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1. What can I know? 2. What shall I do? 3. What may I hope? 4. What is man?
-Kant
I have trained myself... always to be able to dance in the service of thought... My life begins as soon as a difficulty shows up. Then dancing is easy. The thought of death is a nimble dancer. Everybody is too serious for me.
-Kierkegaard
They were offered the choice between becoming kings or the couriers of kings. The way children would, they all wanted to be couriers. Therefore there are only couriers who hurry about the world, shouting to each other - since there are no kings - messages that have become meaningless. They would like to put an end to this miserable life of theirs but they dare not because of their oaths of service.
-Kafka, Couriers
So that's the idea. I'm to live without eyelids. Don't act the fool, you know what I mean. No eyelids, no sleep; it follows doesn't it? I shall never sleep again. But then - how shall I endure my own company? Try to understand. You see, I'm fond of teasing, it's a second nature with me - and I'm used to teasing myself. Plaguing myself, if you prefer; I don't tease nicely. But I can't go on doing that without a break.
-Sartre No Exit
I feel so queer. Don't you ever get taken that way? When I can't see myself I begin to wonder if I really and truly exist. I pat myself just to make sure, but it doesn't help much.
-Sartre No Exit
One always dies too soon - or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are - your life and nothing else.
-Sartre No Exit
That's a rule of the game. People will beg you to condemn them, but you must be sure to judge them only on the sins they own to; their other evil deeds are no one else's business, and they wouldn't thank you for detecting them.
-Sartre The Flies
Am I anything more than the dread that others have of me?
-Sartre The Flies
You are God and I am free; each of us is alone, and our anguish is akin.
-Sartre The Flies
You talk too much, Hugo. Always have. You have to talk to make sure you're alive.
-Sartre Dirty Hands
Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or to understand. There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge into contemplation. While if you stick to consciousness, even though the same result is attained, you can at least flog yourself at times, and that will, at any rate, liven you up. Reactionary as it is, corporal punishment is better than nothing.
-Dostoevsky Notes from Underground
He seemed so certain about everything, didn't he? And yet none of his certainties was worth one hair of a woman's head. He wasn't even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man. Whereas it looked as if I was the one who'd come up empty handed. But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of the death I had waiting for me. Yes, that was all I had. But at least I had as much of a hold on it as it had on me. I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so? It was as if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to be vindicated. Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he.
-Camus The Stranger
What do I know of man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.
-Samuel Beckett