Existentialism

“Marry, and you will regret it; do not marry, and you will also regret it; whether you marry or do not marry, you will regret both. Laugh at the world's follies, and you will regret it; weep over them, and you will also regret it; whether you laugh at the world's follies or weep over them, you will regret both.”

“Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute.”

“The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and recuperate themselves by means of imaginary revenge.”

“Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir; also that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant had grown.”

“I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?”

“Man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty; and from the moment that he is thrown into this world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

“The 'essence' of Dasein lies in its existence.”

“Death is a way to be, which Dasein takes over as soon as it is.”

“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.”

“Become who you are.”

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”

“Existence precedes essence.”

“Man is condemned to be free.”

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

“Genuine love ought to be founded on the mutual recognition of two liberties; the lovers would then experience themselves both as self and as other: neither would give up transcendence, neither would be mutilated; together they would manifest values and aims in the world.”

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. But active love is labor and fortitude.”

“To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.”

“Whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good and evil.”

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”

“One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable.”

“The torment of despair is precisely this, not to be able to die. So to be sick unto death is, not to be able to die — yet not as though there were hope of life; no, the hopelessness in this case is that even the last hope, death, is not available.”

“Free for death, and free in death; a holy Naysayer, when there is no longer time for Yea: thus understandeth he about death and life.”

“What if my whole life has been wrong?”

“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.”

“Man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, in other respects is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

“What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world — and defines himself afterwards.”

“To will oneself free is also to will others free.”

“All real living is meeting.”

“"Alles wirkliche Leben ist Begegnung." / "All real living is meeting."”

“Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.”

“— Без бога-то и без будущей жизни? Ведь это, стало быть, теперь всё позволено, всё можно делать?”

“"Страдание — вот единственная причина сознания." / "Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness."”

“The "essence" of Dasein lies in its existence.”

“Grenzsituationen erfahren und Existenz werden ist dasselbe. / To experience boundary situations and to become existence is one and the same.”

“Either I allow the course of things to decide about me — vanishing as myself, since there is no real decision when everything just happens — or I deal with being originally, as myself, with the feeling that there must be a decision.”

“The court wants nothing from you. It receives you when you come and it dismisses you when you go.”

“The movement of faith must continually be made by virtue of the absurd, but yet in such a way, please note, that one does not lose the finite but gains it whole and intact.”

“Hope is for the soul what breathing is for the living body.”

“Aimer un être, c'est lui dire : toi, tu ne mourras pas.”

“Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being — like a worm.”

“"Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact of nonbeing." / German original unavailable: The Courage to Be was composed in English; the concept of Mut zum Sein renders "courage to be."”

“Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of nonbeing.”

“Although the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death saves us.”

“The problem of meaning, then, in its most rudimentary form is, How does a being who needs meaning find meaning in a universe that appears to have no meaning?”

“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.”

“What is happiness? The feeling that power increases — that a resistance has been overcome.”

“All satisfaction, or what is commonly called happiness, is really and essentially always negative only, and never positive.”

“I revolt, therefore we exist.”

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

“We are thrown into the world.”

“The self is a relation that relates itself to itself, or is the relation's relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation's relating itself to itself.”

“I teach you the Übermensch. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?”

“Man is the being who is what he is not and is not what he is.”

“Hell is other people.”

“Faith is namely this paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal, yet in such a way, be it noted, that the movement is repeated, that is, that the single individual, after having been in the universal, now as the single individual isolates himself as higher than the universal.”

“The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified, and select.”

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

“One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion.”

“God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? The holiest and mightiest thing the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives — who will wipe this blood off us?”

“This instinct for freedom, forcibly made latent, pushed back and penned up inside, finally only able to discharge and vent itself on itself — that, and that alone, is what bad conscience is in its beginnings.”

“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”

“Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.”

“Whoever has been deeply wounded by the depth of his suffering — what a blessing that is! I do not love him because he lives today, but because he has overcome himself.”