Existential Fate Quotes

This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!

Every day, the dispensing of existence.... Its face is fierce and distant and ancient.

Perhaps the whole world is actually a banquet, to which every living thing is invited. First you come as guests: then eventually you're on the menu.

The fate of the universe is a decision yet to be made, one which we will intelligently consider when the time is right.

Everyone strives to attain the Law,' answers the man, 'how does it come about, then, that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?' The doorkeeper perceives that the man is nearing his end and his hearing is failing, so he bellows in his ear: 'No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended for you. I am now going to shut it.

God will have life to be real; we will be damned, but it shall be theatrical.

As we look out into the Universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.

Death is contagious; it is contracted the moment we are conceived.

In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. The required diligence and doggedness and lucidity thus resemble the conqueror's attitude. To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: There is no frontier between being and appearing.

What are gods for if not to sit in judgment over men? The Many-Faced God does not weigh men's souls, however. He gives his gift to the best of men as he gives it to the worst. Elsewise the good would live forever.

Your fate is to be yourself, both punishment and crime.

There is a certain fate to the universe and a certain randomness.

The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life.

What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitterness?

Death must no longer be either the penalty for prosperity or the consolation of misery. God did not destine it to be either the punishment or the compensation for life.

He who chooses the infinite has been chosen by the infinite.

I remain unconvinced that anything other than rapid decomposition is the fate of my body and mind after death.

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea.

We did not happen to be--we were chosen by God to exist.

My summary of all our experiences was that it showed that heaven and hell are one place, and we all go there. To those who are prepared, it is heaven; to those who are not fit and ready, it is hell.

I can promise you that the world is a factory. The sun stirs it, the humans rule it. And I remain. I carry them away.- spoken by death

As Plotinus tells us, we elected the body, the parents, the place, and the circumstances that suited the soul and that, as the myth says, belongs to its necessity.

Oblivion waits without beckoning or threatening.