existential

Acts of violence-- Whether on a large or a small scale, the bitter paradox: the meaningfulness of death--and the meaninglessness of killing.

We're really endless in a way. If time goes on forever, then any way you divide it is also forever. A tenth of infinity is infinity. It's only us that think the time is gone. It isn't. We're still there. Still at our wedding. Still on honeymoon. All the good times are still happening. Even in the middle of the bad times to come, we'll still be together. Forever, in a way.

..Breaking yet budding,dying yet living - standingamongst ruins and rage,reaching for possibilitiesplaying hard to get.

At the end of time I want my art to stand up and my soul to bow down.

He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet's intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.

If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything.

We lose everything because everything remains except us. And therefore any form of posterity may be an affront, and perhaps any memory, as well.

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.

You are a hater of activity in life; quite right, for before there can be any meaning in activity, life must have continuity, and this your life lacks. You occupy yourself with your studies, that is true, you are even industrious. But it is only for your own sake and is done with as little teleology as possible. Otherwise you are unoccupied; like those workers in the Gospel, you stand idle in the marketplace (Matthew 20:3). You stick your hands in your pockets and observe life. Then you rest in despair, nothing occupies you, you don__ step aside for anything: __f someone were to throw a tile down from the roof I wouldn__ get out of the way._ You are like someone dying, you die daily, not in the profound, serious sense in which one usually takes that word, but life has lost its reality and __ou always reckon your lifetime from one day__ notice to quit to the next_. You let everything pass you by, it makes no impression, but then suddenly something comes which grips you, an idea, a situation, a smile from a young girl, and then you are __n touch_; for just as on some occasions you are not in touch, so at others you are in touch and of service in every way. Wherever something is going on you are __n touch_. You conduct your life as it is your custom to behave in a crowd, you __ork your way into the thickest of it, trying if possible to be forced up above the others so as to be able to lie on top of them_; if you manage to get up there you __ake yourself as comfortable as possible_, and this is also the way you let yourself be carried along through life. But when the crowd disperses, when the event is over, you stand once more at the street corner and look at the world. A dying person possesses, as you know, a supernatural energy, and so too with you. If there is an idea to be thought through, a work to be read through, a plan to be carried out, a little adventure to be experienced - yes, a hat to be bought, you take hold of the matter with an immense energy. According to circumstance, you work on untiringly for a day, for a month; you are happy in the assurance that you still have the same abundance of strength as before, you take no rest, __o Satan can keep up with you_. If you work together with others, you work them into the ground. But then when the month or, what you always consider the maximum, the six months have gone, you break off and say, __nd that__ the end of the story_. You retire and leave it all to the other party, or if you have been working alone you talk to no one about what you were doing. You then pretend to yourself and others that you have lost the desire and flatter yourself with the vain thought that you could have kept working with the same intensity if that is what you desired. But that is an immense deception. You would have succeeded in finishing it, as most others, if you had patiently willed it so, but you would have found out at the same time that it needs a kind of perseverance quite different from yours.

Existential envy which is directed against the other person__ very nature, is the strongest source of ressentiment. It is as if it whispers continually: __ can forgive everything, but not that you are_ that you are what you are__hat I am not what you are__ndeed that I am not you._ This form of envy strips the opponent of his very existence, for this existence as such is felt to be a __ressure,_ a __eproach,_ and an unbearable humiliation. In the lives of great men there are always critical periods of instability, in which they alternately envy and try to love those whose merits they cannot but esteem. Only gradually, one of these attitudes will predominate. Here lies the meaning of Goethe__ reflection that __gainst another__ great merits, there is no remedy but love.__ Max Scheler

We believe because it gives us faith. It gives us the willingness to go through our day, to keep the existentialist threat of meaninglessness away. We believe because we crave to be seen, to be known, to be understood. We believe because that is the only thing we can do. If there is no one to judge us - to tell us that we are good, and that if we are bad, we can be redeemed - why bother living at all? Why bother being good at all? If there is no one to look after us, and we are truly alone in this universe, what purpose do we have? We have nothing but the present moment, and only temporariness.

Free to move, speak,_extemporize, and yet. We have not been cut loose. Our truancy is defined by one fixed star,_and our drift represents merely a slight change of angle to it: we may seize the moment, toss it around while the moments pass, a short dash here, an exploration there, but we are brought round full circle to face again the single immutable fact --

Finally, the horizon stretched out infinitely before me and I felt utterly content looking at stars from afar and trying to make out all the variable, temporary, extinguished or faded stars. I was nothing in this infinity, but I could finally breathe.

Then there are also the quiet deaths. How about the day you realized you weren't going to be an astronaut or the queen of Sheba? Feel the silent distance between yourself and how you felt as a child, between yourself and those feelings of wonder and splendor and trust. Feel the mature fondness for who you once were, and your current need to protect innocence wherever you make might find it. The silence that surrounds the loss of innocence is a most serious death, and yet it is necessary for the onset of maturity.What about the day we began working not for ourselves, but rather with the hope that our kids have a better life? Or the day we realize that, on the whole, adult life is deeply repetitive? As our lives roll into the ordinary, when our ideals sputter and dissipate, as we wash the dishes after yet another meal, we are integrating death, a little part of us is dying so that another part can live.

They claimed no allegiance to any flag and valued no currency but luck and good contacts.

Would any of you like to share your career aspirations within the class? Jim?I dunno, to be honest, I was just hoping to be able to keep the demons away...

...And meanwhile the Galaxy ran through space and left behind those signs old and new and I still hadn't found mine.

Have you ever felt in your inmost being, the conscience of others?' again she was trembling, the words were not releasing her. 'It's intolerable you know