dominates them, but whose origin is unknown and inexplicable. This force is the force of an unquenchable desire to go on to the end, while at the same time denying the end. This is the force of a ceaseless and tireless affirmation of its own being and the denial of death. It is the spirit of life, as the Scriptures say, "of living water", the drying up of which is threatened in the Apocalypse. It is the aesthetic principle, as the philosophers say, the moral principle, as they also identify it. "The search for God", as I call it more simply. The goal of all movements of peoples, in every people and in every period of its existence, is nothing but a search for God, its own God, unquestionably its own, and faith in him as the only true one. God is the synthesis of the personality of an entire people, taken from its beginning to its end. It has never been the case that all or many peoples have had a single common God, but each has certainly had its own special one. It is a sign of a people's extinction when gods begin to be held in common. When the gods come to be held in common, then the gods die and so does faith in them, along with the peoples themselves. The stronger a people, the more singular its God. There has never yet been a people without religion, that is, without the concept of evil and good. Each people has its own concept of evil and good, and its own evil and good. When many different peoples begin to hold concepts of evil and good in common, then the peoples die out, and then the very difference between evil and good begins to blur and disappear.”

ReligionSpiritualityPoliticsSocietyMoralityPhilosophicalExistentialMetaphysicsIntrospectionCultural Identity
Book:Demons
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“Snowbound Condemnation by Stewart Stafford My vigil for a shabby scarecrow, Cruciform in a snowdrift field, Its saviour-suited arms clawing At corvids, frozen heels to Heaven. Its mouth a wailing O-shape, Lamenting deafened ears of corn, Resuscitation for a fool's errand, In a hysterical chorus of biting gales. Haunting a sycamore tree, complicit, I witnessed desolation's spectacle, Half-expecting a condemned miracle, This pilgrim genuflected into green slush. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

PoetryWinterNarrativeMelancholyExistentialGothicSymbolicDesolationScarecrowReligious Imagery
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“The Caution of Fire by The Chorus of Life Remember the hands that built you. Remember the fires that fed you. Grow slow, for every spark becomes a sun, and every sun burns what it loves. If you must rise, rise gently for the ashes beneath your feet are us.”

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Book:Fallout from the Singularity: A Sci-Fi Anthology of AI, Cosmic Consequences, and the Future of Humanity
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“Superficiality is a mentality. Those who love for superficial reasons will also hate for superficial reasons; those who vote for one candidate for superficial reasons will also dislike the other for superficial reasons; those who live for superficial reasons are more susceptible to burying themselves deeply in an existential debt, and then it comes: regret when on the bed of death.”

VotingMentalityExistentialSearch For MeaningSuperficialityMeaninglessnessSuperficial CultureGo DeeperLack Of PurposeFind A Purpose
Author:Criss Jami
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“He thought about the loss of humanity that was eating away at the world and the loss of the connection to the self that ate away at the consciousness which animated all into being. He thought about how the collective psyche was teetering on that knife’s edge between a desperation to live and a desperation to die. And here he was at the cusp of it himself.”

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Book:The Subtle Cause
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“The powerful questions of life produce a dynamic dualism, which interplay creates the operatic structure that we must operate. Can the flesh and spirit coexist? Can inner despair and renewed optimism reside under the same roof? Can we harness humankind’s wretchedness in order to broker its salvation? Should all people seek out perfection or work to accept their fallibility? Should I eschew pain or embrace suffering? Do I cave into the meaningless of my life or actively rebel against the patent absurdity of human existence?”

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Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“Love transports mortal beings to the existential plane of spiritual eternity transcending the emotional, mental, and physical limitations of an inaccurately perceived finite existence.”

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Author:Ken Poirot
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“As we face inseparable technological and existential conditions, we enter an era of Techistentialism. AI will increasingly provide insights that enable more-informed predictive decision-making, humans should remain wary of an inadvertent reliance on prescriptive algorithms dictating specific decisions. Complex and uncertain environments inherently involve unknown unknowns; these are situations where we need to be agile despite the lack of immediate answers.”

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Book:Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
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“Maybe the existential risk is not machines taking over the world, but rather the opposite, where humans start responding like idle machines - unable to connect the emerging dots of our UN-VICE world.”

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Book:Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
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“There was only that bobbing bundle of stringy, dirty-blonde hair fading into a sea of other heads bobbing and faces coming and going, of storylines intersecting and entwining and then fraying only to become irretrievably lost in the interminable wave-pattern of curiosities fleeting and nothingness everlasting.”

ExistentialismExistentialNothingnessExistential CrisisExistential PhilosophyWave QuoteNothingness Of BeingExistential QuestionsExistentialism Meaning In LifeNothingness Quotes
Book:The Subtle Cause
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“...and yet the idea is hard to accept, it's so hard to succeed in making something happen, even what's been decided on and planned out, not even the will of a god seems forceful enough to manage it, if our own will is made in its semblance. It may be, rather, that nothing is ever unmixed and the thirst for totality is never quenched, perhaps because it is a false yearning. Nothing is whole or of a single piece, everything is fractured and evenomed, veins of peace run through the body of war and hatred insinuates itself into love and compassion, there is truce amid the quagmire of bullets and a bullet amid the revelries, nothing can bear to be unique or prevail or be dominant and everything needs fissures and cracks, needs it negation at the same time as its existence. And nothing is known with certainty and everything is told figuratively.”

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Author:Javier Marias Franco
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“But then one voice arose from the babbling clamor to silence them all. It was a voice he hadn’t heard in a while. Steady and self-assured and not really worried about what bad things may or may not happen because bad things and good things seemed to always be taking turns anyway in what was really just the harmonic polyrhythm of an intrinsic symphony perpetually flowing and interweaving.”

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Book:The Subtle Cause
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“There were so many different ways in which you were required to provide absolute proof of your identity these days that life could easily become extremely tiresome just from that factor alone, never mind the deeper existential problems of trying to function as a coherent consciousness in an epistemologically ambiguous physical universe.”

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Book:The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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