The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.

 

What is worse?

A lie that draws a smile?

Or a truth that draws a tear?

 

Above all, don't lie to yourself. 

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others

. And having no respect he ceases to love.

 

There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, 

but in the end, they always fall

 

Seize the wind,

Don't become the kite that never flies

 

Life isn't about finding yourself. 

Life is about creating yourself.

 

It is better to be hated for what you are 

than to be loved for what you are not.

 

It is the man of science, 

eager to have his every opinion regenerated,

 his every idea rationalized,

 by drinking at the fountain of fact,

and devoting all the energies of his life to the cult of truth,

 not as he understands it, but as he does not yet understand it,

 that ought properly to be called a philosopher

 

 

Hope burns eternal in the human heart.

 

Is it better to go with the flow 

or let the flow go?

 

The candle that burns half as long 

burns twice as bright 

 

The candle that burns twice as bright 

burns half as long 

Nietzsche

 

he likes the contemplation of pain,

he erects conceit into a duty,

 the men whom he most admires are conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in causing men to die

 

 

A person whose desires and impulses are his own—are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture—is said to have a character. 

One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has character

 

Healthy introspection, without undermining oneself; it is a rare gift to venture into the unexplored depths of the self, without delusions or fictions, but with an uncorrupted gaze.

 

What you don’t know won’t hurt you. 

A dubious maxim: 

sometimes what you don’t know can hurt you very much.

 

Few among men are they who cross to the further shore. 

The others merely run up and down the bank on this side.

 

Fate isn’t one straight road…

there are forks in it, 

many different routes to different ends. 

We have the free will to choose the path

 

Every existing thing is born without reason,

 prolongs itself out of weakness,

 and dies by chance

 

faith is like opening the faucet. 

We can open it a lot, a little, or not at all

 

. The gods either have power or they have not.

 If they have not, why pray to them?

 If they have, then instead of praying to be granted or spared such-and-such a thing, why not rather pray to be delivered from dreading it, or lusting for it, or grieving over it? 

Clearly, if they can help a man at all, they can help him in this way.

 You will say, perhaps, ‘But all that is something they have put in my own power.’ 

Then surely it were better to use your power and be a free man, than to hanker like a slave and a beggar for something that is not in your power. 

Besides, who told you the gods never lend their aid even towards things that do lie in our own power? 

Begin praying in this way, and you will see. 

Where another man prays ‘Grant that I may possess this woman,’ let your own prayer be, ‘Grant that I may not lust to possess her.’ W

here he prays, ‘Grant me to be rid of such-and-such a one,’ you pray, ‘Take from me my desire to be rid of him.’

 Where he begs, ‘Spare me the loss of my precious child,’ beg rather to be delivered from the terror of losing him.

 In short, give your petitions a turn in this direction, and see what comes.

 

Attaining consciousness is connected with the gradual liberation from mechanicalness, for man is fully and completely under mechanical laws

 

The question has often been asked; 

Is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy? 

It does not matter what you call it. 

Buddhism remains what it is whatever label you may put on it. The label is immaterial. 

Even the label 'Buddhism' which we give to the teachings of the Buddha is of little importance. 

The name one gives is inessential.... 

In the same way Truth needs no label: it is neither Buddhist, Christian, Hindu nor Moslem. It is not the monopoly of anybody. 

Sectarian labels are a hindrance to the independent understanding of Truth, and they produce harmful prejudices in men's minds

 

Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possiblities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.

Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what the may be; 

it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, 

and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familar things in an unfamilar aspect

 

Sometimes we need to lose something to understand its value

 

 if all the apples are bad… maybe it’s the tree that’s the problem

 

evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; 

that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices

 

This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists.

 This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists.

 There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction

 

A lot of people experience the world with the same incredulity as when a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat.…

We know that the world is not all sleight of hand and deception because we are in it, we are part of it.

 Actually we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat. 

The only difference between us and the white rabbit is that the rabbit does not realize it is taking part in a magic trick.

 

 Imagine if we had no secrets, no respite from the truth. 

What if everything was laid bare the moment we introduced ourselves

 

"Nothing" does not exist 

 

In modern physics, there is no such thing as "nothing."

 Even in a perfect vacuum, pairs of virtual particles are constantly being created and destroyed. 

The existence of these particles is no mathematical fiction. 

Though they cannot be directly observed, the effects they create are quite real. 

The assumption that they exist leads to predictions that have been confirmed by experiment to a high degree of accuracy.

 

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. 

In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

 

I love him whose soul is deep, 

even in being wounded, 

and who may perish through a minor matter:

 thus he goes willingly over the bridge. 

I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgets himself,

 and all things are in him: 

thus all things become his going under. 

