Best Existentialism Quotes to Inspire, Uplift & Motivate You Every Day

“We get sombre about death. Think about Charon the ferryman rowing the souls across the Styx to the Isle of the Dead. Pretty grim stuff. Unless you think that, perhaps, at times, old Charon rows souls back to the land of the living too. Perhaps I have merely gone to rest awhile…”

“All creation necessarily ends in this: Creators, powerless, fleeing from the things they have wrought.”

“And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten—since, in either case, other men and women will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably. Still, somehow this line of thought wasn't as consoling as it should have been; the idea of all those years of life in hand was a galling reminder!”

“This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression - and with all this yet to die.”

“You’re better looking than me. You’re more intelligent than me. Your personality is more likable than mine. You make more money than me. Your family is nicer than mine. Your religion is better than mine. You’ve seen more beaches than me. You’ve been to more cities than me. Your automobile is nicer than mine. Your significant other is better looking than mine. Your candidate won. Your home team won. You’re number one. But life is a tie. We all die.”

“A lover exists only in fragments, a dozen or so if the romance is new, a thousand if we're married to him, and out of those fragments our heart constructs an entire person. What we each create, since whatever is missing is filled by our imagination, is the person we wish him to be. The less we know him, of course, the more we love him. And that's why we always remember that first rapturous night when he was a stranger, and why this rapture returns only when he's dead.”

“They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.”

“Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!”

“Truth manifests, when you realize within your heart that you are the truth. There is no ultimate objective truth that the humans as a toddling species in the suburbs of one among billions of galaxies, should be concerned of with its ridiculously limited faculties of comprehension. What matters at the present, is the truth that we radiate in our actions both internally and externally.”

“I have no philosophy of life, I only have life.”

“Our only true identity is that of a steward. Everything else is a costume. The more ornate the mask, the more fragmented the soul beneath it. To save the world, don’t protect your ego—plant something. Heal something. Love something. Serve something. Or be still. The garden is waiting.”

“If a child says, "I don't care about anything", that is not a sign of a wise child but of a troubled and depressed one. Similarly, adults who withdraw from the world soon get bored. Even lovers, if they retreat to their private love nest for too long, lose interest in each other. We do not thrive in safety and rest. Human existence means "transcendence", or going beyond, not "immanence", or reposing passively inside oneself. It means constant action until the day one runs out of thing to do - a day that is unlikely to come as long as you have breath.”

“The Liquid Pantomime by Stewart Stafford”

“Ape chase the “after”, over life, for apes have alcohol in their vein.”

“I know that the fact that I am always searching for God, always struggling to discover the fullness of Love, always yearning for the complete truth, tells me that I have already been given a taste of God, of Love and of Truth. I can only look for something that I have, to some degree, already found. How can I search for beauty and truth unless that beauty and truth are already known to me in the depth of my heart? It seems that all of us human beings have deep inner memories of the paradise that we have lost.”

“Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.”

“We built machines to answer every question, but forgot to ask what it means to be human.”

“Gateway to Enlightenment (Sonnet 2025)”

“The burden of my argument is that to set oneself up like this in such a defeatingly vast and intimidatingly inhuman structure is merely to announce the coming to rest of one's progress, and without that we are lost.”

“Man, this creature so 'noble in faculty,' moves step by step in a pilgrimage that is destined to bring him only back again to the inanimate state of the stone. From dust we are, and to dust we ultimately return.”

“The true monsters are those who don’t stay true to themselves.”

“Eros, the god of love, emerged to create the earth. Before, all was silent, bare, and motionless. Now all was life, joy, and motion. — Early Greek Myth”

“What is love? He is neither mortal nor immortal, but a mean between the two. He is a great spirit (daimon) and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal. He is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides men and gods, and therefore in him all is bound together. — Diotima (quoted by Socrates)”

“Nature has a way of disrupting predictability to introduce us to our true selves.”

“He thought that humans are like sheep, powerless and helpless, whose reins are in the ruthless hands of life. This life, like a cold-hearted shepherd, drives man toward an endless journey against his desires and will.”

“Silence does not ask permission to rule; it simply occupies the throne that the word has left vacant out of fear of the truth.”

“​"The true gaze does not come from the light, but from the inhabited darkness.”

“The Philosopher’s Weight by Stewart Stafford”

“[Y]ou are here to learn something. Don’t try to figure out what it is. This can be frustrating and unproductive.”

“It is man's unique privilege, among all other organisms. By pursuing falsehood you will arrive at the truth!”