Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

In the end, the art of hunger can be described as an existential art. It is a way of looking death in the face, and by death I mean death as we live it today: without God, without hope of salvation. Death as the abrupt and absurd end of life

Life is islands of ecstasy in an ocean of ennui, and after the age of thirty land is seldom seen.

Our conviction that the world is meaningless is due in part to the fact (discussed in a later paragraph) that the philosophy of meaningless lends itself very effectively to furthering the ends of political and erotic passion; in part to a genuine intellectual error - the error of identifying the world of science, a world from which all meaning has deliberately been excluded, with ultimate reality.

Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.

The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war.

The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.

Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.

I went through a whole phase when I was younger of being obsessed with Tolstoy and Kafka and Camus, all those really, beautiful, dark depressing books.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

The flesh, alas, is sad, and I have read all the books.

My search not only failed, but I convinced myself that all those who had searched like myself had failed also, and come like me to the despairing conviction that the only absolute knowledge man can possess is this—that life is without a meaning.

One joins the movement in a valueless world, Choosing it, till both hurler and the hurled, One moves as well, always toward, toward.

Condition de l'homme: inconstance, ennui, inquie tude. Man's condition. Inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.

Meaning is man-created. And because you constantly look for meaning, you start to feel meaninglessness.

If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.

It may be that there was no reason or purpose, for mankind must always be finding reasons where there are none, and comfort in a purpose that hardly exists.

Philosophy is a proud, sullen detector of the poverty and misery of man. It may turn him from the world with a proud, sturdy contempt; but it cannot come forward and say, here are rest, grace, pardon, peace, strength, and consolation.

The great question of philosophy remains: If life is meaningless, what can be done about alphabet soup?

Satre found atheism 'cruel', Camus 'dreadful', and Nietzsche 'maddening'. Atheists who consistently try to live without God tend to commit suicide or go insane. Those who are inconsistent live on the ethical or aesthetic shadow of Christian truth while they deny the reality that made the shadow.

..finally he was just another ant, working and working until he died without meaning.

There was an enjoyment to being alive, he felt, that because of an underlying meaninglessness–like how a person alone for too long cannot feel comfortable when with others; cannot neglect that underlying the feeling of belongingness is the certainty, really, of loneliness, and nothingness, and so experiences life in that hurried, worthless way one experiences a mistake–he could no longer get at.

Philosophy - hopeless. Yet it gives me hope.

Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.