I love him who has a free spirit and a free heart:

 thus his head is only the guts of his heart;

 his heart, however, causes his going under. 

I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the cloud that lowers over man:

 they herald the coming of the lightning,

 and as heralds they perish.

 

I'm more than ever of the opinion that a decent human existence is possible today only on the fringes of society, where one then runs the risk of starving or being stoned to death.

 In these circumstances, a sense of humor is a great help

two enemies

 

Two twins, inseparably fused:

The hunger of the hungry

 and the fullness of the full.

There are so many kinds of time

 

. The time by which we measure our lives. Months and years. 

Or the big time, the time that raises mountains and makes stars.

Or all the things that happen between one heartbeat and the next. 

Its hard to live in all those kinds of times.

 Easy to forget that you live in all of them.

 

It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all. 

By being religious we establish ourselves in possession of ultimate reality at the only points at which reality is given us to guard. 

Our responsible concern is with our private destiny, after all

 

If I didn't try to assume responsibility for my own existence, it would seem utterly absurd to go on existing

 

There were a group of people before the Ascension known as the Astalsi. 

They claimed that each person was born with a certain finite amount of ill luck

 And so, when an unfortunate event happened, they thought themselves blessed

—thereafter, their lives could only get better.

 

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. 

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

 

I believe there's another force as well, one every bit as real as the God ...,

 and that it works consciously to bring all our decent impulses to ruin. ...,

 but a kind of demon of discord, a prankish and stupid thing

 that laughs with glee when an old man sets himself on fire trying to light his pipe 

or when a much-loved baby puts its first Christmas toy in its mouth and chokes to death on it.

 

you can never wash anything completely away, not from this dark glass of a world

 

there isn't a culvert in the world that remembers the water flowed through it once the rain has stopped.

 

Sometimes you can't help people. 

Sometimes it's better not even to try.

 

Atonement is powerful; 

it is the lock on the door you close against the past.

 

The world turns, that's all.

 You can hold on and turn with it, 

or stand up to protest and be spun right off.

 

when we say, 'I don't understand,' God replies, 'I don't care.' 

 

that's what people most always do with the stuff they can't make out - just forget it.

 

Like some dogs: kick them once and they never trust you again, no matter how nice you are to them.

 

But people love a hypocrite, you know——

they recognize one of their own, and it always feels so good when someone gets caught with his pants down  and it isn't you.

 

Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.

 Time takes it all, time bears it away, and in the end there is only darkness. 

Sometimes we find others in that darkness, 

and sometimes we lose them there again.

Sometimes the embers are better than the campfire.

 

It's strange how pain marks our faces, and makes us look like family

 

Sometimes there is absolutely no difference at all between salvation and damnation.

 

Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.

 

We each owe a death - there are no exceptions

 

each of you has his or her own death, 

you carry it with you in a secret place from the moment you're born,

 it belongs to you and you belong to it

 

Without man and his potential for moral progress, the whole of reality would be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final purpose

 

Electricity was a reality in the universe when Moses led the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. 

This is true of all natural laws; 

they have always existed but only when understood may they be used

 

All of us are creatures of a day;  the rememberer and the remembered alike.

 All is ephemeral—both memory and the object of memory. 

The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; 

and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. 

Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere.

 

If a man who can’t count finds a four leaf clover, is he lucky? 

 

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self;

 but the point is not only to get out - you must stay out; 

and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.

 

It is quite true what Philosophy says: 

that Life must be understood backwards. 

But that makes one forget the other saying: 

that it must be lived—forwards. 

The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, 

precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward- looking position.

 

Where do one's fears come from? 

Where do they shape themselves? 

Where do they hide before coming out into the open?

 

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

 

When a youth was giving himself airs in the Theatre and saying, 'I am wise, for I have conversed with many wise men,' Epictetus replied, 'I too have conversed with many rich men, yet I am not rich!’

 

So you think that money is the root of all evil? 

Have you ever asked what is the root of money? 

Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them.

 Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. 

Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. 

Money is made possible only by the men who produce.

 Is this what you consider evil?

 

'It is my bad luck that this has happened to me.' 

No, you should rather say:

 'It is my good luck that, although this has happened to me, 

I can bear it without pain, 

neither crushed by the present

 nor fearful of the future.' 

Because such a thing could have happened to any man, 

but not every man could have borne it without pain.

 So why see more misfortune in the event

 than good fortune in your ability to bear it?”

 

the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

 

Ownership is not limited to material things. 

It can also apply to points of view. 

Once we take ownership of an idea — whether it’s about politics or sports — what do we do? 

We love it perhaps more than we should. We prize it more than it is worth. 

And most frequently, we have trouble letting go of it because we can’t stand the idea of its loss.

 What are we left with then? 

An ideology — rigid and unyielding.

 

You know more than you think you know,

 just as you know less than you want to know.

 

In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing.

 No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. 

But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, 

and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man

 as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations

 

Consciousness is a mystery that faces the mystery of potential and transforms it into actuality.

We do that with every choice we make. 

Our choices determine the destiny of the world.

 By making a choice, you alter the structure of reality

 

Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic. 

If anything at all, it is realistic, for it takes a realistic view of life and the world.

It looks at things objectively (yathābhūtam). 

It does not falsely lull you into living in a fool's paradise,

 nor does it frighten and agonize you with all kinds of imaginary fears and sins.

 It tells you exactly and objectively what you are and what the world around you is,

 and shows you the way to perfect freedom, peace, tranquility and happiness.

 

The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions.

 "Everything is permitted" does not mean that nothing is forbidden.

 

Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this

 

There are 10,000 books in my library, and it will keep growing until I die. 

 If I had not picked up this habit in the library long ago, I would have more money in the bank today; 

I would not be richer.

 

Anhedonia refers to the reduced ability to experience pleasure. 

It has had an important place in many aspects of psychopathology since it was first described in the previous century,

and is still a feature of several types of psychiatric disorders and maladaptive behaviors.

Anhedonia

 

Masochism is more widespread than we realize because it takes an attenuated form. 

The basic dynamism is as follows:

 a human being sees something bad which is coming as inevitable. There is no way he can halt the process; he is helpless. This sense of helplessness generates a need to gain some control over the impending pain -- any kind of control will do. 

This makes sense; the subjective feeling of helplessness is more painful than the impending misery.

 So the person seizes control over the situation in the only way open to him: he connives to bring on the impending misery; he hastens it. 

This activity on his part promotes the false impression that he enjoys pain. Not so. It is simply that he cannot any longer endure the helplessness or the supposed helplessness. 

But in the process of gaining control over the inevitable misery he becomes, automatically, anhedonic. 

Anhedonia sets in stealthily. 

Over the years it takes control of him. For example, he learns to defer gratification; this is a step in the dismal process of anhedonia. 

In learning to defer he gratification he experiences a sense of self-mastery; he has become stoic, disciplined; he does not give way to impulse. He has "control".

 Control over himself in terms of his impulses and control over the external situation. He is a controlled and controlling person. 

Pretty soon he has branched out and is controlling other people, as part of the situation. He becomes a manipulator. 

Of course, he is not consciousily aware of this; all he intends to do is lessen his own sense of impotence.

 But in his task of lessening this sense, he insidiously overpowers the freedom of others.

 Yet, he derives no pleasure from this, no positive psychological gain; all his gains are essential negative.

 

Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, 

when thoroughly explored, it dispels it

Existentialism

 

a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the issue of human existence.

 Existentialist philosophers explore questions related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence.

 Common concepts in existentialist thought include 

existential crisis, 

dread, 

and anxiety in the face of an absurd world,

 as well as authenticity, courage, and virtue.

critiqued rationalism and concerned themselves with the problem of meaning

Søren Kierkegaard 

Friedrich Nietzsche 

 Fyodor Dostoevsky, 

 Jean-Paul Sartre, 

 Simone de Beauvoir, 

Sartre posits the idea that

 "what all existentialists have in common is the fundamental doctrine that existence precedes essence

 Sartre described existentialism as 

"the attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent atheism."

For others, existentialism need not involve the rejection of God, but rather 

"examines mortal man's search for meaning in a meaningless universe," 

considering less "What is the good life?" (to feel, be, or do, good), 

instead asking "What is life good for?

individuals shape themselves by existing and cannot be perceived through preconceived and a priori categories, an "essence".

 Human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life

in contradiction to Aristotle and Aquinas who taught that essence precedes individual existence

the subjective thinker has only one setting—existence—and has nothing to do with localities and such things

people are defined only insofar as they act and that they are responsible for their actions

Someone who acts cruelly towards other people is, by that act, defined as a cruel person. Such persons are themselves responsible for their new identity (cruel persons). This is opposed to their genes, or human nature, bearing the blame.

"Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards." The more positive, therapeutic aspect of this is also implied: a person can choose to act in a different way, and to be a good person instead of a cruel person

 it belongs to the essence of a house to keep the bad weather out, which is why it has walls and a roof. Humans are different from houses because—unlike houses—they do not have an inbuilt purpose: they are free to choose their own purpose and thereby shape their essence; thus, their existence precedes their essence

an essence is the relational property of having a set of parts ordered in such a way as to collectively perform some activity

freedom: nothing fixes our purpose but we ourselves, our projects have no weight or inertia except for our endorsement of them

Simone de Beauvoir, holds that there are various factors, grouped together under the term sedimentation, that offer resistance to attempts to change our direction in life. Sedimentations are themselves products of past choices and can be changed by choosing differently in the present, but such changes happen slowly. They are a force of inertia that shapes the agent's evaluative outlook on the world until the transition is complete

The notion of the absurd contains the idea that there is no meaning in the world beyond what meaning we give it. This meaninglessness also encompasses the amorality or "unfairness" of the world.

opposes the traditional Abrahamic religious perspective, which establishes that life's purpose is the fulfillment of God's commandments. This is what gives meaning to people's lives

 To live the life of the absurd means rejecting a life that finds or pursues specific meaning for man's existence since there is nothing to be discovered.

life becomes absurd due to the incompatibility between human beings and the world they inhabit

absurdity is limited to actions and choices of human beings. These are considered absurd since they issue from human freedom, undermining their foundation outside of themselves

The absurd contrasts with the claim that "bad things don't happen to good people"; to the world, metaphorically speaking, there is no such thing as a good person or a bad person; what happens happens, and it may just as well happen to a "good" person as to a "bad" person

 Because of the world's absurdity, anything can happen to anyone at any time and a tragic event could plummet someone into direct confrontation with the absurd

helping people avoid living their lives in ways that put them in the perpetual danger of having everything meaningful break down is common to most existentialist philosophers. 

The possibility of having everything meaningful break down poses a threat of quietism, which is inherently against the existentialist philosophy

It has been said that the possibility of suicide makes all humans existentialists. 

The ultimate hero of absurdism lives without meaning and faces suicide without succumbing to it

Facticity is a limitation and a condition of freedom. It is a limitation in that a large part of one's facticity consists of things one did not choose (birthplace, etc.), but a condition of freedom in the sense that one's values most likely depend on it. 

the value ascribed to one's facticity is still ascribed to it freely by that person

to disregard one's facticity during the continual process of self-making, projecting oneself into the future, would be to put oneself in denial of oneself and would be inauthentic.

Authenticity involves the idea that one has to "create oneself" and live in accordance with this self. 

For an authentic existence, one should act as oneself, not as "one's acts" or as "one's genes" or as any other essence requires.

 The authentic act is one in accordance with one's freedom

 The Other is the experience of another free subject who inhabits the same world as a person does

The world is constituted as objective in that it is something that is "there" as identical for both of the subjects; a person experiences the other person as experiencing the same things. 

This experience of the Other's look is what is termed the Look

In Sartre's example of a man peeping at someone through a keyhole, the man is entirely caught up in the situation he is in. 

He is in a pre-reflexive state where his entire consciousness is directed at what goes on in the room.

 Suddenly, he hears a creaking floorboard behind him and he becomes aware of himself as seen by the Other. 

He is then filled with shame for he perceives himself as he would perceive someone else doing what he was doing—as a Peeping Tom.

 For Sartre, this phenomenological experience of shame establishes proof for the existence of other minds and defeats the problem of solipsism. 

For the conscious state of shame to be experienced, one has to become aware of oneself as an object of another look, proving a priori, that other minds exist.

The Look is then co-constitutive of one's facticity.

Another characteristic feature of the Look is that no Other really needs to have been there: It is possible that the creaking floorboard was simply the movement of an old house; the Look is not some kind of mystical telepathic experience of the actual way the Other sees one (there may have been someone there, but he could have not noticed that person). 

It is only one's perception of the way another might perceive him

"Existential angst", sometimes called existential dread, anxiety, or anguish

negative feeling arising from the experience of human freedom and responsibility. 

The archetypal example is the experience one has when standing on a cliff where one not only fears falling off it, but also dreads the possibility of throwing oneself off. 

In this experience that "nothing is holding me back", one senses the lack of anything that predetermines one to either throw oneself off or to stand still, and one experiences one's own freedom.

angst is before nothing, and this is what sets it apart from fear that has an object.

 While one can take measures to remove an object of fear, for angst no such "constructive" measures are possible. 

The use of the word "nothing" in this context relates to the inherent insecurity about the consequences of one's actions and to the fact that, in experiencing freedom as angst, one also realizes that one is fully responsible for these consequences.

Despair is generally defined as a loss of hope.

In existentialism, it is more specifically a loss of hope in reaction to a breakdown in one or more of the defining qualities of one's self or identity.

What sets the existentialist notion of despair apart from the conventional definition is that existentialist despair is a state one is in even when they are not overtly in despair. So long as a person's identity depends on qualities that can crumble, they are in perpetual despair